Jackie Gleason Music For Lovers Only/Music To Make You Misty CD

So you want to be a conductor? The leader of an orchestra? Well, it helps to have enough money to book the best musicians, arrangers, and studios in town. For material, stick with the greats - no novelties or recent tunes. Top it off with dark, lyrical trumpet - or some other sexy instrument - to lead those strings on. Starting in the early '50s, Jackie Gleason followed this formula faithfully and, in the process, amassed an impressive catalogue of highly listenable "mood music."

On his first musical foray, 1952's 10-inch MUSIC FOR LOVERS ONLY, Gleason's secret weapon was the understated (and underrated) trumpet man Bobby Hackett, late of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. With a style less florid than that of another wartime favorite, Harry James, Hackett brought a genuine urbanity to Gleason's lush string settings, catching the ear of the man-in-the-street far more easily than, say, the middlebrow Melachrino Strings or Mantovani. Gleason himself said it was all a seduction aid anyway; he was just giving an average guy "all the help he could get" in that delicate space between the living room - where the Hi-Fi was, of course - and the bedroom.

Plucked from his Capitol catalog what was quite possibly the most famous album he ever put out, 1952's 10 inch LP 'Music for Lovers Only', and joined it with another classic, 1957's 'Music to Make You Misty', to form a 20-track musical bouquet. Also includes original artwork, too. 'Collectors' Choice Music'.

Originally released on Capitol (345) & (455).

2 LPs on 1 CD: MUSIC FOR LOVERS ONLY (1952)/MUSIC TO MAKE YOU MISTY (1957).

Personnel includes: Jackie Gleason (conductor); C. Dudley King Jr., Richard Jones, Sid Feller (arranger); Toots Mondello (alto saxophone); Bobby Hackett (trumpet).