Alan Copeland, the songwriter, Grammy-winning arranger and ultra-smooth vocalist recognized for his a few years with The Modernaires and performances on Your Hit Parade and The Crimson Skelton Hour, has died. He was 96.
Copeland died Dec. 28 in an assisted residing facility in Sonora, California, his buddy Bob Lehmann informed The Hollywood Reporter.
As just lately as this fall, Copeland was nonetheless singing and enjoying keyboards in a quartet referred to as Now You Hazz Jazz. “It was his dream to play in a small group till the final curtain, that’s how he termed it,” stated Lehmann, the drummer.
Copeland wrote or co-wrote songs together with “Make Like to Me” — Jo Stafford’s model made it to No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1954 — “Too Younger to Know,” “Excessive Society,” “This Should Be the Place, “Darling, Darling, Darling” and “Whereas the Vesper Bells Had been Ringing.”
After taking arranging classes from Henry Mancini, he organized vocals for large bands and the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Bing Crosby, Jim Nabors, Rely Basie, Engelbert Humperdinck, Peter Marshall and Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme.
In 1968, Copeland gained a Grammy for greatest up to date pop efficiency by a refrain for pairing the theme from CBS’ Mission: Inconceivable with The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wooden.” (Hearken to the medley right here.)
Identified for combining musicality with wit, as famous jazz critic Stanley Dance as soon as put it, Copeland additionally spent a number of years within the Sixties on Skelton’s CBS selection present with The Modernaires, who would morph into The Skel-tones and The Alan Copeland Singers.
Copeland, who glided by the nickname Weaver, was born in Los Angeles on Oct. 6, 1926. As a member of the Robert Mitchell Boy Choir, he sang in such fabled movies as Angels With Soiled Faces (1938), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), International Correspondent (1940), Meet John Doe (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and Going My Means (1944).
After serving with the U.S. Navy, Copeland began his personal vocal group, The Twin Tones, a featured attraction with Jan Garber’s orchestra.
He joined The Modernaires for the primary time in 1948, and shortly, the group was performing alongside The Andrews Sisters and Dick Haymes on a five-nights-a-week radio selection program hosted by singer/bandleader Bob Crosby (Bing’s brother). The present then segued to tv.
Copeland appeared with the group in The Glenn Miller Story (1954), starring Jimmy Stewart, then left to carry out solo on the favored NBC/CBS program Your Hit Parade from 1957 till it left the air in 1959.
He rejoined The Modernaires and did preparations and added lyrics to such classics as “Within the Temper” and “Tuxedo Junction” for the 1960 album The Modernaires Sing the Nice Glenn Miller Instrumentals. They discovered additional success 4 years later with New Prime Hits within the Glenn Miller Model, an album that featured singer Tex Beneke.
Copeland organized and carried out for Nabors’ 1966 hit “Cuando Calienta el Sol” and sang on Common Photos’ Totally Trendy Millie (1967), starring Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing. And he served as choral supervisor on Blake Edwards’ Darling Lili (1970), starring Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson, and on Bing Crosby-hosted Christmas specials for twenty years.
Copeland appeared as a member of the band put collectively by Tony Randall’s Felix Unger on two 1974 episodes of ABC’s The Odd Couple and was again, but once more, with The Modernaires within the Nineteen Nineties.
He additionally collaborated along with his late spouse, Joyce, a vocalist also referred to as Mahmu Pearl, on a number of albums.
His memoir, Jukebox Saturday Nights, was revealed in 2007.
This text initially appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
