Angela Morley R.I.P.

[julian_craster]

Music arranger Angela Morley dies

Three-time Emmy winner also composed scores

By JON BURLINGAME



Variety:

Music arranger Angela Morley dies - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety





See also:

Emmy Winning and Oscar Nominated Arranger Angela Morley Passes Away at 84

Angela Morley, three-time Emmy winner and two-time Oscar nominee for her

film and television music and one of England's best-known arrangers, died

Wednesday, Jan. 14 in Scottsdale, Ariz., of complications from a fall and

subsequent heart attack. She was 84.

Morley won Emmys as an arranger for two Julie Andrews specials (in 1988

and 1990) and a "Christmas in Washington" special (1985). Her Oscar

nominations were for adapting the songs in the musicals "The Little Prince"

(UK, 1974) and "The Slipper and the Rose" (UK, 1977).

She also composed several film scores including the animated "Watership

Down" (1978) and, under her birth name of Walter Stott, "The Looking Glass

War" (1969), "Captain Nemo and the Underwater City" (1969),

"When Eight Bells Toll" (1971) and several British features in the 1950s.

Morley scored dozens of TV series episodes in the 1970s and '80s,

receiving Emmy nominations for her work on "Dallas," "Dynasty,"

"Blue Skies" and "Emerald Point N.A.S."; she also scored "Falcon Crest,"

"Hotel," "Wonder Woman" and other shows. She also scored four

TV-movies including the remake of "Madame X" (1981) and

received 11 Emmy nominations in all.



She also contributed orchestrations to nearly three dozen films, among

them such John Williams scores as "Star Wars," "Superman," "E.T., the

Extra-Terrestrial," "Schindler's List" and "Home Alone." Williams employed

her regularly during his stint with the Boston Pops in the 1980s and '90s;

her arrangements are featured on more than a dozen Pops albums.



Born Walter Stott in Leeds, Yorkshire, he played alto saxophone in English

big-bands of the 1940s but became a full-time arranger in 1950, eventually

(as Wally Stott) arranging records for such popular singers as Mel Torme,

Rosemary Clooney,Marlene Dietrich and Noel Coward.



He wrote and conducted music for BBC Radio's popular "Goon Show" in the

1950s and was active on the British music scene as an arranger-conductor

throughout the 1960s. He became Angela Morley in 1972 and conducted the

BBC Radio Orchestra during the 1970s. She moved to the U.S. in 1980.



She is survived by her partner, Christine Parker; a son, three

grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

[wadsy]

Angela Morley was a mega talent. This is so sad ( a lot of talented people seem



to have passed away recently). As Wally Stott in the 60,s she arranged music



for Scott Walker on his solo albums. A Genius! R.I.P Angela.

[Marky B]

A talent unnoticed on the whole. I've heard Wally's music for the Good Show.

Angela Morley .

Mark

[Steve Crook]

He (as Wally) wrote the percussive music that Moira Shearer dances to in Peeping Tom and was musical director on Michael Powell's Luna de miel [aka Honeymoon]



Steve

[julian_craster]

In between recording takes of dynamic underscore for The Slipper and the Rose



From The Times

January 20, 2009

Angela Morley: Composer and arranger | Times Online Obituary



Angela Morley: Composer and arranger

Morley wrote the film scores for several successful films and collaborated on others, notably with John Williams



Angela Morley was a versatile musician, a composer, arranger and conductor, who began her professional life as Wally Stott and became nationally known in the 1950s as a stalwart of The Goon Show before undergoing a sex-change.



The change of gender, and its unwelcome publicity, ushered in a difficult period in her private life, but she was able to pick up her career, eventually moving to the United States where she worked on a number of popular films and television shows.



She was born Walter Stott in Leeds in 1924. His father was a watchmaker and owned a shop selling watches, jewellery and silver plate. A musical memory was of sitting on the floor surrounded by records of the Jack Payne and Henry Hall bands and playing them on a wind-up gramophone.



At eight he started piano lessons but these came to an end when his father died suddenly a few months later. He toyed briefly with the violin and accordion before taking up the clarinet and playing in the school orchestra. Next it was an alto saxophone and a first taste of band music, performing under Bert Clegg at the Empress Ballroom in Mexborough, South Yorkshire.



He left school at 15 and toured with a juvenile band for ten shillings a week. His career started to take off during the Second World War when bands were losing musicians to the forces. The young Wally Stott spent a couple of years going from band to band until, at 17, he joined Oscar Rabin as lead alto.



In 1944, aged 20, he joined the Geraldo Orchestra, familiar to millions through its BBC radio broadcasts. As the orchestra played in various combinations, from swing band to symphonic, Stott was able to hone his skills as an arranger, inspired by two masters of the craft, the Canadian-born Robert Farnon and Bill Finegan, who worked for Tommy Dorsey.



The self-taught Stott decided it was time to seek professional instruction and studied harmony, counterpoint and composition with the Hungarian composer Matyas Seiber and took a conducting course with Walter Goehr.



At the beginning of the 1950s he gave up playing to concentrate on writing, arranging and conducting. He became musical director of the new Philips record label, began to write film scores and moved into broadcasting on The Goon Show and Hancock’s Half-Hour.



