Jenkins, Gordon (Hill)

Jenkins, Gordon (Hill), American arranger, conductor, and songwriter; b. Webster Groves, Mo., May 12, 1910; d. Malibu, Calif., May 1, 1984. Jenkins achieved success as a songwriter, penning such hits as “P.S. I Love You” and “San Fernando Valley,” and as a recording artist with “Maybe You’ll Be There” and “My Foolish Heart.” But he was best known for his work as an arranger and conductor for singers, including the Weavers, with whom he scored the hit “Goodnight Irene,” and, from the 1950s to the 1980s, with Frank Sinatra.

The son of an organist, Jenkins occasionally substituted for his father at a movie theater in Chicago. At 15 he won a banjo-playing contest in St. Louis and became a protégé of Cliff Edwards. After playing piano in jazz bands in speakeasies, he was hired as a staff musician and arranger by a St. Louis radio station. In the early 1930s he joined the orchestra of Isham Jones as a pianist and arranger. His first notable composition was “Blue Prelude” (music and lyrics by Jenkins and Joe Bishop), which was recorded by Bing Crosby, who scored a hit with it in July 1933. Then came two hits in 1934 for which Jenkins wrote music to lyrics by Johnny Mercer, “You Have Taken My Heart,” by Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orch. in February, and “P.S. I Love You,” by Rudy Vallée in November. In 1935, Benny Goodman adopted Jenkins’s mournful “Goodbye” as his closing theme.

Isham Jones disbanded in 1936 and his orchestra was reorganized by Woody Herman, who adopted “Blue Prelude” as his theme; Jenkins wrote arrangements for the new band. He wrote the orchestrations and served as the musical director of the Broadway revue The Show Is On (N.Y., Dec. 25, 1936). In 1938 he moved to Calif, and took a job with Paramount Pictures. Woody Herman reached the hit parade with “Blue Evening” (music and lyrics by Jenkins and Joe Bishop) in July 1939. The same year, Jenkins became musical director for NBC in Hollywood, conducting radio orchestras for a variety of shows through 1948.

Jenkins joined Capitol Records upon its formation in 1942 as musical director and as a recording artist, scoring one of the label’s first chart hits with “He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings” (music by Michael Carr, lyrics by Eric Maschwitz) in August. In April 1944, Bing Crosby hit #1 with Jenkins’s composition “San Fernando Valley.” In 1945, Jenkins moved to Decca Records as staff conductor, and the label released the first version of his “musical narrative” Manhattan Tower as an album of 78s. His recording of “Maybe You’ll Be There” (music by Rube Bloom, lyrics by Sammy Gallop) peaked in the Top Ten in October 1948 and sold a million copies. At the same time he was conducting the orchestras backing such Decca stars as Dick Haymes and the Andrews Sisters on their hits.

Jenkins wrote his only Broadway score for the revue Along Fifth Avenue (N.Y., Jan. 13, 1949), which ran 180 performances. But he enjoyed greater success during the year as a recording artist, reaching the Top Ten with “Again” (music by Lionel Newman, lyrics by Dorcas Cochrane) in May and “Don’t Cry Joe (Let Her Go, Let Her Go, Let Her Go)” (music and lyrics by Joe Marsala) in November, and making personal appearances at such venues as the Capitol Theatre in N.Y. He topped the charts with “My Foolish Heart” (music by Victor Young, lyrics by Ned Washington) in June 1950 and reached the Top Ten with “Bewitched” (music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart) in July.

Jenkins had seen The Weavers performing at the Village Vanguard in N.Y. earlier in 1950 and persuaded Decca to sign them. The folk group’s debut single, “Goodnight Irene” (music and lyrics by Lead Belly, adapted by John Lomax)/ “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena” (an Israeli folk song composed by Issachar Miron [Michrovsky], rewritten by Julius Grossman, arranged by Spencer Ross, and with English lyrics by Jenkins), was credited to “Gordon Jenkins and His Orch. and The Weavers” upon its release in the summer of 1950; both songs were hits, with “Goodnight Irene” spending months at #1, and the disc sold more than two million copies. In a duet with Artie Shaw, Jenkins again reached the Top Ten with “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” (music by John W. Kellette, lyrics by Jean Kenbrovin) in October 1950. “So Long (It’s Been Good to Know Yuh)” (music and lyrics by Woody Guthrie) peaked in the Top Ten for Jenkins and the Weavers in February 1951.

Jenkins had a series of minor chart records in 1951 and 1952, many in tandem with singers; he returned to the Top Ten co-billed with Peggy Lee on “Lover” (music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart) in July 1952. December saw the release of the only film for which he wrote a complete score, Bwana Devil. In August 1953 the Hilltoppers peaked in the Top Ten with a million-selling revival of “P.S. I Love You.” As a recording artist, Jenkins hit the Top Ten of the LP chart with Seven Dreams in January 1954.

Leaving Decca Records, Jenkins returned to NBC as a television producer in 1955. In November 1956 a revised and expanded version of his earlier work, Gordon Jenkins Complete Manhattan Tower, was released on Capitol Records in tandem with a TV broadcast. The LP spent several weeks in the charts, and there were singles chart entries for “Repeat after Me” (by Patti Page), “New York’s My Home” (by Sammy Davis Jr.), and “Married I Can Always Get” (by Teddi King) from the score.

Starting in 1957, Jenkins primarily devoted himself to arranging and conducting for major popular singers. He conducted the orchestra behind Judy Garland for her appearance in London in 1957 and the same year he wrote the arrangements for Nat “King” Cole’s chart-topping, million- selling LP Love Is the Thing and began a long association with Frank Sinatra by arranging his Top Ten Where Are You? album, followed at the end of the year by the million-selling A Jolly Christmas with Frank Sinatra. In contrast to the uptempo Sinatra albums arranged by Billy May, Jenkins’s works were string-filled ballad albums with haunting charts. These included the Top Ten hit No One Cares (1959), All Alone (1962), and the gold-selling September of My Years (1965), featuring the Top 40 hit “It Was a Very Good Year” (music and lyrics by Ervin Drake), for which Jenkins won the 1965 Grammy Award for Best Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist or Instrumentalist.

Jenkins continued to work in television in the late 1960s, notably writing What It Was, Was Love, an “original albumusical” released as an LP featuring Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme and broadcast as a TV special in 1969. In 1973 he conducted the orchestra for the chart album by Nilsson, A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night and for Frank Sinatra’s gold- selling return-to-action OI’ Blue Eyes Is Back. In 1980 he wrote, arranged, and conducted the album-length biographical work “The Future,” used as one of the three LPs in Sinatra’s gold-selling Trilogy album. His final album with Sinatra was 1981’s She Shot Me Down. He died at 73 in 1984 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease).

—William Ruhlmann