Marty Gold

• Born 26 December 1915, New York City, New York
• Died 14 January 2011, California

Marty Gold worked as a pianist with several sweet bands in the 1930s, but his first brush with fame came as a member of a comic band known as the Korn Kobblers. Gold played with and did the arrangements for the Kobblers, which brought his work to the attention of Guy Lombardo and other bandleaders. Preferring the sanity of the studio to nightly antics on stage, he returned to New York and settled down as a freelance arranger and composer.

He began recording under his own name in the early 1950s, mainly for Decca, but then switched to RCA and its affiliates Vik and X. He arranged and played on a number of the Three Suns' mid-50s albums. Gold composed as well, co-authoring "Tell Me Why," a #2 hit for the Four Aces.

Gold was one of the workhorses of RCA Victor's arranging staff through most of the 1950s and 1960s. He worked on hundreds of albums, backing acts ranging from the Rafael Hernandez to Peter Nero. A versatile stylist, he supplied whatever the setting called for: syrupy strings for a singer, rocking walls of sound for Top Ten covers, hale and hearty vocal choruses for his Kapp albums of college songs.

In some ways, he was like the East Coast version of Billy May. He worked fast, covered a wide territory, and never put himself "above" his material. So, like May, you can find his contributions showing up on kids' records, too, and more than a few of them. He provided the background music for dramatizations of Dr Seuss' books and, in the late 1960s and 1970s, recorded numerous albums for the Peter Pan label. Some of these featured a cloying chorus of kids singing covers of such pop hits as "These Boots are Made for Walking."

But his best work can be heard on hi fi and stereo showcase albums he recorded for RCA and its subsidiary, Vik. On these Gold's style is to use every bit of the orchestra, including the kitchen sink. A typical arrangement will have at least five different major instrument types playing part of the melody in as little as eight bars. These albums aren't quite as wild as Esquivel's, but they're worth looking for if you like music with a big zing, zang, zoom in it.