From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Ray Conniff (November 6 1916 - October 12 2002) was an American musician. He was born in Attelboro, Massachusetts, and learned to play the trombone from his father. He studied music arranging from a coursebook.
After he was in the army in World War II, he was hired by record label Columbia as their home arranger, and he worked with several artist, among those were Rosemary Clooney, Guy Mitchell and Johnnie Ray. He wrote an arrangement for Don Cherry's Band of Gold in 1954, an album that sold millions of copies. This allowed him to make his own record, and this became the successful \S Wonderful!, a collection of famous songs that were recorded with an orchestra. In the same vein he released two more albums, S Marvellous and S Awful Nice.
Between 1957 and 1968, he had 28 albums in the American Top 40, the most famous ones being Somewhere my love. The title track of the album (also called "Lara's Theme") was written for the film Doctor Zhivago (1965), and was a top 10 single in the US.
He topped the album list in Great Britain in 1969 with His Orchestra, His Chorus, His Singers, His Sound. He also was the first American popular artist to record in Russia - in 1974 he recorded Ray Conniff in Moscow with help of a local choir.
His later albums like Exclusivamente Latino, Amor Amor and Latinisimo made him popular in Latin-American countries. He continued performing until his death in 2002.
