Buddy Bregman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Buddy Bregman (born 9 July 1930) is an American musical arranger, record producer and composer.
He has worked with many of the greatest musical artists of 20th Century popular music including; Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, and Frank Sinatra
Born in Chicago, he studied at UCLA and during his sophomore year, wrote 'I Need Your Lovin' with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller which subsequently became his first hit record.
As an arranger, conductor and the A&R head of Norman Granz's newly established Verve Records, he also scored and orchestrated many major motion pictures including; 'The Pajama Game, Crime in the Streets, Secret of the Purple Reef and several others.
1956 saw Bregman orchestrate and arrange three albums which subsequently went platinum, and which still remain today one of his greatest achievements.
Two of the albums represented the commencement of Ella Fitzgerald's epic 'Songbooks' project.
Bregman's intelligent and sensitive arrangements for Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, and Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers & Hart Songbook would establish Fitzgerald as an international star, and secure her legacy as one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook. Bregman also arranged several of Fitzgerald's early Verve singles.
Bing Crosby's 1956 album Bing Sings Whilst Bregman Swings which Bregman also arranged and conducted also later went platinum.
After his tenure at Verve, Bregman became a television producer and director, working with great success for the BBC, and also as Head of Entertainment for ITV.
Bregman then wrote Jump Jim Crow, a musical for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and later went into London-based independent TV and film production, and subsequently produced and directed a feature flm starring Olivia Newton-John.
Upon returning to the United States, Bregman worked as a television producer and director.
