Artist Name
Frank De Vol and His Orchestra

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Long Ago and Far Away (1958)


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Origin
flag Moundsville, West Virginia, U.S.

Genre
genre icon Composer

Style
style icon Classical

Mood
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Born

born icon 1911

Active
calendar icon 0 to dead icon 1999

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Artist Biography
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Frank Denny De Vol (September 20, 1911 – October 27, 1999), also known simply as De Vol, was an American arranger, composer and actor.

Early life and career
De Vol was born in Moundsville in Marshall County in northern West Virginia, and was reared in Canton, Ohio. His father, Herman Frank De Vol, was band-leader of the Grand Opera House in Canton, Ohio, and his mother, Minnie Emma Humphreys De Vol, had worked in a sewing shop. He attended Miami University.

De Vol began composing music when he was 12. When he was 14, he became a member of the Musicians' Union. After playing violin in his father's orchestra and appearances in a Chinese restaurant, he joined the Horace Heidt Orchestra in the 1930s, being responsible for the arrangements. Later, he toured with the Alvino Rey Orchestra, before embarking on his recording career.

Arrangements
By the time De Vol was 16, "he was doing arrangements with professional skill." From the 1940s, De Vol wrote arrangements for the studio recordings of many top singers, including Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Vic Damone and Jaye P. Morgan. His single most famous arrangement is probably the haunting string and piano accompaniment to Cole's "Nature Boy", which was a United States Number One in 1948. That same year, he released a version of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" (Capitol Records 15420), that he arranged and sang lead vocals on.

In 1966–1967, he arranged the soundtrack for the 1967 Columbia Pictures comedy film The Happening starring Anthony Quinn and co-produced The Supremes recording of the theme from the film with Motown producers Holland–Dozier–Holland which became a #1 American pop hit later that year.

Mood music
The success of "Nature Boy", recorded for Capitol Records, led to an executive position for De Vol at the rival Columbia Records. There, he recorded a series of orchestral mood music albums under the studio name "Music by De Vol" (which he also used for some of his film and TV work). The 1959 album Bacchanal! (The Passions and Pageantry of Gods and Goddesses of Mythology) is an acclaimed, example of De Vol's mood music; each track is by English composer Albert Harris and is named after a god or goddess of Greek mythology.

Concert appearances
In the 1950s, De Vol's orchestra played frequently at the Hollywood Palladium under the concert name "Music of the Century".

Radio
De Vol's orchestra and arrangements were available to radio stations via electrical transcriptions. His work was syndicated by Capitol Transcriptions, for which he also was musical director.
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Last Edit by zag
28th Mar 2019

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