Biography
Johnny Richards stood among the bolder arrangers working in the 1950s and 1960s, crafting expansive, densely scored charts that freely embraced dissonance while displaying a keen affinity for Latin rhythms. Observers have described his writing as “provocatively colorful,” yet the notoriously grandiose “Prologue” he supplied for the self-aggrandizing Stan Kenton requires only the single adjective “provocative.” Born in Schenectady, NY, Richards studied piano, violin, banjo, and trumpet; his mother, a concert pianist, had trained under Paderewski. He began composing for films in London during 1932–1933, then continued the work in Hollywood for the rest of the decade as Victor Young’s assistant at Paramount, simultaneously taking composition lessons from Arnold Schoenberg. Between 1940 and 1945 he fronted his own big band, after which he settled once more in Los Angeles and began writing arrangements for Charlie Barnet and Boyd Raeburn. In 1950 he prepared a string-orchestra album for Dizzy Gillespie and contributed charts to sessions by Sarah Vaughan, Helen Merrill, and Sonny Stitt. His longest and most celebrated partnership was with Kenton, commencing in 1952; the flamboyant Kenton album Cuban Fire! remains a vivid showcase of Richards’s style. He again led orchestras of his own in 1956–1960 and 1964–1965, issuing recordings on Capitol, Coral, Roulette, and Bethlehem, and he co-authored one of Frank Sinatra’s signature pieces, “Young at Heart.”
Albums
