Nelson Riddle stands among the most celebrated orchestrators in the annals of American popular song. Across a lengthy and accomplished tenure he also distinguished himself as a composer of motion-picture and television scores, a conductor, a trombonist, and, on occasion, a chart-topping artist under his own name. Following stints as both sideman and arranger with the ensembles of Charlie Spivak and Tommy Dorsey during the 1940s, he earned widespread recognition for his charts on behalf of leading vocalists such as Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, and Dean Martin. Possessing an unmatched command of atmosphere and nuance, Riddle excelled at illuminating the emotional core of any given lyric. He routinely tailored his writing to the particular attributes and constraints of each singer, thereby eliciting performances of striking depth. Yet it is his imperishable partnership with Frank Sinatra, especially the Capitol concept albums of the 1950s and 1960s, that sealed his historical standing. Their 1953 treatment of “I’ve Got the World on a String” became a substantial success and played a decisive role in restoring Sinatra’s commercial momentum. Beyond pop recordings, Riddle supplied music for numerous prominent films and television programs, ultimately receiving an Academy Award for his work on the 1974 production The Great Gatsby. In the years preceding his death in 1985 he experienced a late-career resurgence through three jazz-oriented albums recorded with Linda Ronstadt; the second of these, Lush Life, earned him a Grammy awarded after his passing.
Nelson Smock Riddle entered the world on June 1, 1921, in Oradell, New Jersey. His father, an amateur musician active in a neighborhood ensemble, encouraged young Nelson to study classical piano; at fourteen the boy switched to trombone. Early enthusiasms included Debussy and Ravel, yet he also absorbed contemporary pop and big-band swing. In 1940 he signed on as trombonist and arranger with Jerry Wald’s dance orchestra. The following year he moved to Charlie Spivak’s group, remaining until he entered the merchant marine in 1943. After his discharge he spent 1944 and 1945 as a trombonist with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, for which he also supplied a pair of arrangements, “Laura” and “I Should Care.” Returning to the New York vicinity in 1946, he created charts for ensembles led by the Elgart Brothers and Elliot Lawrence. Before the year ended, however, he relocated to Los Angeles and secured a position arranging for Bob Crosby. In 1947 he joined the staff of NBC Radio, where he composed underscoring for dramatic series while simultaneously studying orchestration and conducting under Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Victor Young.
Riddle’s initial major opportunity arrived when Les Baxter engaged him to supply uncredited arrangements for Nat King Cole. One such chart, “Mona Lisa,” yielded Cole’s largest-selling record of 1950, although Baxter alone received the credit. “Too Young” proved equally successful in 1951, prompting Cole to retain Riddle as his principal arranger—an association that lasted more than a decade and produced such enduring performances as “Unforgettable.” In 1952 Riddle’s setting of “The Blacksmith Blues” for Ella Mae Morse attracted further attention at Capitol Records, which promptly engaged him as a staff arranger.
Upon Frank Sinatra’s arrival at Capitol in 1953 the label urged the singer to collaborate with the rising Riddle. Sinatra initially preferred to continue working with his longtime Columbia associate Axel Stordahl, yet he quickly appreciated the vitality of Riddle’s style and came to consider him his most intuitive musical partner. The first joint recording, “I’ve Got the World on a String,” inaugurated a series of conceptually cohesive albums whose moods ranged from the romantic intimacy of the ten-inch LPs Songs for Young Lovers and Swing Easy to the stark solitude of In the Wee Small Hours and Only the Lonely, and onward to the buoyant swing of Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! and A Swingin’ Affair! The resulting body of work ranks among the most distinguished achievements in popular-music history.
During the early 1950s Capitol also signed Riddle as a recording artist. Leading his own orchestra he released roughly ten easy-listening albums. In 1956 the instrumental “Lisbon Antigua” climbed to the top of the pop charts; its successor, “Port au Prince,” reached the Top 20, as did the albums Hey…Let Yourself Go! (1957) and C’mon…Get Happy! (1958). Riddle’s 1958 composition “Cross Country Suite” brought him his first Grammy. As the decade progressed he became increasingly active in film scoring. Through Sinatra he contributed to Johnny Concho (1956), Pal Joey (1957), A Hole in the Head (1959), and Come Blow Your Horn (1963), as well as the Rat Pack pictures Ocean’s Eleven (1960) and Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). Additional assignments included the W. C. Handy biography St. Louis Blues (1958) and Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita; he earned Academy Award nominations for Li’l Abner (1959) and Can-Can (1960). He further served as musical director for variety programs featuring Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Rosemary Clooney.
In addition to his work with Sinatra and Cole, Riddle supplied arrangements for Betty Hutton, Jimmy Wakely, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, and Judy Garland; the last-named artist delivered two of her most compelling vocal performances on the 1956 album Judy and its 1958 successor, Judy in Love. Late in the decade he began an extensive collaboration with Ella Fitzgerald, conducting two sessions that yielded Ella Swings Brightly with Nelson and Ella Swings Gently with Nelson while also furnishing many charts for her celebrated Songbooks series, notably the volumes devoted to Gershwin, Kern, and Mercer. Throughout the 1960s he worked with Rosemary Clooney on Rosie Solves the Swingin’ Riddle (1960), Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Al Martino, Johnny Mathis on I’ll Buy You a Star (1961), Shirley Bassey on Let’s Face the Music (1962), Billy Eckstine, Jack Jones, Eddie Fisher, Keely Smith, and numerous others. His final complete album with Sinatra, Strangers in the Night (1966), demonstrated Riddle’s facility with contemporary pop idioms and helped restore the singer’s commercial footing.
Riddle’s soundtrack activities extended prominently into television. He composed the memorable theme for The Untouchables in 1959, and his theme for Route 66 became a chart single upon its 1962 release. Although he did not create the iconic Batman theme, he scored numerous episodes of the series. Additional television assignments encompassed The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Tarzan, Emergency!, and Barnaby Jones. In 1967 he became musical director of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and later held similar posts on variety programs hosted by Julie Andrews and Helen Reddy. Another Academy Award nomination followed his adaptation of the score for Paint Your Wagon (1969), and he received his first Oscar for The Great Gatsby in 1974. He continued to assist Sinatra on special occasions, including the singer’s 1971 farewell concert at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles and a 1974 return engagement at Madison Square Garden. Riddle also maintained his own recording career, moving from Sinatra’s Reprise label to Liberty/United Artists and several smaller companies as his style grew more jazz-inflected and propulsive.
By the mid-1970s, shifts in musical fashion and declining health prompted Riddle’s virtual retirement. He reemerged in the early 1980s to arrange three traditional-pop albums for Linda Ronstadt: What’s New (1983), Lush Life (1984), and For Sentimental Reasons (1986). The first two earned him Grammys for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocals. His last completed undertaking was Blue Skies, a 1985 project with soprano Kiri Te Kanawa. Nelson Riddle died in Los Angeles on October 6, 1985.
