Good morning, all! Today will be either a good time or a very torturous day, and I'll let you know after 6 pm, when it's officially over.
I spent most of last evening communicating with people about Russell Warner's death via email and telephone. I got a couple of beautiful emails from Michael Price, producer at Goodspeed, whom I adore. He's known Russell forever, since Russell's career as an arranger/orchestrator began at Goodspeed. It was the Goodspeed revival of Jerome Kern's VERY GOOD EDDIE that took him to Broadway. I've always loved that revival recording, and about half the score is Russell's work, since there were a lot of interpolations and replacements. Russell's work blends in with the originals marvelously. I first worked for Goodspeed in 1988, and by that time Russell was no longer there. I met him in 1984 when John McGlinn was looking for another orchestrator to work on the Book-of-the-Month Club recording "Songs of New York." I didn't want to transcribe a lot of period recordings and rescore them, and Russell did a fantastic job. At the last minute, I ended up doing one track for Joe Papp, "Please Don't Monkey With Broadway," that I had to transcribe from the original film soundtrack, for two reasons: it was a lasr-minute rush job and I needed to prove to myself I could do it.
