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The gentleman to your left, who thinks he knows Continental music because he can hum a few bars of La vie en rose, is in for an agreeable surprise. Because here Percy Faith, fresh from his delectable expositions of American waltzes, carnival rhythms and assorted music from Hollywood, offers a collection of songs from Europe that survey a wide range of emotions, with some of the suavest melodies of the season. Not until very recently has the European song had much success in America; every year or so some English-language adaptation makes a strong bid for fame, but on the whole the tempos and moods of Continental music have been too special for domestic tastes. However, with the success of The Song from Moulin Rouge, April in Portugal and Anna, at substantially the same time, an increased interest in European songs sprang up, and the portfolio presented here by Percy Faith is a fascinating survey of the best of these songs.

The collection opens with two French numbers, Mademoiselle de Paris, a typical French waltz with its light, nostalgic touch, and Symphony, an attractive fox trot that gained considerable success in this country in 1946-7. Vola, Colomba proves to be another fox trot of smooth, easy charm, and In Love (Fiorin Fiorello) explores the Italian mutation of the rhumba with some interesting Faith coloration. Listeners will find Suddenly an enchanting slow waltz, whose melody is as familiar as its title is comparatively unknown. The Petite Bolero is an exceptionally catchy variation on the bolero rhythm, with a strong, sure beat.

The second half of the program with Oscar Straus’ waltz, La Ronde, for the controversial French film of the same name, presenting a charming waltz with carousel overtones and the lightness that should accompany a story of easy amours. Many Times, which follows, is a suave, rich waltz, while If You Said Goodbye (T’ho Volute Bene) from the film “Anna” is an expressive fox trot. Percy Faith’s arrangement of April in Portugal is arresting an unusual, in that it slides over the customary tango setting and reverts to the original conception, with an interesting role assigned to the percussion. Under the Bridges of Paris (Sous les ponts de Paris) brings back the ever delightful French waltz, and the program concludes with a brilliant Spanish-type selction, Sympatico (Chi Lo Sa Perche!) in the vein of current Italian composers.

The arrangements of the songs presented here are in the Faith tradition, rich and resonant, but entirely free of the distortion of the melody that often accompanies concert arrangements of popular numbers. The Faith touch can be velvety, as in the aforementioned Moulin Rouge, or full of abandon, as in his best-selling Delicado, but no matter which mood the song brings forth, a mastery of the material is always evident. These relatively little-known songs which comprise “Continental Music” offer a superb show-case for the Faith style, and at the same time a fine show-case for Continental composers. The grace and sophistication, the cheerful zest, the sweet nostalgia of these songs show that for years Americans have been overlooking a rich and inexhaustible source of melodic refreshment. In presenting them here, Percy Faith not only offers a program of exceptionally pleasant listening, but brings some new notes to the popular musical scene in songs that are destined for wide popularity.

The music in this collection is some of the most romantic to be heard on records. Including a large selection of American waltzes by some of the country’s finest composers, together with other favorite compositions, it displays the superb talents as arranger and conductor of Percy Faith. In addition to his richly colorful treatments of these pieces, it also offers two selections featuring The Magic Voices, If I Loved You by Richard Rodgers, and Easy To Love by Cole Porter. In these expressive arrangements, the voices of a female choir are used as instruments in the orchestra, not to sing lyrics or carry the melody, but to add a new texture of sound.

The oldest of eight children, Percy Faith began studying the violin at the age of seven. Shortly thereafter an aunt gave him a fine piano, with which he immediately became fascinated. By the time he was ten, he had progressed to the point where he was able to present a double recital, playing alternate solos on the violin and the piano. However, his real love was the piano, and he concentrated on that instrument. During this highschool years, he found after-hours employment in a Toronto movie house, playing music to accompany silent films. Here he learned how to improvise and to ad-lib, to fit the mood of various scenes and to stretch out the music when his cue-sheets proved faulty.

Upon graduation from highschool, he joined an orchestra which played in and around Toronto. Suddenly, an offer came from Jack Arthur, a symphonic-orchestra conductor known as the “Paul Whiteman of Canada.” Impressed with Percy’s ability, Arthur lent him to a small band in the area, intending to place him in his own group after Percy had acquired more experience. However, Percy found work on several radio programs, and continued to study for concert work under such teachers as Frank Wellman of the Toronto Conservatory, and Louis Waizman. It was Waizman who recognized the Young musician’s talent for interpretive arranging, and convinced him that he should follow that technique.

