Biography
April 12, 1916, marked the birth of West Coast jazz arranger and composer Russ Garcia in Oakland, California. After earning his degree from San Francisco State University he pursued advanced studies in composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, then launched his professional path by writing charts for bandleaders Horace Heidt and Al Donahue. Once he relocated to Los Angeles he supplied music and conducted for the Ronald Reagan-hosted radio program This Is America. When that series concluded Garcia spent two years as a staff arranger at NBC Radio and afterward joined the faculty of Hollywood’s Westlake School of Music, where his pupils included Bill Holman, Bob Graettinger, and Gene Puerling; the instructional materials he developed there later appeared in book form as The Professional Arranger. His screen career opened in 1946 with the score for My Dog Shep, after which Henry Mancini recruited him for The Glenn Miller Story, leading to a fifteen-year association at Universal Pictures alongside Pete Rugolo and Benny Carter. Subsequent assignments took him to Warner Bros. and Disney, where his projects ranged from George Pal’s science-fiction film The Time Machine to the television series Rawhide and The Virginian. He also supplied arrangements for vocalists Anita O’Day and Frances Faye, and by the mid-1950s he had become a fixture on West Coast jazz sessions, eventually leading his own ensemble, the Wigville Band, whose personnel featured Charlie Mariano, Jimmy Giuffre, and brothers Pete and Conte Candoli. In 1957 Garcia served as arranger and musical director for the Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald recording of Porgy and Bess. Outside jazz his most enduring contributions include the AAMCO album Sounds in the Night, widely regarded as one of the most haunting vocal-ensemble collections ever issued, and the 1959 masterpiece Fantastica, a landmark space-age pop album that conjures the sounds of distant planets and alternate dimensions. Following his work for Stan Kenton’s Neophonic Orchestra, Garcia abandoned the music industry in 1966; he and his wife Gina sold their belongings, embarked on a voyage across the Pacific, and devoted themselves to spreading the Baha’i faith among the region’s isolated islands. The couple eventually made their home in New Zealand, where Garcia made only sporadic returns to music.