78 Facts About Vic Schoen

Victor Clarence Schoen was an American bandleader, arranger, and composer whose career spanned from the 1930s until his death in 2000.

Vic Schoen furnished music for some of the most successful persons in show business including Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Les Brown, Woody Herman, Gene Krupa, George Shearing, Jimmie Lunceford, Ray McKinley, Benny Carter, Louis Prima, Russ Morgan, Guy Lombardo, Carmen Cavallaro, Carmen Miranda, Gordon Jenkins, Joe Venuti, Victor Young, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, and his own The Vic Schoen Orchestra.

Vic Schoen wrote TV specials for Jack Carson Show, The Dave King Show, Ethel Merman, The Big Record with Patti Page, The Dinah Shore Show, Shirley MacLaine, Shirley Temple, Andy Williams, and Pat Boone.

Vic Schoen is probably best remembered as the musical director and arranger for the Andrews Sisters.

Vic Schoen was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents.

Vic Schoen is one of the very few composer-arrangers who was self-taught.

Vic Schoen learned how to write big band arrangements at this time by "trial and error".

Vic Schoen wrote many of Count Basie's earlier arrangements in the mid-1930s.

Vic Schoen met The Andrews Sisters while playing trumpet in Leon Belasco's society orchestra in 1936.

The girls were packing their bags to go back home to Minneapolis when Vic Schoen, who was then with Billy Swanson's orchestra, invited them to sing on a radio program in New York City.

Vic Schoen described the earlier arrangements he wrote for the Andrews Sisters as having a quasi Dixieland feel.

Vic Schoen was backstage at a Yiddish Theatre in New York looking through a large crate of sheet music.

Vic Schoen found the song Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen written by Sholom Secunda with Yiddish lyrics by Jacob Jacobs.

Vic Schoen was attracted to the song because he liked that his "name was part of the title".

When Vic Schoen arrived to join in, he noticed lyricist Sammy Cahn next to them signing his name on the newly released record.

Vic Schoen was puzzled and asked a Decca Records producer why Cahn was present.

Don Raye and Hughie Prince were able to convince Vic Schoen to arrange Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar and after the success of that, they followed with a new song Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.

When Vic Schoen was auditioning new band members in the late 1930s for his backup band to the Andrews Sisters, he needed a new drummer.

Vic Schoen gave the kid a chance at a rehearsal to see if he could play his arrangements.

Vic Schoen was nice enough to meet with the young man afterwards to teach him how to read music.

Vic Schoen once commented that none of the famous big band singers with whom he worked could read music.

Vic Schoen played the chords on the piano, and the trio matched the chords in three-part harmony.

Vic Schoen formed his own orchestra in 1938 and backed them on stage and on screen, as well as in the studio, for the next decade.

Vic Schoen scored an animated film for Walt Disney: Little Toot which used the Andrews Sisters to narrate-sing the storylines.

The concept behind The Andrews Sisters arrangements was a simple formula that Vic Schoen used many times.

Vic Schoen never wrote below the lowest G in the double bass.

Vic Schoen used repeated notes in the bass instead of the constant walking bass, which came later in 1940s big band music.

Vic Schoen contributed many arrangements to Les Brown's library and those are lost to this day.

Vic Schoen scored and conducted most of their recordings, including such hits as the aforementioned Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, as well as Rum and Coca Cola, Apple Blossom Time, I Can Dream Can't I, and I Wanna Be Loved.

Vic Schoen served as their musical director on several films, most notably Buck Pirates, and on television specials and concerts, including the group's concert at the London Palladium.

From 1940 to 1957 Vic Schoen lived in Los Angeles and throughout those years was music director in residence for Decca Records, Kapp Records, RCA Records, Liberty Records, and Mainstream Records.

Vic Schoen was musical director for Universal Pictures for three years, Paramount Pictures for four years, and was with ABC, NBC, and CBS for eleven years.

In 1951, Vic Schoen arranged "On Top of Old Smoky" for The Weavers.

One of Vic Schoen's background singers in the Dinah Shore Show was a young woman by the name of Virginia "Ginny" O'Connor.

Vic Schoen used to hang out backstage waiting for her.

Vic Schoen was one of the most sought after arrangers of the time.

Vic Schoen worked with Irving Berlin on the 1954 movie White Christmas where he arranged the songs "Count Your Blessings" and "White Christmas".

Vic Schoen wrote for Maurice Chevalier's first American tour in 1955 and arranged for Chevalier's television specials.

Vic Schoen was not officially trained on the mechanisms of how music was synchronized to film.

Vic Schoen learned on the job how to synchronize 100 minutes of background score and vocal arrangements.

One piece that Vic Schoen was most proud of in his career was the chase music he wrote toward the end of the movie when Danny Kaye's character engages in a sword fight.

