Biography
BIO
Neal Paul Hefti (October 29, 1922 – October 11, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, tune writer, and arranger. He was perhaps best known for composing the theme music for the Batman television series of the 1960s, and for scoring the 1968 film The Odd Couple and the subsequent TV series of the same name.
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Hefti was born to an impoverished family in Hastings, Nebraska. As a young child, he remembers his family relying on charity during the holidays. He started playing the trumpet in school at the age of eleven, and by high school was spending his summer vacations playing in local territory bands to help his family make ends meet.
Growing up in and near a big city like Omaha, Hefti was exposed to some of the great bands and trumpeters of the Southwest territory bands, and he was also able to see some of the virtuoso jazz musicians from New York that came through Omaha on tour. His early influences all came from the North Omaha scene. He said,
"We'd see Basie in town, and I was impressed by Harry Edison and Buck Clayton, being a trumpet player. And I would say I was impressed by Dizzy Gillespie when he was with Cab Calloway. I was impressed by those three trumpet players of the people I saw in person... I thought Harry Edison and Dizzy Gillespie were the most unique of the trumpet players I heard."
These experiences seeing Gillespie and Basie play in Omaha foreshadowed his period in New York watching Gillespie play and develop the music of bebop on 52nd Street and his later involvement with Count Basie's band.
He began arranging professionally in his teens, when he wrote charts for Nat Towles. He became a prominent composer and arranger while playing trumpet for Woody Herman; while working for Herman he provided new arrangements for "Woodchopper's Ball" and "Blowin' Up a Storm," and composed "The Good Earth" and "Wild Root." After leaving Herman's band in 1946, Hefti concentrated on arranging and composing, although he occasionally led his own bands. He is especially known for his charts for Count Basie such as "Li'l Darlin'" and "Cute".
AWARDS
Grammy nominations:
-Nomination for Jazz Pops (Li'l Darlin', Cute, Coral Reef) as artist.
-Two awards for Basie, aka Atomic Basie (Li'l Darlin', Splanky, Teddy the Toad) as composer.
-Three nominations (one award) for the Batman TV score.
-Two nominations for the Harlow movie score ("Girl Talk").
-Two nominations for The Odd Couple TV score.
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences:
-Nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music - 1968 "The Fred Astaire Show" as conductor
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers:
-Jazz Wall of Fame 2005
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.