By 1931, Faith was conducting his own orchestra – a small string group – on the air. He progressed through larger groups and in 1934 the Canadian Broadcasting System hired him as staff arranger and conductor. He was given a program called “Gaiety in Romance” that at once landed a sponsor, and continued with “Streamline” and “Music by Faith.” Early in 1940 he was offered the conductor’s post with the “Carnation Hour” in the United States, which he conducted until 1947, until he starred on “The Pause That Refreshes.” Shortly thereafter, he joined Columbia Records as a member of the Artists and Repertoire staff, and as a recording artist in his own right. Since that time his arrangements have been in constant demand, and he has been one of the leaders in the return of the instrumental number to favor. Such Faith hits as Delicado, The Song From Moulin Rouge and others have done much to re-establish instrumental music in a field long given over to vocalists. In this collection of romantic music, the reason for his success is easy to hear, and easier to still to enjoy. This is music in the true romantic manner: sumptuous, melodic and brimming with beautiful harmonies.

ABOUT PERCY FAITH

Born April 7, 1908, Toronto, Canada
Studied violin and piano, attended Toronto Conservatory
Joined the CBS as staff arranger and conductor in 1934
Came to the States in 1940
Famous as composer, arranger, conductor and accompanist on records.

For over thirty years, the movies have been a fertile source of some of the world’s greatest song hits. There was a time—before the seventh annual Academy Awards presentation in 1935, the year an Oscar for Best Song made its debut—when a song success originated either in a Broadway show, or from that musically productive area in mid-Manhattan known affectionately as Tin Pan Alley. When sound came to the “flicks” in the late Twenties, however, many songwriters moved West to lend their talents to the spectacular musicals that issued in profusion from the film capital.

Since then, motion-picture producers have called upon the service of the best composers and lyricists on both sides of the Atlantic to provide songs and theme music for their films, whether musical or dramatic. Today, over thirty Academy Award-winning songs have lingered on to embellish American’s—and the world’s—musical landscape.

This year, the thirty-ninth gala Oscar-awarding ceremony was more exciting than ever. To all those present at Santa Monica’s Civic Auditorium (as either spectators or as hopeful winners) and to the millions witnessing the event on television, on of the most eagerly awaited announcements was that for Best Song. And here to perform the winner and the four other distinguished Oscar nominees is Percy Faith. Percy’s arrangements for his orchestra are, as you might expect, superb demonstrations of how great popular music can be made to sound greater still. As an added bonus, Percy conducts many more fine movie songs and themes, both new and recent.

Renew the pleasure you experienced when you saw these outstanding films, and rediscover the Academy Award-caliber music that helped make them memorable. Listen, and relive all the excitement of the movies themselves, and the breathtaking Academy Award presentations that honored them!

About Percy Faith . . .

Canadian-born, but today a citizen of the United States–more exactly a resident of Great Neck, Long Island–Percy Faith had his first professional job at the age of 11, when he played a hearts-and-flowers piano accompaniment to silent movies in a Toronto theatre. He was too small to reach comfortably from bench to keys, so they built him up by seating him on a thick stack of sheet music.

At 15, having attended the Toronto Conservatory of Music, he made his debut on the stage of Massey Hall, along with other star pupils. The critics seemed to like his playing of Liszt’s “Hungarian Fantasy” so, he says, “I thought I might try professional piano–outside of a movie theatre.” At 18, he was writing musical arrangements for prominent bandleaders, and the following year, he became a member of a small concert group. He left this group after a year or two to do radio work.

Faith’s musical talents soon began to develop beyond the limitations of merely playing an instrument; he found himself becoming more and more interested in composing, arranging, and conducting. His work in these three capacities was so outstanding that, in 1933, he became staff conductor, arranger, and pianist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He remained with CBC for seven years, during which time he wrote and arranged the music for important dramatic programs , and conducted such popular musical shows as “Music by Faith,” “Strings in Swingtime,” “Bands Across the Sea,” and the Empire broadcasts when the King and Queen visited Canada.

Faith came to the United States in 1940 to appear as guest conductor on NBC’s “Carnation Contented Hour,” following the death of Josef Pasternack. In September of that year, he was invited to accept the position of permanent conductor. Percy accepted, and he continues to guide the distinguished orchestra, all of whose programs Faith does himself.

