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Vincent DeRosa
Vincent Ned DeRosa (October 5, 1920 – July 18, 2022) was an American hornist who served as a studio musician for Hollywood soundtracks and other recordings from 1935 until his retirement in 2008. Because his career spanned over 70 years, during which he played on many film and television soundtracks and as a sideman on studio albums, he is considered to be one of the most recorded brass players of all time.[1][2][3] He set "impeccably high standards"[4] for the horn, and became the first horn for Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Alfred Newman, and John Williams, among others, with Williams calling him "one of the greatest instrumentalists of his generation."[5] DeRosa contributed to many of the most acclaimed albums of the 20th century, including some of the biggest-selling albums by artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Barry Manilow, Frank Zappa, Boz Scaggs, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Nilsson, Stan Kenton, Henry Mancini, The Monkees, Sammy Davis Jr., and Mel Tormé. Early life and trainingDeRosa was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 5, 1920. His family moved to Chicago about a year after his birth. His father, John DeRosa, was a professional clarinetist; his mother, Clelia DeRubertis DeRosa, was an accomplished singer. He began his horn studies at age ten with Peter Di Lecce, Principal Horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.[6] In 1932, the family moved to Los Angeles.[7] While still a teenager, DeRosa studied briefly with his uncle, Vincent DeRubertis.[8] He also studied with and played several times for Alfred Edwin Brain Jr., Dennis Brain's uncle.[9] CareerDeRosa began his professional career in 1935 by substituting for another player in the San Carlo Opera Company's production of La traviata. When the U.S. entered World War II, DeRosa enlisted before he could be drafted and was assigned to play with the California Army Air Forces radio production unit. He was discharged in 1943 because he was the head of a household. However, eventually he was recalled to service and was demobilized in 1945.[10] RecordingDeRosa's recording career began shortly after his military service ended, and he quickly established himself as the first-call session horn player in the recording industry.[8] He recorded extensively in several genres, including jazz, rock, pop, and classical. His name has become a metaphor for prolific recording: in Collected Thoughts on Teaching and Learning, Creativity, and Horn Performance Douglas Hill refers to a prolific session player as "the Vince DeRosa of the London freelance scene."[11] AlbumsAs a jazz player, he is recognized as one of the first French horn players to forge a career as a jazz sideman.[12] During his career, he played on important jazz instrumental recordings, including Art Pepper's Art Pepper + Eleven – Modern Jazz Classics, Stan Kenton's Kenton / Wagner, and Johnny Mandel's I Want to Live!. He also appeared on landmark recordings by jazz vocalists, including Mel Tormé and the Marty Paich Dek-Tette, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers & Hart Song Book and Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book, Sammy Davis Jr.'s The Wham of Sam, and June Christy's Something Cool. DeRosa also contributed to important jazz fusion recordings, including David Axelrod's Song of Innocence and groundbreaking albums by Jean-Luc Ponty including King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa. As a sideman on pop records, his contributions to Sinatra's most important recordings are perhaps best known (see with "Work with Sinatra" below). However, he also contributed to many other hit pop recordings such as Barry Manilow's triple-platinum album Even Now, Neil Diamond's hit September Morn, and Louis Armstrong's I’ve Got the World on a String and Louis Under the Stars, two of the most important pop albums from Armstrong's later catalog.[13] As a sideman on rock, blues, and funk records, DeRosa contributed to seminal recordings such as Frank Zappa's first solo album Lumpy Gravy, Boz Scaggs' quintuple-platinum Silk Degrees, and Tower of Power's Back to Oakland, and to rock cult classics such as Harry Nilsson's Son of Schmilsson and Van Dyke Parks's Song Cycle. DeRosa was also an accomplished classical player. He was the hornist on the album The Intimate Bach which received a Grammy Nomination for Best Classical Performance – Chamber Music (1962).[14] Music critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote of DeRosa's performance on this record, "This is the most astonishing example of virtuosity on the horn I have ever heard on records...To play as lightly and speedily as a harpsichord, right out in the open with a minimum of support, is to give an incredible performance."[6] SoundtracksIn addition to his work as a sideman, DeRosa appeared on many prominent soundtracks for film, musicals, and TV, including Carousel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Edward Scissorhands, How the West Was Won, Jaws, Mary Poppins, Midway, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, Rocky, The Days of Wine and Roses, The Magnificent Seven, The Music Man, and The Sound of Music.[15] The television programs for which he played include Batman, Bonanza, Dallas, Hawaii Five-O, Peter Gunn, Star Trek, The Rockford Files, and The Simpsons.[16] Work with Frank SinatraDeRosa's playing and career are closely associated with Frank Sinatra's recordings because of Frank Sinatra's fame, the number of seminal Sinatra albums on which DeRosa played, and two highly publicized accounts of Sinatra's comments to or about DeRosa (see below). DeRosa played first horn on many albums considered to be the greatest in Sinatra's catalog and among the greatest of all time, including In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, and Strangers in the Night. Sinatra was not known for openly complimenting his musicians (drummer Irv Cottler once said, "Frank will never come right out and tell you that you swung your ass off"[17]). However, he publicly acknowledged DeRosa's excellence. In Sinatra: The Chairman, author James Kaplan discusses DeRosa with Milt Bernhart, a trombonist who had played with both Sinatra and DeRosa on many occasions:
