We like occasionally to take a break from the deafening cascade of crises and disasters punctuating daily life and turn to some other pursuits that make the world better. Music features prominently among them. The artists, composers and musicians who have come this way and left so much behind that has inspired and brought often indescribable joy deserve to be remembered.
Musician, arranger and composer Neal Hefti passed away last week. At a young age, he played the trumpet skillfully enough, but found his musical skills soon taking him into the world of arranging. He did key arrangements for Woody Herman and Count Basie. For Basie, he composed and arranged the classic Li’l Darlin’, a popular big band staple even today.
I think the 1960s were the best time for Hefti. He arranged and conducted all 12 cuts on Sinatra’s 1962 classic, Sinatra and Swingin’ Brass. That’s the album that includes the Johnny Rotella tune Nothing But the Best, which was for a long time a very hard number to find because it appeared as a later addition to that album and was not on the original recording. The best of Hefti’s own compositions were, to my ear at least, reserved for some of Neil Simon’s film work, especially The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park. Hefti’s score for How to Murder Your Wife is indelibly printed on my mind. The memory was heightened by the appearance of the sultry Virna Lisi, whom the credits say starred opposite Jack Lemmon, but I never really noticed.
The signature style of Hefti’s music is its strong melodies. Even the musically challenged never had any trouble humming one of Hefti’s movie themes as they left the theater. Hear the theme from Simon’s Barefoot in the Park and those two newlyweds come alive again. They are forever young. You become young again, too, just as you were when you first saw the movie. Listen to The Odd Couple theme, and it’s impossible not to see Felix shadowing the cigar-smoking Oscar with a can of Air Wick in their shared apartment. We have known some amusing people thanks to the talents of those with the imagination to create them and others who bring the screen to life with music.
Hefti’s ability to compose for big bands, for the movies and for television (he wrote the original Batman theme in 1966) defined the versatility of his talent, much as the same skills did for Henry Mancini, another giant of his time.
Neal Hefti was born in Nebraska, and died on Saturday at his home outside Los Angeles at the age of 85. In between, he gave the world the kind of joy that only those with a gift to understand the true potential that eight amazing basic notes arrayed in various octaves and for different durations -which I am reliably informed were conceived by angels consigned to earth to remind them of their heavenly home- can provide.
We send condolences to Mr. Hefti’s family, but are happy to record enormous gratitude for the legacy he left behind.