An experienced recording artist, Percy has made several sides with Hildegarde, and she has made guest appearances on his air show. His arrangements are intricate and exuberant, spiced with provocative native touches; the interpretations are full-bodied and imaginative.

About Hildegarde . . .

The story of how Hildegarde grew from “the shy dear that made Milwaukee famous” to the glamourous young lady who has given command performances before royalty, is a fairy tale come true that needs little retelling here. No secret has been made of her humble beginnings as a pianist in a tiny mid-western movie house. And it never detracted from the eminence of her present position as society’s slickest singer of songs–the one woman capable of holding the super-sophisticates spellbound.

Wherever she appears–and she’s appeared just about everywhere–she’s billed as “The Incomparable Hildegarde.” It’s quite a billing to live up to. A lesser personality might well cringe under the caustic comment so extravagant a descriptive word as “incomparable” could occasion. But Hildy, as she’s affectionately known, thrives on the dangerous adjective–for the simple reason that she is incomparable. There has been no woman in the entertainment world with whom she can be compared. Her brand of showmanship is actually unique. It is so bland, so ingenuous, so apparently naïve, that it is deceptive. You sit looking at and listening to her, wondering what it is she’s got that gets you, and before you’ve finished wondering, Hildy’s got you . . . but good.

A newspaper columnist can’t afford to go all-out in praise of a star too often. He must spend his special words like dollars, must save his bouquets for Saturday Night people. The following quote speaks in terms reserved only for a few of the “chosen.” Everett Johannes, in his column “Hob Nobbing,” said of Hildegarde: “But after the laughs and the repartee, and the lively songs, it is in the quiet and darkened room that she reaches her height. A love song isn’t just a love song to her–it’s a story, and she tells it that way. She goes to the piano and the lights trickle away, all but one soft one, and suddenly her voice grows sad and lost and wistful, and she seems alone, even in the great room, and the words are a soliloquy and the love they tell about might as well be your own, for the songs gets deep down in you. The sad and lost and wistful voice is all over the room, and you are seeing and hearing theatre at its best.”

In 1951, soon after Percy Faith came to Columbia Records as its musical director, a position somewhere between Mitch Miller, who was the A&R man, and along list of singers in search of hits, Percy found a song for himself. As a Columbia artist also searching for his first hit, he had a right to keep it for himself. As Mitch’s musical director and hit-song hunter for the rest of the roster, he had an obligation to give it away. But the music was Brazilian, there was no lyric, and there was already a recording available by the composer, Azevedo. Percy showed the music to Mitch, but he kept it, wrote an arrangement which would feature a guitar with his concert orchestra, and took a taxi to Columbia’s 30th Street studio, an ancient church whose shell offered the best recording sound in New York City.

In a dark corner of the old church before the start of the session Mitch and Percy discovered a harpsichord, closed and locked, ready to be trucked away behind the lady who had just completed her Bach album. Without a qualm worth remembering, Mitch and Percy picked the lock on the instrument, pushed it under a microphone, and featured it, instead of the guitar, on Delicado. Percy had his first hit, Mitch a new sound, and somewhere a lady harpsichordist never knew the difference.

Percy FaithBut there is more to a hit than three minutes of accidental gold. Like all success stories, it begins somewhere else, and, usually, it leads to something even better. That Percy should have chosen an unknown Brazilian melody in the first place seemed surprising for a Toronto-born musician trained as a serious pianist. Yet, as far back as Percy can remember, he has been excited by the rhythms, the pounding and scratching of the music of Latin America. Snowbound in Canada, he wrote tropical arrangements long before he ever ventured south of Chicago. Delicado for Percy Faith was a natural choice. Its successors were to become a major part of his international reputation.

A few years after Delicado, when Percy Faith was established as a major artist on singles and albums, he returned to the music of Latin America to record a gold album of the music of Mexico. Called Viva!, and filled with songs among the most beautiful in the world, it also included the Mexican Hat Dance popping with whipcracks. And, now identified with Latin American music, he continued with another successful album, this time the compositions of Lecuona, the Cuban writer of Malagueña. One important facet of a brilliant career had been revealed when the lock on a harpsichord was picked.

