On June 1, 1921, Nelson Riddle was born. For 35 years, Riddle was one of the recording industry’s finest behind-the-scenes talents, a composer and arranger. He is best remembered today for his work as arranger and bandleader at Capitol Records in the 1950s and 1960s.
Riddle grew up in New Jersey, where he studied piano and trombone as a child. In high school, he had hopes of being a jazz trombonist but didn’t think he was good enough. He shifted his focus toward composing and arranging.
After high school, Riddle played in and arranged music for several local dance bands. In 1942, he joined the Merchant Marine, where he served for about two years, taking informal lessons in orchestration from one of his fellow merchant marines.
In 1944, Riddle joined Tommy Dorsey’s band; his trombone playing was apparently better than he’d feared. He didn’t stay with Dorsey very long, because he was drafted by the Army in April 1945. He was discharged after 15 months, and moved to Los Angeles, where he began working steadily as an arranger for radio shows and records. His first big success came in the spring of 1949, when Doris Day’s “Again” was a hit record.
In 1950, Riddle was hired by bandleader Les Baxter at Capitol Records to write arrangements for a Nat King Cole recording session. That session included one of Cole’s most successful records, “Mona Lisa”,though Baxter was credited on the label. Riddle and Cole continued to work together throughout the 1950s; their albums together include Cole’s last all-instrumental album and the Latin-flavored Cole Espanol.
In 1953, Capitol’s executives thought that Riddle would be a good partner for Frank Sinatra, who had just arrived at the label. Sinatra was reluctant; he’d had success at Columbia Records with arranger Axel Stordahl, and wanted to continue that relationship.
But Stordahl’s first Capitol records for Sinatra weren’t well received, and Sinatra agreed to work with Riddle. The first result of that collaboration was (again) a classic, "I’ve Got the World on a String.” That began a long partnership that included some of Sinatra’s finest albums—Songs for Young Lovers, In the Wee Small Hours, and Songs for Swingin’ Lovers among them.
“Swingin’” was a common theme in album titles during Riddle’s heyday. His swingin’ albums included, Swingin’ Pretty for Keely Smith, Ella Swings Brightly and Ella Swings Gently with Ella Fitzgerald, and Rosie Solves the Swingin’ Riddle with Rosemary Clooney.
Riddle was also recording albums and singles at Capitol under his own name. “Lisbon Antigua” was a #1 pop hit in late 1956, and two of his albums, Hey...Let Yourself Go and C’mon....Get Happy made it to the top 20 of the pop charts, no small feat for albums of traditional pop standards in the early rock’n’roll era. And as a composer, Riddle was one of the earliest Grammy winners, winning the first-ever Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition, it wasn’t called that at the beginning, but after several name changes, that’s where it finally settled, for his Cross Country Suite.
In the late 1950s, Riddle began another fruitful collaboration, recording with Ella Fitzgerald. Their work together included three of her landmark “songbook” albums, devoted to George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer.
In 1966, Riddle was hired to write music for the Batman TV series. He didn’t write the famous “na na na na BATMAAAN!” theme; that was by Neal Hefti. But when Hefti was unavailable to score the weekly episodes, Riddle did that for two seasons. And in 1974, after five nominations, Riddle won the Academy Award for his score to The Great Gatsby.
Riddle never really retired; he continued to work in film and television and toured with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. But the traditional pop in which he specialized had gone out of style, and it was a surprise when he was approached in 1982 by Linda Ronstadt, who wanted to record an album of standards. Riddle was hesitant. He’d been approached by pop singers in the past and had turned them down when all they wanted was a single song, which he thought would be jarring and out of place in the middle of a modern rock album. Ronstadt said she wanted to do a full album, and Riddle’s daughter, a Ronstadt fan, told him, “Don’t worry, Dad. Her checks won’t bounce.” So Riddle signed on for what became a three-album project. The albums, collected in a single package as Round Midnight, were hugely successful and revived interest in Riddle’s career among a new generation of fans.
Nelson Riddle died on October 6, 1985, of kidney failure. The arrangements for the third Ronstadt album had been finished, though a different conductor led the orchestra in recording the last three. Riddle received his third Grammy Award posthumously for his work on that album.
More of Nelson Riddle’s music is available for streaming at Hoopla and Freegal.