''Percussion at Work'' is an album by composer, arranger and conductor
Pete Rugolo
Pietro "Pete" Rugolo (December 25, 1915 – October 16, 2011) was an American jazz composer, arranger and record producer.
Life and career
Rugolo was born in San Piero Patti, Sicily. His family emigrated to the United States in 1920 and settle ...
featuring performances recorded in 1957 and first released on the EmArcy label.Mercury Records Catalog: EmArcy 36100 series accessed October 6, 2016 accessed October 6, 2016
Reception
The
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
review by Scott Yanow observed: "Some of arranger Pete Rugolo's Mercury and Emarcy recordings of the late 1950s seemed to concentrate more on getting effects than producing creative jazz. ... the album is primarily for hi-fi freaks and those who love percussion solos."
Track listing
''All compositions by Pete Rugolo, except where indicated.''
# "Artistry in Percussion" - 4:06
# "Fugue for Rhythm Section" - 3:35
# "1 + 4" - 4:30
# "Chorale for Brass, Piano, and Bongo" (Rugolo,
Stan Kenton
Stanley Newcomb Kenton (December 15, 1911 – August 25, 1979) was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though K ...
Eddie Cano Edward Cano (June 6, 1927 – January 30, 1988) was an Afro-Cuban jazz and Latin jazz pianist and composer.
Early life
Cano was born in Los Angeles on June 6, 1927. His mother was Mexican-American, and his father, a bass guitarist, was Mexican. Can ...
) - 2:59
# "Bongo Riff" - 3:31
# "Percussion at Work" - 4:54
*Recorded at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, CA on November 5, 1957 (tracks 1, 3-5 & 8) and November 15, 1957 (tracks 2, 6, 7 & 9).
Personnel
*
Pete Rugolo
Pietro "Pete" Rugolo (December 25, 1915 – October 16, 2011) was an American jazz composer, arranger and record producer.
Life and career
Rugolo was born in San Piero Patti, Sicily. His family emigrated to the United States in 1920 and settle ...
Don Fagerquist
Donald Alton Fagerquist (February 6, 1927 – January 23, 1974) was a small group, big band, and studio jazz trumpet player from the West Coast of the United States.
Career
Fagerquist was a featured soloist with several major bands, including M ...
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
(tracks 1, 3-5 & 8)
*
Milt Bernhart
Milt Bernhart (May 25, 1926 – January 22, 2004) was a West Coast jazz trombonist who worked with Stan Kenton, Frank Sinatra, and others. He supplied the solo in the middle of Sinatra's 1956 recording of '' I've Got You Under My Skin'' conducted ...
,
Herbie Harper
Herbert Harper (2 July 1920 — 21 January 2012) was an American jazz trombonist of the West Coast jazz school.
Born in Salina, Kansas, he played swing music with Benny Goodman and Charlie Spivak in the 1940s and 1950s. Working on the West Coas ...
,
Frank Rosolino
Frank Rosolino (August 20, 1926 – November 26, 1978) was an American jazz trombonist.
Biography
Rosolino was born in Detroit, Michigan, United States, He performed with the big bands of Bob Chester, Glen Gray, Tony Pastor, Herbie Fields, Ge ...
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trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...
John Graas
John Graas (March 14, 1917 – April 13, 1962) was an American jazz French horn player, composer, and arranger from the 1940s through 1962. He had a short but busy career on the West Coast, and became known as a pioneer of the French horn in jazz ...
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French horn
The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most ...
(tracks 1, 3-5 & 8)
*Clarence Karella -
tuba
The tuba (; ) is the lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece. It first appeared in the mid-19th century, making it one of the ne ...
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
*Al Portch -
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...
*
Joe Mondragon
Joe Mondragon (February 2, 1920 – July 1987) was an American jazz bassist.
Early life
Mondragon was born in Antonito, Colorado, and raised in the Española Valley region of New Mexico. Mondragon was of Apache and Hispanic origin.
Career ...
Mel Lewis
Melvin Sokoloff (May 10, 1929 – February 2, 1990), known professionally as Mel Lewis, was an American jazz drummer, session musician, professor, and author. He received fourteen Grammy Award nominations.
Biography
Early years
Lewis was ...
(tracks 2, 6, 7 & 9),
Shelly Manne
Sheldon "Shelly" Manne (June 11, 1920 – September 26, 1984) was an American jazz drummer. Most frequently associated with West Coast jazz, he was known for his versatility and also played in a number of other styles, including Dixieland, sw ...
Larry Bunker
Lawrence Benjamin Bunker (November 4, 1928 – March 8, 2005) was an American jazz drummer, vibraphonist, and percussionist. A member of the Bill Evans Trio in the mid-1960s, he also played timpani with the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra.
...
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vibraphone
The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist ...
,
xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in ...
,
timpani
Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally ...
bongos
Bongos ( es, bongó) are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. They are struck with both hands, most commonly in an eight-stroke pattern called ''martillo'' (hammer). The ...