A new direction for Percy Faith was forecast soon after the success of Delicado when six feet of manuscript paper reached him from Paris. The motion picture “Moulin Rouge” had opened abroad with a theme some 80 measures long by the French composer Georges Auric. The music went the rounds of New York publishers and record companies, all of whom rejected it as being too long. Finally, and with tacit approval to make a few changes, Percy picked out 32 measures and wrote the arrangement of what was to be called The Song from “Moulin Rouge.” It was Percy’s first million-selling single and clearly an invitation to search the scores of other motion pictures for themes suitable to his 45-man orchestra, a group of musicians which has always included veterans of big bands, jazz stars, and a sprinkling of concert masters—a virtuoso orchestra.

Percy continued to record motion-picture themes with consistent success for the next two decades, choosing such compatible examples as Tara’s Theme from “Gone With The Wind,” and winning a Grammy award for his recording of Theme from “Romeo and Juliet.” The story of his greatest hit of all, Theme from “A Summer Place,” includes the usual twists of fortune which seem to accompany unique moments. In the late Fifties he was offered a contract to record for the then-new Warner Brothers Records. The proposal was made more tempting by an offer to score several Warner Brothers pictures. After careful consideration, Percy decided to turn it down in favor of remaining with Columbia where he was by then a major artist certain of a long and profitable career. Among the list of forthcoming Warner pictures he would have scored if he had accepted the offer was “A Summer Place,” and soon afterward the theme for this picture, written by Max Steiner, was brought to Percy.

He liked the melody but was surprised by the triplets, a device then popular but certainly not expected from the venerable Hollywood composer. So Percy called Max to verify these clusters of eight-notes covering the score. “Oh,” said Steiner, “they sent me a young man who told me triplets were hot. But what the hell,” he added with a telephonic shrug, “they were good enough for Mozart.” So the triplets remained in the Faith arrangement of Steiner’s theme, and the single record began to sell. During the winter of 1960 Theme from “A Summer Place” gathered momentum until it became a worldwide hit, was chosen Record of The Year by the music trade magazines Billboard and Cash Box, awarded a Grammy, and, of course, became another gold record for Percy Faith. “If I had accepted the Warner Brothers offer,” Percy muses, “I would have written the theme. Then what?”

The thin line which separates the creative arranger from the composer in a musician like Percy Faith is often crossed and, usually, the listener is unaware of the crossing. A Faith arrangement is a composition in all but melody, and often that too, and this imprint of his own on every performance accounts for the immediate identification his music enjoys. Percy has been crossing the composer line for a quarter century, sometimes intentionally, sometimes in spite of himself. An early example, which would have earned a gold record award had it not been the back side of another gold record, The Song from “Moulin Rouge,” is Swedish Rhapsody. Accompanying a 30-minute television show in the early Fifties was a lengthy composition by the Swedish composer Hugo Alfven consisting of Swedish folk themes woven into a concert piece. When the music attracted listener attention, Percy sent for it, discovered the themes it contained, and adapted them to a shorter piece, for which he was given composition credit with Alfven. His recording of Swedish Rhapsody, which by now has become more popular than its companion song, completed the success.

Percy has continued to compose. In the gold-award album Bouquet, which featured for the first time his string orchestra, the title song is his. Another album which won the coveted gold award, Themes for Young Lovers, was a successful single of a Faith composition called, of course, Theme for Young Lovers. His theme for “The Virginian” has been played so often in so many parts of the world that he could, if he would, write music for horses, too.

One of the prime sources of American popular music during the past half century has been the Broadway musical theatre. Record stars have been feasting on its songs ever since Jolson recording Swanee, and there were never more songs to choose from than in the early Fifties when Percy was fashioning his own career. But until he returned to the 30th Street studio to record the score from “Kismet,” there were no successful instrumental albums of such scores. It was believed, logically, that listeners wanted lyrics with their show music but, perhaps, the Borodin music was so good, or, perhaps, Percy’s arrangements were lyrical enough. At any rate, his album of the music, including Baubles, Bangles And Beads, was a success too big to have been accidental, and s it led to yet another fertile field for Faith.

Percy followed the score from “Kismet” with an even more successful album of the music from “My Fair Lady,” from which Show Me is taken for this collection, as well as beautiful albums of Rodgers and Hammerstein music from “South Pacific” and “The Sound of Music.” And if it is true that a familiar song is often more appealing when its lyrics are played rather than sung, when a more universal language is used, then Percy Faith’s catalog of musical theatre will endure.

