Claude Thornhill

Claude Thornhill was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on August 10 1909. He started playing the piano from the age of ten. His mother, a choir director and church organist, encouraged him to pursue a musical career. Her ambition was for him to become a concert pianist. However, a close friendship with the clarinettist Danny Polo soon steered young Claude away from classical music, towards jazz. After a season on the 'S. S. George Washington' with Heavy Elder's Riverboat Orchestra and another year with the 'Kentucky Colonels', Thornhill embarked on a musical education at the Cincinnati Conservatory and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, studying not only piano, but harmony, counterpoint and arranging.

By the late 1930's, Thornhill had moved to the West Coast as a free-lance arranger. He also helped Skinnay Ennis set up a band and served as musical director on the Bob Hope Show.

Following a two-year stint with Austin Wylie's band in the Cleveland area, Thornhill settled in New York in early 1931. During the first half of the decade, he worked steadily for more than a few name orchestras, including those of Hal Kemp, Paul Whiteman, Donald Voorhees, Jacques Renard, Freddy Martin, Ray Noble and Benny Goodman.

Beginning in 1936, Thornhill enjoyed a somewhat lengthier spell with Andre Kostelanetz, further honing his skills as an arranger. His first bona fide success arrived a year later, courtesy of an arrangement of "Loch Lomond", which became a hit recording for a 25-year old vocalist named Maxine Sullivan. As her musical director, he also supervised her first recording dates for Okeh and Vocalion.

With forty of his own arrangements in hand (and encouragement from his close friend Glenn Miller), he finally took the step of assembling a big band in 1940. After several setbacks on the West Coast (including a fire which burned down one of the venues), Thornhill finally opened at the prestigious Glen Island Casino the following March. Some of the more prominent musicians who formed part of this group, were trumpeters Conrad Gozzo and Rusty Diedrick, clarinettist Irving Fazola, trombonist Tasso Harris and the excellent arranger Gil Evans. With its French horns and emphasized sustained chords, unison clarinets (there were six in the band!) and Thornhill's own delicate piano solos, the band sounded unlike any other. While rarely a true swinging outfit like Goodman's or Shaw's, the band excelled at lush, melodic ballads, such as "Sleepy Serenade", Thornhill's own composition (his theme song), "Snowfall", and arrangements of classic pieces, like "Träumerei". Unfortunately, due to World War II and the draft, this first incarnation of the Claude Thornhill Orchestra was short-lived. Claude himself enlisted in the U. S.

Navy in 1942. He first served in Artie Shaw's navy band, 'The Rangers', before devoting more time to organising special musical events. In the process, he worked closely with some of the top brass, including Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Admiral William F. Halsey. Thornhill then led a service orchestra in Hawaii until the end of the war.

In 1946, he assembled another big band, which included a swinging drummer named Billy Exiner, the vocalist Fran Warren (whose biggest hit with the band was "A Sunday Kind of Love"), and, on some recording dates, emerging stars Lee Konitz and Gerry Mulligan. The main creative impetus came from Gil Evans, whose classic arrangements (such as, "Buster's Last Stand", "Donna Lee", "Anthropology" and "Yardbird Suite") are regarded by many as having presaged the birth of the 'Cool' movement (Evans, of course, went on to collaborate with Miles Davis on the seminal albums "Miles Ahead" and "Sketches of Spain"). However, Thornhill, like everyone else in the business, was eventually affected by the overall financial downturn, which made it less and less profitable to operate big bands.

By the 1950's -- and suffering from health problems -- he had disbanded the orchestra and gone into semi-retirement.

He re-emerged to briefly serve as musical director for Tony Bennett in 1957, thereafter confining his bandleading activities to a sextet.

On July 1 1965, he died suddenly of a double heart attack at his home in Caldwell, New Jersey.

Inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1984.