June 1 - Nelson Riddle

Arranger and bandleader Nelson Riddle, Jr., was born on June 1, 1921, in northeastern New Jersey. A trombone player, he went to Hollywood after World War II and arranged music for Nat King Cole at Capitol Records. By 1953 Frank Sinatra had chosen him as his arranger, and his work on “I’ve Got the World on a String” and the album Only the Lonely helped revive Sinatra’s career. Riddle also worked with Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Rosemary Clooney and others, and arranged music for Bing Crosby and Sinatra in the films “High Society” (1956) and “Pal Joey” (1957). Three of Ella Fitzgerald’s great “songbooks” were arranged by Riddle, and in the 1960s he composed the theme for the TV series “Route 66” and worked on “Batman” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” He re-emerged in the 1980s with three “traditional pop” albums for Linda Ronstadt: “What's New” (1983), “Lush Life” (1984) and “For Sentimental Reasons” (1986). The first two earned him Grammy Awards.