1. Morton Sanford Garson was a Canadian composer, arranger, songwriter, and pioneer of electronic music.
17 Facts About Mort Garson
1. 2.
Mort Garson is best known for his albums in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Mother Earth's Plantasia.
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Mort Garson was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, the son of Russian Jewish refugees.
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Mort Garson later moved to New York City where he studied music at the Juilliard School of Music.
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Mort Garson worked as a pianist and arranger before being called into the Army near the end of World War II.
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Mort Garson arranged for the Lettermen on Capitol Records, provided background to Laurence Harvey reading poetry on Atlantic Records, and provided arrangements for Esther Phillips, Julie London, Nancy Wilson, Chris Montez, Leslie Uggams, Joanie Sommers, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and many others.
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Mort Garson was a favorite of producers when the job involved soft pop vocal groups and string ensembles, and was responsible for a wide variety of easy listening records, including Bossa Nova for All Ages by the Continentals, Symphony for the Soul by the Total Eclipse, and Sea Drift by the Dusk 'Til Dawn Orchestra.
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Mort Garson worked on albums and singles by The Sugar Shoppe, the Sunset Strings, and the Love Strings, and released singles under his own name.
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In 1967, Mort Garson met Robert Moog at a music engineers' convention, and became one of the first arrangers and composers to work with the early Moog synthesizer; his electronic albums from the period are now highly prized among collectors and exotica fans.
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Mort Garson released, in 1972, a record of music-and-moans, Music for Sensuous Lovers, to capitalize on the best-seller at the time, The Sensuous Woman by "Z".
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In 2018, independent reissue label Rubellan Remasters licensed and released on CD for the first time Mort Garson's two occult-themed albums, remastered from original studio tapes.
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In 2019 and 2020, a further set of Mort Garson albums, including Plantasia, which is seen as his best-known album, and a set of previously unreleased recordings, Music from Patch Cord Productions, were issued both on CD and vinyl by Sacred Bones.
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Mort Garson's music was used as incidental music during the television transmissions of the Apollo 11 crewed Moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969.
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Mort Garson scored the 1974 Fred Williamson film Black Eye, and adapted the music for Mel Brooks' and Carl Reiner's 1975 animated television special The 2000 Year Old Man.
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Mort Garson then scored the action films Treasure of the Amazon and Vultures, which both starred Stuart Whitman.
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Mort Garson was closely associated with Heatter-Quigley Productions, creating the theme songs and music cues for the following TV game shows:.
17.
Mort Garson died of renal failure in San Francisco in 2008, at the age of 83.