HELLO AND WELCOME TO THE RUSSELL GARCIA FRIENDS PAGE ON MYSPACE.
This page is for fans to get information and celebrate Russell Garcia's life in music. Emails sent to this MYSPACE page do not go to Russ Garcia - just to the moderator of this site. And while he appreciates our interest, he does not have time in the day to respond to the volume of email from all of you. If you would like to leave a note on his 'wall' that is the best way to tell him how much you love or hate his music! Thank you!
Internationally renowned composer, conductor and arranger, Russ Garcia, has worked with a Who’s Who in entertainment industry – Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Anita O’Day, Mel Torme, Julie London, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson, Walt Disney, Orson Welles, Jane Wyman, Ronald Regan, Andy Williams, Judy Garland, Henry Mancini, and Charlie Chaplin – just to name a few – and is, at the age of 91, now living a simple life with his singer-lyricist-writer wife, Gina, in their home in Kerikeri, New Zealand. Still working regularly, the youthful Garcia continues to compose and arrange both in the U.S. and around the world. Together, the Garcia’s also volunteer their services regularly to teach primary school children in New Zealand, “Values” such as Trustworthiness, No Prejudice, Honesty, Anger Control, etc., through the use of songs, raps, stories, games and creative exercises.
The life he and his wife and writing partner Gina are living is a far cry from the glamorous and hectic world of Hollywood where Garcia spent so many years of his life writing music for films, television and record albums, working up to seventeen hours a day, seven days a week. His musical compositions for films include the George Pal, MGM films, The Time Machine and Atlantis the Last Continent, as well as his orchestrated themes for Father Goose and The Benny Goodman Story, among others.
When trying to describe the orchestral sounds that emerged from West Coast jazz scene during the Fifties, the name of Russ Garcia always comes to mind. His works are regarded with great respect for the special, distinctive touch there is in all of his arrangements that helped to enrich the language of both orchestra and combo-sized jazz ensembles.
Bethlehem Records often called on Garcia’s arranging abilities since he was one of the few Hollywood soundstage and studio veterans who could easily and naturally switch from film scoring to jazz arranging without missing a beat. Developing a parallel career, not only did he provide arrangements for many singers and instrumentalists, he recorded over 60 albums under his own name, as well as composing for cutting edge projects such as the Stan Kenton Neophonic Orchestra.
He has always been an innovator with his music using experimental frameworks on which newer and greater presentations could be fashioned, as he proved, assembling his unexpected and groundbreaking four-trombone band with famed brass players Frank Rosolino, Tommy Pederson, Maynard Ferguson and Herbie Harper. Marty Paich can even be heard on some of these sessions at the piano. He used this instrumentation and sound to great success in collaborations with singers like Frances Faye and Anita O’Day, and now brings it back to us in his most recent collaboration: a recording of all Garcia originals with New York vocalist, Shaynee Rainbolt.
It is am impressive resume, but Garcia is reluctant to blow his own horn. “It sounds like name dropping,” he protests, overlooking the fact that even today in Hollywood, 30 years after he gave up fame and fortune for the good life, people continue to drop his name.
Born April 12, 1916, in Oakland, California, one of five boys, he grew up in what he says was an “ordinary” household where music was something that came out of the radio. When his family noticed the five-year-old Russ standing by the radio every Sunday morning waiting for the New York Philharmonic to come on, it was obvious the young man had a special interest in music. One of his brothers presented him with an old coronet he bought for $5, which Russ taught himself to play. In school he started a jazz band to play his new horn, and ended up using the band as an outlet for his compositions and arrangements of standards – all self-taught. “I’ve been able to read music since I was little,” he says. “I don’t know how, because I had lessons only when I went to high school. Call it instinct, call it a gift, I’ve never questioned my musical ability. I’m thankful for it. If I take up a sheet of manuscript paper and a pen there’s a whole orchestra playing in my head. At times I can’t write quickly enough to keep up with what’s flowing out of me.”