As the Fifties turned into the Sixties, music turned also, and the songs of a new generation were often beautiful and meaningful. Equally important for a man with a large orchestra, many of these songs could be played by strings. By the mid-Sixties Percy was playing the new music, adding still another dimension to his imposing talent and another audience for his records. After his Themes for Young Lovers won its gold award, (I Will Follow You in this collection also comes from that album), he adapted Jim Webb’s MacArthur Park for his orchestra. Then, because poetry had entered music of the decade, Percy added a girls’ chorus to his orchestra. Yellow Days, Angel of The Morning, and Windy, for the latter two of which he won Grammy nominations, feature the Faith chorus and orchestra.

This attractive collection of Percy Faith hits is more than a score of records. It is the essence of nearly a quarter century of an illustrious career. It is the recollection of a hundred albums and a half dozen important directions his music has taken since Delicado. And, in retrospect, it is the explanation of his place in our music. His talents are all here: the inseparable talents of composing and arranging, the stylish sweep of his strings, the impeccable selection of repertoire. Few artists have equaled his popularity on records. Fewer still continue to surprise.

—Irving Townsend

Percy Faith is one of America’s popular and distinguished musicians. His newest hit, The Theme from “A Summer Place,” has already sold well over a million records, joining Delicado and The Song from Moulin Rouge in that select circle. He is known as a composer—it was he who adapted The Song from Moulin Rouge from the original score, and provided Guy Mitchell with My Heart Cries for You—and arranger and conductor of singular talents. His collections range from sparkling Latin American concoctions through sumptuous mood music to immensely popular instrumental settings of scores from Broadway shows.

Percy Faith was born in Toronto, Canada, on April 7, 1908. He began his studies early, and applied himself so assiduously that by the time he was eleven, he was earning three dollars a night—plus carfare—as a pianist for silent movies in a Toronto theater. At fifteen, he made his concert debut in Massey Hall, and thereafter continued his piano work, along with a new-found interest arranging for orchestras. In 1933, Percy was appointed staff conductor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, remaining until 1940, when he moved to the United States to become conductor of “The Contented Hour.” That same year, he became a citizen. His career moved forward steadily, and in 1947 he became conductor of “The Pause That Refreshes on the Air.” Other radio programs, and guest appearances with such fine orchestras as the NBC Symphony further enhanced his reputation, and in 1950 he joined Columbia Records.

On October 26, 1933, contracts were signed by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Du Bose Heyward and The Theatre Guild for the composition and production of a new American opera, Porgy and Bess. Although hopes must clearly have been high, none of the participants can have had any idea of the eventual significance of the work, nor of the unending beauty of its music. The manuscript was marked finished on August 23, 1935, and the first public performance was heard at the Colonial Theatre in Boston on September 30. New York heard Porgy and Bess on October 10, and received it with a mixture of enthusiasm and dismissal; everyone liked the tunes, but critics felt it was not a true opera and audiences—at least Broadway audiences—tended to shun anything even approaching opera. So shortly thereafter, having run up 124 performances, Porgy and Bess was retired from the stage, leaving only its superb songs as a legacy.

In 1942 the work was revived to considerably more acclaim—both critics and audiences came around, this time, and a long run and extensive tour resulted. The music grew and grew in popularity, both as individual numbers and as a suite arranged for symphony orchestra. Columbia Records then undertook to record the complete work, including several sections cut from stage productions, and met with signal success. And then, on June 9, 1952, Porgy and Bess was revived in Dallas, and a fantastic saga began. The production toured Europe, returned for a year in New York and an American tour, went back to Europe, on to Latin America, played for a week at La Scala in Milan, went behind the Iron Curtain to Leningrad (December 26, 1955) and Moscow, and closed four years later on June 3, 1956 in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. As an example of American theatrical art it provided an unparalleled exhibit for residents of twenty-nine countries. It was pointed out at the time that Porgy and Bess did not so much make a tour as a triumphal procession. And now, to round out the story, Porgy and Bess has been adapted for motion pictures in a Samuel Goldwyn production, directed by Otto Preminger and starring Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr., and Pearl Bailey.