The red "recording in progress" light was illuminated to ensure no interruptions, so Vic Schoen started to conduct a cue but noticed that the entire orchestra had turned to look at Igor Stravinsky, who had just walked into the studio.

At the height of his fame in the late 1940s and early 1950s, various producers approached Vic Schoen about making him a "TV personality".

The producers suggested that he hire another arranger-orchestrator to help write his music, but Vic Schoen, who orchestrated all of his own compositions and arrangements, always declined.

Vic Schoen orchestrated all of his own music for The Court Jester, which was unusual at the time because most film composers used an orchestrator to help speed up the process due to the enormous time constraints and amount of music to write.

Page and Vic Schoen's most challenging project was a new recording of Gordon Jenkins narrative tone poem Manhattan Tower.

Vic Schoen's arrangements were far more lively and jazzy than the original Jenkins arrangements.

In 1957, Vic Schoen moved to New York City to become the musical director for The Big Record, a variety series on CBS hosted by Patti Page.

Several bands appeared as guests on The Big Record, but it wasn't until Les Brown, an old friend, was booked that Vic Schoen decided to fulfill a long-term desire to write a work for two bands.

Later in the year, Vic Schoen wrote the rest of the work but it was many months before Les Brown's peripatetic band was in New York long enough for the recording to take place.

Les, absorbed by the challenge from the beginning, worked hard with Vic Schoen in making this set come alive.

In "The Sorcerer and the Latin," Vic Schoen uses even more variegated colors.

There's certainly bursting excitement in the monophonic version, but in stereo, Vic Schoen's conception takes on intensely vivid life and becomes a new recording experience.

Vic Schoen had a relationship with David Kapp who released the album on his newly formed label Kapp Records.

Vic Schoen composed and arranged nine compositions for the album, which was groundbreaking at the time.

However, Vic Schoen arranged the music in such a way that two bands would alternate playing rather than perform the same music simultaneously, as he felt that the sound would be too loud, distorted, and overbearing.

For many years after the release of Stereophonic Suite For Two Bands, Les Brown tried on many occasions to persuade Vic Schoen to compose more music for a second album.

Vic Schoen finally agreed in the mid-1990s, and new music was premiered on November 26,1995, at the Orange County Musicians' Union's 25th annual 'Bash' scholarship benefit at the Red Lion Hotel in Costa Mesa, CA with the Les Brown Band and the Bill Tole Orchestra.

In June 1960 Vic Schoen moved back to Los Angeles after finishing work on The Big Record with Patti Page and The Dave King Show.

In 1961 Vic Schoen orchestrated on the film All Hands on Deck and was musical director for Shirley Temple's Storybook which aired on NBC from 1958 to 1961.

In 1962 Vic Schoen served as music director for the Andy Williams TV Show and the Pat Boone TV Show.

When Danny Kaye heard about the accident, he immediately flew his own plane to McCarran Airport to pick up Vic Schoen and bring him back to Los Angeles to guarantee the best medical attention.

Michael Kapp had felt that Vic Schoen's name was so ubiquitous in the public by the early 1960s that they decided to create "Peter London", Vic Schoen's pseudonym.

Vic Schoen decided in the late 1960s that he would like to start teaching at USC in Los Angeles.

Vic Schoen commented that he greatly enjoyed composing music to accompany his paintings.

Vic Schoen struggled with alcoholism and other demons and found it increasingly difficult to get jobs in the studio world.

Vic Schoen finally quit drinking in the mid-1970s and joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

Vic Schoen attended meetings regularly until the late 1980s and helped many struggling alcoholics by recounting his anecdotes, funny stories, and life lessons he had learned throughout the years.

Vic Schoen wrote the music to serve as a veritable musical journey around the world.

Vic Schoen mentioned that after moving from country to country, coast to coast, it was too big of a job to lug the massive amount of music he had written.

Vic Schoen once had a flood in his garage that ruined a huge amount of his library.

Vic Schoen began to search record stores and different venues to find his arrangements and recordings.

Vic Schoen arranged music for Glenn Miller Remembered, a PBS production video taped in Seattle, 1984, starring Tex Beneke and Marion Hutton.

In 1984 Vic Schoen composed "Ballet in Brass II" for two jazz band as well as "Suite For Two Jazz Bands and Concert Piano".

In 1985, Vic Schoen composed music for a Boeing Company special show as it celebrated the 50th anniversary of its B-17 Flying Fortress.

Patti Page and Vic Schoen reunited for a 1986 stage show in Las Vegas.

Vic Schoen was asked by Nico Snel to write many arrangements for his pops concerts.

Vic Schoen arranged music for her stage show that was performed nationally and abroad.