Biography
Robert Drasnin, an American composer and multi-instrumentalist, supplied scores for numerous television series including Lost in Space, CHiPs, Playhouse 90, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission Impossible, and The Twilight Zone. Between 1977 and the early 1990s he served as Director of Music for CBS Entertainment. Earlier in his career he performed on alto, clarinet, and flute in the jazz groups of Tommy Dorsey and Red Norvo. His standing as an artist nonetheless centers on a work he probably regarded as minor at the time, the album Voodoo!, which the small Tops label issued near the close of the 1950s. At the direction of the label’s A&R chief, Drasnin produced a close approximation of Martin Denny’s exotica sound. His rendering of the tropical-Latin-lounge jazz hybrid unfolded in a noticeably more restrained style than Denny’s own. Drasnin subsequently arranged Denny’s album Latin Village. The scarce original LP of Voodoo! was reissued on CD in 1996. In 2007, almost fifty years after its predecessor, Drasnin released Voodoo II, produced by Skip Heller. He died on May 13, 2015, from complications following a fall. Up to that point he had been preparing material for a third volume in the Voodoo series. Producer and friend Skip Heller compiled and completed the resulting Voodoo III, issued in 2017.
Albums
