Gordon Jenkins
Gordon Jenkins (1910-1984)
Gordon Hill Jenkins (12 May 1910-1 May 1984) was an American arranger who was an influential figure in popular music in the 1940s and 1950s, renowned for his lush string arrangements. Jenkins worked with the Andrews Sisters, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland, and Nat King Cole, among other singers. Jenkins was married to singer Loulie Jean Norman, who sings on a few of his albums.
Jenkins was born in Webster Groves, Missouri. He started his career doing arrangements for a St Louis radio station. He was then hired by Isham Jones, the director of a dance band known for its ensemble playing, and this gave Jenkins the opportunity to develop his skills in melodic scoring. He also conducted The Show Is On on Broadway.
After the Jones band broke up in 1936, Jenkins worked as a freelance arranger and songwriter, contributing to sessions by Isham Jones, Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Andre Kostelanetz, Lennie Hayton, and others. In 1938, Jenkins moved to Hollywood and worked for Paramount Pictures and NBC, and then became Dick Haymes' arranger for four years. In 1944, Jenkins had a hit song with "San Fernando Valley".
In 1945, Jenkins joined Decca Records. In 1947, he had a million-seller with "Maybe You'll Be There" and in 1949 had a huge hit with Victor Young's film theme "My Foolish Heart", which was also a success for Billy Eckstine. At the same time, he regularly arranged for and conducted the orchestra for various Decca artists, including Dick Haymes ("Little White Lies", 1947) and Patty Andrews of the Andrews Sisters ("I Can Dream, Can't I", 1949).
During this time, Jenkins also began recording and performing under his own name. He headlined New York's Capitol Theater between 1949 and 1951 and the Paramount Theater in 1952. He appeared in Las Vegas in 1953 and many times thereafter. He worked for NBC as a TV producer from 1955 to 1957, and performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964.
By 1949, Jenkins was musical director at Decca, and he signed -- despite resistance from Decca's management -- the Weavers, a Greenwich Village folk ensemble that included Pete Seeger among its members. The combination of the Weavers' folk music with Jenkins' orchestral arrangements became immensely popular, to the surprise of everyone involved. Their most notable collaboration was a version of Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" (1950) backed by Jenkins' adaptation of the Israeli folk song, "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena". Other notable songs they recorded together are "The Roving Kind", "On Top of Old Smokey" (1951), and "Wimoweh" (1952).
Jenkins later moved to Capitol Records where he worked with Frank Sinatra, notably on the albums Where Are You (1957) and No One Cares (1959), and Nat King Cole, with whom he had his greatest successes; Jenkins was responsible for the lush arrangement of "When I Fall in Love" (1957), one of Cole's best-known recordings, and the albums Love Is the Thing (1957) and The Very Thought of You (1958). Jenkins also wrote the music and lyrics for Judy Garland's 1959 album The Letter and conducted several of Garland's London concerts in the early 1960s.
As rock and roll gained ascendency in the 1960s, Jenkins' lush string arrangements fell out of favor and he worked only sporadically. He arranged Sinatra's September of My Years (1967), for which he won a Grammy, and Sinatra's 1973 comeback album, Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back. He also worked with Harry Nilsson on A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (1973), a collection of pre-rock and roll standards. The Nilsson sessions, with Jenkins conducting, were recorded on video and later broadcast as a television special by the BBC.
Although best known as an arranger, Jenkins also wrote well-known several songs including "Goodbye" (Benny Goodman's sign-off tune), "Blue Prelude", "When a Woman Loves a Man" and "Future", composed music for Sinatra's 1979 concept album Trilogy.
Jenkins died in Malibu, California in 1984 at age 73 of Lou Gehrig's disease.
(From 
Wikipedia
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Gordon Jenkins Songs for the „Sinatra Songbook“:
Before The Music Ends (Trilogy, Reprise 1979)
The Future (Trilogy, Reprise 1979)
Good-Bye (Only The Lonely, Capitol 1958)
Homesick That’s All (Columbia 1945)
How Old Am I? (September Of My Years, Reprise 1965)
I Loved Her (She Shot Me Down, Reprise 1981)
I’ve Been There (Trilogy, Reprise 1979)
None But The Lonely Heart (No One Cares, Capitol 1959)
P.S. I Love You (Close To You, Capitol 1956)
San Fernando Valley (Radio 1944)
This Is All I Ask (September Of My Years, Reprise 1965)
What Time Does The Next Miracle Leave? (Trilogy, Reprise 1979)
World War None (Trilogy, Reprise 1979)
Sinatra-Studio Recordings with Arrangements by Gordon Jenkins:
Tone Poems Of Colour (Capitol 1956)
Where Are You? (Capitol 1957)
A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra (Capitol 1957)
No One Cares (Capitol 1959)
All Alone (Reprise 1962)
September Of My Years (Reprise 1965)
The World We Knew (Reprise 1967)
Ol’Blue Eyes Is Back (Reprise 1973)
Some Nice Things I’ve Missed (Reprise 1974)
Trilogy (Reprise 1979)
She Shot Me Down (Reprise 1981)
Everything Happens To Me (Reprise, 1996)
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