Another reason DeRosa is closely associated with Sinatra is that an exchange between DeRosa and Sinatra was featured in the article "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" for Esquire by Gay Talese in 1966. The article became one of the most famous pieces of magazine journalism ever written, and is often considered not only the greatest profile of Frank Sinatra but one of the greatest celebrity profiles ever written.[19] In his piece, Talese documents the following touching conversation between Sinatra and DeRosa: When a French horn player, a short Italian named Vincent DeRosa who has played with Sinatra since The Lucky Strike "Hit Parade" days on radio, strolled by, Sinatra reached out to hold him for a second. The exchange was given renewed exposure by Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Alex Ross in his book Listen to This. In the chapter "Edges of Pop," Ross highlights the famous article and calls the exchange between DeRosa and Sinatra "The sweetest moment in Gay Talese’s classic Esquire profile."[21] One reason for DeRosa's appearance on so many of Sinatra's albums is that DeRosa was the preferred first horn for Sinatra's frequent collaborator Nelson Riddle (Riddle's biographer refers to DeRosa as a "horn player extraordinaire"[22]). As an example of Riddle's esteem for DeRosa, he chose DeRosa as a featured soloist on the Sinatra album Close to You, an album on which the Hollywood String Quartet and typically one soloist per song accompanied Sinatra. Riddle was deliberate in his choice of sideman,[23] selecting trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison, clarinetist Mahlon Clark, and DeRosa for this project. Work with Henry ManciniWhile DeRosa might be most closely associated with Frank Sinatra, he is also well known as Henry Mancini's first-call horn player, working with Mancini on at least eight albums and many film scores. The albums included The Music from Peter Gunn, the first album to win the Grammy award for Album of the Year (1959) and was selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The album's title song features famous,[24] difficult-to-execute French horn lines, with DeRosa as first chair.[25] Mancini often composed his themes with a favorite player in mind: "Sometimes when I hear people play, especially if they’re distinctive players, I actually try to incorporate their sound into a particular score."[26] Mancini had Vince DeRosa in mind when he composed his Academy Award-winning theme to the film Days of Wine and Roses: "For the first yawning notes of this score, he was hearing the solid round tone of studio veteran French horn soloist Vince DeRosa, and that became the voice of solitude in the film."[26] This theme won the 1962 Academy Award for best song. InfluenceDeRosa's impact on studio horn playing was significant, and set a new standard for studio horn parts.[8] As a sideman on thousands of sessions and a horn instructor at USC and elsewhere, DeRosa influenced many musicians and composers. The list below documents composers and musicians who are publicly acknowledged to have studied with, or been influenced by, DeRosa's teaching or playing. Composers
"Vince Derosa's contribution to American music can't be overstated. He was the premier first horn player on virtually every recording to come out of Hollywood for over forty years. He represented the pinnacle of instrumental performance and I can honestly say that what I know about writing for the French horn, I learned from him. DeRosa was an inspiration for at least two generations of composers working in Hollywood and beyond. He is respected world-wide and universally regarded as one of the greatest instrumentalists of his generation. It has been a privilege to have worked with him all these many years."[5]
Horn playersThe following horn players have publicly acknowledged studying with DeRosa.
Awards and honors
Personal lifeBeginning in the late 1950s, DeRosa played a Conn 8D horn. In the 1950s he taught a small number of students at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music but otherwise taught formally at the University of Southern California from 1974 to 2005.[36] Since retiring in 2008, DeRosa split his time between his residences in La Canada, CA, Maui, and Montana.[37] DeRosa's uncle, Vincent DeRubertis, also played with Sinatra on at least one occasion, on the soundtrack for High Society.[38] Like his nephew, DeRubertis also contributed to many soundtracks.[39] DeRosa died on July 18, 2022, at the age of 101.[40][41] DiscographyWith The 5th Dimension
With Laurie Allyn
With Laurindo Almeida
With American Flyer
With Louis Armstrong
With Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald
With David Axelrod
With Hoyt Axton
With The Blackbyrds
With Vernon Burch
With Red Callender
With Glen Campbell
With June Christy
With Stanley Clarke
With Nat King Cole
With Natalie Cole
With Judy Collins
With Alice Coltrane
With Rita Coolidge
With Sonny Criss
With Michael Davis
With Miles Davis
With Sammy Davis Jr.
With Sammy Davis Jr. and Carmen McRae
With John Denver
With Teri DeSario
With Neil Diamond
With Lamont Dozier
With Earth, Wind & Fire
With Billy Eckstine
With The Emotions
With Juan García Esquivel
With Don Fagerquist
With José Feliciano
With Clare Fischer
With Ella Fitzgerald
With Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg
With Donna Fuller
With Judy Garland
With Barry Gibb
With Harpers Bizarre
With Debbie Harry
With Neil Hefti
With The Hi-Lo's
With Bill Holman
With Paul Horn
With Freddie Hubbard
With Gordon Jenkins
With Stan Kenton
With Peggy Lee
With Henry Mancini
With Johnny Mandel
With Chuck Mangione
With Gap Mangione
With Barry Manilow
With Shelly Manne
With Skip Martin
With Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams
With Billy May
With Les McCann
With Carmen McRae
With Sérgio Mendes
With The Monkees
With Oliver Nelson
With Michael Nesmith
With Sammy Nestico
With Harry Nilsson
With Michael Omartian
With Lee Oskar
With Patti Page
With Marty Paich
With Van Dyke Parks
With Art Pepper
With David Pomeranz
With Jean-Luc Ponty
With Pure Prairie League
With Johnny Richards
With Minnie Riperton
With Mavis Rivers
With George Roberts
With Pete Rugolo
With Pharoah Sanders
With Arturo Sandoval
With Boz Scaggs
With Diane Schuur
With Jack Sheldon
With Lalo Schifrin
With Doc Severinson
With Horace Silver
With Frank Sinatra
With Judee Sill
With JD Souther
With Duane Tatro
With The Temptations
With Cal Tjader
With Mel Tormé
With Tower of Power
With Stanley Turrentine
With Sarah Vaughan
With Paul Weston
With Mason Williams
With Frank Zappa
Notes
References
External links
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