In this program of music from Porgy and Bess, Percy Faith has chosen not only the magnificent highlights but has gone on to include some rarely-heard sections of the Gershwin score. Divorced from its lyrics, the music proves as exciting and vibrant as ever—few melodies anywhere are lovelier than “Summertime” or more touching than “My Man’s Gone Now,” fewer still have the ebullience of “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’” or “It Ain’t Neceesarily So.” And included, too, are such comparatively unfamiliar gems as “A Woman Is A Sometime Thing,” “Oh, I Can’t Sit Down” and the street cries of “The Strawberry Woman” and “The Crab Man.” Mr. Faith has presented these selections in the sequence in which they appear in opera, forming a sweeping panorama that moves with engrossing power from the opening sketch of “Catfish Row” to the proud finale, “I’m on My Way.”

The plot of Porgy and Bess concerns a crippled Negro beggar who lives in Catfish Row, a tenement on the waterfront of Charleston, South Carolina. (In the film, the time has been set back from Heyward’s original contemporary setting to that of roughly 1911.) Bess, a vibrant young woman, takes refuge from the law with Porgy, and grows to love him for his gentleness and strength. When Porgy is arrested on suspicion of murder, Bess falls under the evil influences of Sportin’ Life and goes off to New York City with him. On his return, Porgy finds her gone, but with deep faith sets off in his little goat cart to find her. A synopsis so brief can only hint at the richness and depth of the libretto itself, and gives no idea at all of the incomparable splendors of the score. Nevertheless, in Percy Faith’s instrumental settings, the power and excitement of Porgy and Bess are preserved with genuine sympathy, and the music is so ‘right,’ so true, that one is swept along by it. It may be apposite to quote a remark by Virgil Thomson: “When one considers one by one the new works that the world’s greatest opera houses have produced with ballyhoos and hallelujahs in the past forty years and the almost unvarying pattern of their failure, one is inclined to be more than proud of our little Georgie.” And even without Mr. Thomson’s qualification, one is inclined, as these magnificent melodies unfold, to be more than proud.

For this album, I used two orchestral combinations of thirty-seven and forty-two pieces. The performances of the men were so fine that I am inclined to give credit where credit is due, and list the names of those who played important solos, and to praise the orchestra as a whole. I have always thought of this orchestra as an individual, as a soloist rather than as an ensemble.

— Percy Faith

Violin: George Ockner, Piano: Bernie Leighton, Trumpet: "Doc" Severinson, Alto Sax: Jimmie Abato, Tenor Sax: Russ Banzer, Mallets: Terry Snyder, Cello: Phil Kraus, Cello: Lucien Schmidt, Oboe: Harold Feldman

“There’s a magic in the distance, where the sea-line meets the sky,” wrote the poet Alfred Noyes. And in this enchanting collection of music inspired by faraway horizons of the world, Percy Faith applies his matchless touch to a dozen songs that take on a nostalgic glow even for hose who have never journeyed to mysterious India, the fabulous Orient or found peace and contentment on a sun-drenched Pacific isle.

Percy leads his orchestra (sometimes augmented by a wordless vocal chorus) in shimmering evocations of a mythical Himalayan utopia, Shangri-La; a delightfully languid version of Kashmiri Song, suggestive of all the seductive charm of pale hands beside the Shalimar, and songs of Siam (Richard Rodgers’ beloved March of Siamese Children), Persia (Stranger in Paradise, And This Is My Beloved), Japan (Percy’s own composition, Cherry Blossom, and Irving Berlin’s Sayonara), China (Mountain High, Valley Low) and the Pacific region (Beyond the Reef, The Moon of Manakoora, Return to Paradise).

As he has unforgettably demonstrated in his superb series of recordings of Latin American music, popular ballads, favorite standards and Broadway hits, Percy Faith can color a melody as no other conductor-arranger-composer can. The sounds of SHANGRI-LA! Make it abundantly clear that the music of distant realms—real or imagined—has inspired the Maestro’s palette to glow more brilliantly than ever.

The miracle of modern instrumentation has brought new life to the popular song market. So accustomed are we to hearing “classical” arrangements that we often take them for granted; the effortless beautify and grace of the music belies its struggle for popular acclaim. Actually, it has cost our foremost arrangers over a decade of trial and error to produce the colorful variety which marks today’s popular hits. Not only does this variety mean higher standards of performance, but also a greater range and incentive for songwriting in the future.

