I
remember when I learned John Scott Trotter wrote all of Bing Crosby’s
arrangements, and his orchestra played on Crosby’s immortal
album “White Christmas.”
John
Scott Trotter (left), Ethel Merman, and Bing Crosby ready a radio
show. John Scott arranged Bing’s rendition of Irving Berlin’s
song “White Christmas,” which in 2014 is still the bestselling
musical recording in history.
I had already known
Scott as the man who played piano with a school band (for which he
wrote many of the arrangements) that was formed at the University
of North Carolina. In the 1930s they became famous almost overnight,
playing aboard big, scheduled passenger ships crossing the Atlantic
between New York and Southampton, well before the airlines took over
during the mid 1950s.
The
band, called The Hal Kemp Orchestra, was aboard ship one summer and
was invited to play for Prince George—he was throwing a big
party as the future King of England (later becoming the Duke of Windsor
after he renounced his throne “for the woman I love”)
as he traveled from New York back across the Atlantic.
At
one point, the Prince, who fancied himself something of a musician
(drums) joined the band—that simple gesture made headlines,
and Hal Kemp became famous.
Later
John Scott wrote arrangements for many of the Kemp tunes. Some 700
were recorded, all at 78 rpm, before Hal’s untimely death in
1940, after which The Hal Kemp Orchestra was no more.
But
John Scott kept on working, and after he created the arrangement for
“White Christmas” in 1942 (still number one single in
recording sales), Bing wouldn’t work without him. Up until the
mid-1950s, Bing rarely allowed anyone else to arrange his music, but
John Scott must have convinced him otherwise.
The
string of hit songs the duo created has never been matched.
During
our early days at Air Cargo News, I had the great pleasure to create
a 22-hour musical history of Hal Kemp & his Orchestra for Public
Radio in New York City.
John
Scott’s early work for Kemp was full of wonderful musical discoveries
brought to America for the first time, like the French song “Boom”
and many others.
John
Scott invented the staccato triplets played by the horn section to
create a unique sound for the Kemp band on many recordings, “Got
a Date With An Angel” and others, and the sound became the band’s
trademark—it even caused the great songwriter Johnny Mercer
to remark with some admiration, describing Kemp’s signature
as “the typewriter band.”
John
Scott’s arrangements influenced everybody from Kay Kyser to
Glenn Miller, and of course the greatest crooner of them all, Bing
Crosby, who said this about Trotter: “I'm not musically educated
enough to really describe what he was in music terms. I just knew
he was very good and he had marvelous taste.”
Blessed Christmastide & all good
wishes.
Geoffrey