Ray Conniff



Joseph Raymond (Ray) Conniff ( Attleboro ( Massachusetts ), November 61916 - Escondido ( California ), October 122002 ) was an American trombonist , arranger , composerand orchestra conductor . He learned to play the trombone from his father and arranging music using a course in a book.

After military service in World War II, he was hired by the record label Columbia as their home arranger, he worked with various artists, including Johnnie Ray, Rosemary Clooney, Guy Mitchell and Marty Robbins. In 1954 he wrote an arrangement for Don Cherry's Band Of Gold, of which millions of copies were sold. He got this chance to make his own album and this was the successful S Wonderful! - a collection of familiar songs with an orchestra and a chorus of mixed voices without clever words were sometimes used as additional instruments. In the same style he brought then Marvellous S and S Awful Nice out.

Between 1957 and 1968 he had 28 albums in the American Top 40, including Somewhere My Love which millions of copies were sold. The title track of the album (also called "Lara's Theme") was written for the film Doctor Zhivago ( 1965 ), was also in the top 10 singles in the U.S. .

In 1969 he topped the album charts in Britain with His Orchestra, His Chorus, His Singers, His Sound, and in 1974 the first American popular artist music recorded in Russia: He made ​​Ray Conniff in Moscow with the help of a local choir.

His later albums, including Exclusivamente Latino , Amor Amor and Latinisimo made ​​him popular among his major Latin American supporters. He kept appearances until his death at age 85 in October 2002.

In the Netherlands, he had under his own name but a successful single: Harmony in 1973/1974. ==Radio 2 Top 2000 [ edit] ==