When he was eleven years old, the Oakland Symphony Orchestra performed his arrangement of Stardust. By the time he was in high school, he was working five nights a week playing music and earning more than his father who was a credit manager in a large department store. After one year at San Francisco State University, he dropped out because he felt he wasn’t learning enough and instead, went on the road with several big bands. But Russ still wasn’t satisfied, because he says “I was wasn’t advancing fast enough.” He recalls, “I quit and went to Hollywood and had lessons with the best teachers I could find.” He studied composition, harmony, orchestration, counterpoint and form. He took lessons on every instrument so he could write for each with a deeper awareness, rather than just by ear as he had done in the past. He also conducted the West Hollywood Symphony Orchestra once a week for two years, a remarkable experience for a young man in his 20’s, and he says it primed him for what was to come.
His first break came in 1939, when the composer/conductor of the radio show This is Our America fell ill and Garcia got recommended to fill in. He so impressed the director, Ronald Reagan, that he was kept on for two years. Reagan was then married to Jane Wyman who put Garcia on to NBC where he was hired as a staff composer and arranger. As word got out, he says he never had to look for work: “It’s always come to me. I do lead a charmed life.” (Quoting his own composition “Charmed Life” penned based on a fragment he heard Oscar Peterson play). Soon after Henry Mancini called on Russ and his extraordinary talent of transcribing note for note, instrument for instrument, to work on The Glen Miller Story; Charlie Chaplin hired him to do all the arrangements for Limelight; and Universal Studios contracted him to work as composer, arranger and conductor. He did this for 15 years. In the mid-1960’s when Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald needed an arranger/conductor for the record album Porgy And Bess, they looked no further than Russell Garcia. It is still an international best seller. He did three more albums and a concert at the Hollywood Bowl with Armstrong and has lost count of the number of Fitzgerald/Garcia collaborations.
Yet even though he loved what he was doing, in 1966 he decided to walk away from it all. “I fought in the Battle Of The Bulge during World War II and vowed that if I ever got out of it alive, I was going to dedicate myself to world peace.” The Garcia’s decided to sail the Pacific Ocean, carrying the message of peace and the Baha’i faith to the remote islands of the South Pacific. Russ says, “Not many people have the chance to follow their hearts with no financial worries. We had the “charm” working for us: we knew the royalties would see us through for some years.” They spent the next six years on their 13-metre fiberglass trimaran the Dawn-Breaker, as “traveling teachers,” anchoring in such exotic locations as Jamaica, the Galapagos Islands, the Marquesas and Tahiti.
In Fiji, in 1969, the “charm” spun again when musicians visiting from Auckland invited Garcia, on behalf of the New Zealand Broadcasting Commission and the Music Trades Association, to do live concerts, radio and TV shows as well as lecture at universities around the country, a perfect fit seeing as Garcia is also known in music circles as the author of what are considered the definitive textbooks on composition: The Professional Arranger Composer Books 1 and II. The have been translated into six languages and are used in universities and conservatories around the world.
His jobs completed, the Garcia’s were back in Auckland, when friends suggested they visit the Bay of Islands, because as sailors, they thought they would love it. Russ and Gina did, and sailed into Tangitu Bay in 1971 as permanent residents of New Zealand. They have lived in Kerikeri ever since. “We have the best of both worlds,” Russ acknowledges. “Kerikeri is a wonderful place to call home and our attachment to New Zealand is so deep we became citizens over 10 years ago. I’m lucky that at my age I’m able to earn a living doing what I love.”
Garcia continues to compose, conduct, and arrange. Some of his most recent projects include his and Gina’s first opera, The Unquenchable Flame, writing and arranging for the New Zealand Symphony, traveling around the world teaching and lecturing and most recently arranging and conducting a CD of all of his original compositions with New York singer, Shaynee Rainbolt (Shaynee Rainbolt SINGS Russ Garcia-to be released in 2008).
Dear Master Rusell, is an honor to know about you, let me tell you, I am one of you pupils, I studied from your book to be a Musical Arranger 30 years ago. Your book gave me, my first step to be what I am now; I am priviledge to have you as a friend and as a Musical Master. I am Peruvian-American and started my career in Puerto Rico. I would like to said thank you, I am grateful to had the opportunity of having your book in my hands and be one of the arrangers for all the recordings and artists I have produced, thank you for been my friend :)
Dear Unkle Russell~ I can't wait to see you in Los Angeles and Oakland in September! The new CD with Shaynee is absolutely beautiful, just like both of you (and Gina too!) Safe travels and much love. XO T
