Change Your Image
BuddyBregman
Reviews
The Colgate Comedy Hour: Anything Goes (1954)
I loved Ethel
My Uncle Jule Styne hired me to do all of Ethele Merman's orchestrations/arrangements whenever she appeared on TV - this show - COLE PORTER'S ANYTHING GOES - was not an exception. It went smoothly until band call and the band ran down the music. Frank Sinatra's Just One Of Those Things arrangement by Nelson Riddle - which I grew up on - was rehearsed - and Exec-producer Leland Hayward leaned back in his seat in the NBC theatre on Vine St. and said - "I hate that arrangement Buddy re-do it!" YIKES! And Nelson was sitting in front of me and I was very disturbed about it but ran back into a "closet" - scribbled a flurry of notes - had the copyist picking up every page as I finished my every-music-page scribbles. And we got it to the band and they played my "Broadway" version of the song and Leland leaned back in his chair once again and yelled out "I LOVE IT!" Well I did not know how to feel as it was soooo mundane but more in keeping with the show and not the Top 40! Nelson and I met during a lunch break a few days later - he asked me to sit down with he and his wife for lunch and smiled as I tried to apologize - and he just waved it off - "It's fine Buddy - I understand and it happens all the time - and from then on as my recording career zoomed and before I became a producer-director - Nelson was always very nice to me. BUDDY BREGMAN