Russell Garcia (composer) - Professional Career

Professional Career

When he was eleven years old, the Oakland Symphony Orchestra performed his arrangement of "Stardust". By the time Garcia was in high school, he was working five nights a week playing music and earning more than his father who was a credit manager in a large department store. After one year at San Francisco State University, he dropped out because he felt he was not learning enough and instead, went on the road with several big bands. But he remained unsatisfied, because he says “I wasn’t advancing fast enough.” He recalled, “I quit and went to Hollywood and had lessons with the best teachers I could find.” He studied composition, harmony, orchestration, counterpoint and form. He took lessons on every instrument so he could write for each with a deeper awareness, rather than just by ear as he had done in the past. He also conducted the West Hollywood Symphony Orchestra once a week for two years, a remarkable experience for a young man in his 20’s, and he says it primed him for what was to come.

His first break came in 1939, when the composer/conductor of the radio show This is Our America fell ill and Garcia was recommended to fill in. He so impressed the director, Ronald Reagan, that he was kept on for two years. Reagan was then married to Jane Wyman who recommended Garcia to NBC where he was hired as a staff composer and arranger. As word got out, he says he never had to look for work: “It’s always come to me. I do lead a charmed life.” Soon after Henry Mancini called on Garcia and his extraordinary talent of transcribing note for note, instrument for instrument, to work on The Glenn Miller Story. Charlie Chaplin hired him to do all the arrangements for Limelight, and Universal Studios contracted him to work as composer, arranger and conductor. He remained in the post for 15 years. In 1957 when an arranger/conductor was needed for a Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald record album Porgy And Bess, Garcia was hired. It is still an international best seller. He undertook three more albums and a concert at the Hollywood Bowl with Armstrong.

Bethlehem Records often called on Garcia’s arranging abilities since he was one of the few Hollywood soundstage and studio veterans who could easily and naturally switch from film scoring to jazz arranging without missing a beat. Developing a parallel career, not only did he provide arrangements for many singers and instrumentalists, he recorded over 60 albums under his own name, as well as composing for cutting edge projects such as the Stan Kenton Neophonic Orchestra.

He has always been an innovator with his music using experimental frameworks on which newer and greater presentations could be fashioned, as he proved, assembling his unexpected and groundbreaking four-trombone band with brass players Frank Rosolino, Tommy Pederson, Maynard Ferguson and Herbie Harper. Marty Paich can even be heard on some of these sessions at the piano. He used this instrumentation and sound to great success in collaborations with singers like Frances Faye and Anita O’Day, and now brings it back to us in his most recent collaboration: a recording of all Garcia originals with New York vocalist, Shaynee Rainbolt.

Yet even though he loved what he was doing, in 1966 he decided to walk away from it all. “I fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II and vowed that if I ever got out of it alive, I was going to dedicate myself to world peace.” The Garcias decided to sail the Pacific Ocean, carrying the message of peace and the Bahá'í Faith to the remote islands of the South Pacific. Garcia said, “Not many people have the chance to follow their hearts with no financial worries. We had the “charm” working for us: we knew the royalties would see us through for some years.” They spent the next six years on their 13-metre fiberglass trimaran the Dawn-Breaker, as “traveling teachers,” anchoring in such exotic locations as Jamaica, the Galapagos Islands, the Marquesas and Tahiti.

In Fiji, in 1969, the “charm” spun again when musicians visiting from Auckland invited Garcia, on behalf of the New Zealand Broadcasting Commission and the Music Trades Association, to do live concerts, radio and TV shows as well as lecture at universities around the country, a perfect fit seeing as Garcia is also known in music circles as the author of what are considered the definitive textbooks on composition: The Professional Arranger Composer Books I and II. They have been translated into six languages and are used in universities and conservatories around the world.