Experience, the key to making significant music, is widely reflected in the career of arranger-conductor Percy Faith. One of the leading concert, broadcast and recording figures, he has been keeping popular music alive and interesting ever since, as a youngster, he played piano in a picture theatre. Born in Canada, Percy made his radio debut while studying at the Toronto Conservatory of Music. He was active in orchestra work, and at the age of twenty-three conducted his own string group on the air. At twenty-six, he was signed as a staff arranger and conductor by the Canadian Broadcasting Company and three years later became musical director of C.B.C. through the show “Music by Faith.”

When Percy came to the United States in 1940 to succeed Josef Pasternak on the “Carnation Contented Hour,” popular music was resistant to classicized arranging, except in the films. As conductor of this program for the next seven years, however, he witnessed and helped to create many changes in the scoring of everyday ballads. It was during this era that dance bands adopted violins and also gave birth to “progressive” jazz. Contracted to star as the director of radio’s “Pause That Refreshes” between 1947 and 1950, Percy aided current Folk and International trends by featuring well-known American, European and South American singers as guests on the program.

Because of his activity as a composer, Percy Faith’s arrangements never lose their highly original flair. It is evident in this album of mood settings, as they were selected for melodic evenness and recorded to emphasize the feeling of simple yet pervasive sound. One of the most striking features you will hear is the contrast between novel instrumentation and the familiarity of the music itself. Under the skilled direction of Percy Faith, this imaginative contrast forms the basis for one of the most delightful collections in the modern repertoire.

With the mid-90s Easy Listening revival well and truly under way, it is a very good time to be introducing this new compilation of Columbia recordings by master arranger-conductor Percy Faith.

Melody is the essence of ‘Easy,’ as it’s now trendily referred to, and there is no greater lover and respecter of melody than Canadian-born Faith, here heard enhancing twenty magnificent themes from stage and screen.

It will come as little surprise to anyone that Percy Faith, known worldwide for his sumptuous string sound, started his musical education playing the violin at the age of seven. Courtesy of an aunt, a piano then came into his life and for a while, both instruments shared his affections. Then the keyboard edged ahead.

Aged eleven, precocious Percy was playing piano for the silent movies – a fabulous training ground – at $3 a time, and aged fifteen, he was giving his first major recital at Massey Hall. But a tragic accident around 1926, in which his hands were burned, effectively ruled out a concert career and the young maestro turned to arranging.

For the remainder of the ‘20s, Faith combined theory and practice, balancing study at the Toronto Conservatory with hands-on experience on bandstands and radio. He even formed his own string ensemble, another pointer to his fate.

By the early ‘30s, he was safely ensconced at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, presenting “Gaiety In Romance,” then “Streamline” and ultimately “Music By Faith,” which was carried in the USA by MBS. However, budget cuts prompted him to move on and in 1940, he moved to America, immediately replacing Josef Paternak as M.D. for Carnation’s “Contented Hour” on NBC. More radio work followed, as did records for Decca and RCA before, in 1950, aged forty-two, he arrived at Columbia Records, there to remain for twenty-six years, until his death.

“Your Dance Date” was the first of over eighty albums Faith and his orchestra made for the company, a body of work that eventually embraced everything from salutes to great Broadway shows and great American composers via exploration of great Latin rhythms to pop tunes and even, in the mid-70s, disco treatments. Total sales topped the fifty million mark.

Along the way, Faith enjoyed hit singles (“Delicado,” “The Song From Moulin Rouge,” “Theme From A Summer Place”), accompanied Columbia’s star singers (Tony Bennett, Doris Day, Sarah Vaughan, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Mathis), composed or adapted hit tunes (“My Heart Cries For You,” “Swedish Rhapsody,” “Theme For Young Lovers,” “The Virginian”), scored movies (“Love Me Or Leave Me,” “Tammy Tell Me True,” “The Oscar”) and toured Japan, where he remains an MOR icon.

Percy Faith died on February 9th, 1976, six weeks after completing work on “Summer Place ’76,” an album led by a contemporary update of his single best-known title.

The top-drawer film and show tunes assembled here were meat and drink to the man and consequently, despite the absence of his hits (readily available elsewhere), this collection in many ways represents quintessential Faith.

Gerald Mahlowe, 1996

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