Disillusioned with the quality of recording in the cinema he turned down film offers for some years, but in the late 1960s he wrote music for The Looking Glass War, When Eight Bells Toll and Captain Nemo and the Underwater City. After the sex change operation in 1972 he became Angela Morley, taking his mother’s maiden name, and for a while she put her career on hold. But by 1974 she was working on Stanley Donen’s film The Little Prince, with the songwriting team of Lerner and Loewe, and she went on to collaborate with Robert and Richard Sherman on the score for Bryan Forbes’s Cinderella story The Slipper and the Rose. Both films brought her Oscar nominations. In 1977 she was the credited composer on Watership Down, an animated film based on Richard Adams’s novel. Malcolm Williamson had originally been commissioned and wrote what became the first six minutes of music on the film, but had to withdraw through illness. At this period Morley was also a regular conductor of the BBC Radio Orchestra and worked with John Williams on the orchestration of his scores for Star Wars, Superman and The Empire Strikes Back.



She attended the two Oscar ceremonies at which she was nominated, and liked California so much that she settled there in 1980. From then on her work was in the US, much of it for television on such shows as Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Cagney and Lacey and Wonder Woman.



She helped John Williams with his scores for E.T., Hook, the Home Alone films and Schindler’s List and won three Emmy awards for arranging.



Over the years life in Los Angeles became steadily less appealing and after the 1994 earthquake, with its epicentre only six miles from her house, she made her home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Here she founded the Chorale of the Alliance Française of Greater Phoenix, for which she wrote more than 30 arrangements of French songs.



Wally Stott was married twice. His first wife, who founded the Beryl Stott Singers, predeceased him, as did a daughter. In 1970 he was married to Christine Parker and, despite the trauma of the sex change only two years later, she and Angela Morley stayed together.



Morley is survived by her and a son.



Angela Morley, conductor, composer and arranger, was born on March 10, 1924. She died on January 14, 2009, aged 84

[duffy moon]

Don't know much about the lady, but I remember being hypnotised by the flutey theme to Watership Down..still am if I hear it again...what an evocative piece of music...so simple but so effective.

[julian_craster]

Angela Morley: Composer and arranger who worked with Scott Walker and scored 'Dynasty' and 'Dallas'



THE INDEPENDENT (with some errors corrected......)



Thursday, 22 January 2009



Angela Morley: Composer and arranger who worked with Scott Walker and scored 'Dynasty' and 'Dallas' - Obituaries, News - The Independent





Angela Morley worked on several TV series including Dallas, Dynasty, Cagney and Lacey, and Wonder Woman, and won three Emmys for her work. She also assisted John Williams in arranging his gargantuan scores for Star Wars in 1977, Superman in 1978 and The Empire Strikes Back in 1980





The full extent of Angela Morley's credits may not be fully appreciated as she spent the first 48 years of her life as Wally Stott. Combining her identities and her talents for composition, conducting and arrangement, Morley contributed to several film scores including dance music for Peeping Tom (1959) and arranging and conducting The Slipper And The Rose (1975), episodes of the TV series Dallas and Dynasty, hit records by the likes of Frankie Vaughan, Shirley Bassey and Scott Walker, and TV and radio themes, including for the renowned Hancock's Half Hour.



Wally Stott was born in Leeds on 10 March 1924, where he lived with his parents above their jewellery shop. As a young boy, he was intrigued by their collection of dance records andhe recognised them by their labels before he could read. He had pianolessons, but they stopped when his father died in 1933. His mother returned to her home town of Rotherham and there he taught himself to play the alto saxophone, playing in a dance band when he was 15.



When the war started, many dance band musicians joined the forces. This enabled the young Stott to find professional work, mostly in the north of England. In 1941, he joined the widely known Oscar Rabin Band, making his recording debut on "Waiting for Sally" and "Love in Bloom".



In 1944, Stott joined Geraldo, possibly the best-known bandleader of the time and certainly the busiest. They were featured on numerous BBC programmes and they could play swing or symphonies. Bob Adams, who played saxophone alongside Stott, remarked, "Wally played the alto beautifully. It is the sexiest of instruments and there was a beautiful effeminacy about the way Wally played." Stott studied Geraldo's orchestrations, particularly those written by Robert Farnon, and he took lessons in harmony and composition with Matyas Seiber and in conducting with Walter Goehr.



In 1953, Stott became the musical director for a new British label, Philips. The label had a relatively small staff and Stott's job was to assist Johnny Franz in selecting material for the artists and then to arrange and conduct the recording session, which Franz produced. Although many of the British artists were covering American hit songs, Stott determined to make the records as distinctive as possible. Frankie Vaughan's personality was showcased in "Green Door" (1956) and Stott strove to make "The Garden of Eden" (1957) more forceful than Vaughan's competitors. Stott wrote the explosive arrangement for "Tower of Strength" (1960), an early Burt Bacharach and Hal David song, which topped the UK charts.



The same principle held for Shirley Bassey and her hits included "The Banana Boat Song" (1957), "As I Love You" (1958) and "Kiss Me Honey Honey Kiss Me" (1958). Robert Earl, who scored a hit with "I May Never Pass This Way Again" in 1958, said, "The combination of Wally Stott and Johnny Franz was very good for me. They didn't believe in fade-out endings so all those ballads end on big notes."



Philips would release American product from Columbia and when their artists visited the UK, Stott would arrange and conduct their recordings. He worked on "I Am a Camera" with Marlene Dietrich in 1954, Christmas songs with Rosemary Clooney in 1957, and the highly rated album Mel Tormé Meets The British (1957). Stott released instrumental records and both "Limelight" (1953) and "The Cat From Coos Bay" (1954) were popular. He made several albums including Tribute To Jerome Kern (1956), Christmas by the Fireside (1959) and London Pride (1960). Peter Sellers, bored with playing variety bills, once said to his audience, "I'm going to play a record for you" and watched while they listened to Stott's "Christmas Sleigh Bells".



In addition, Stott contributed to several films including Hindle Wakes [assisting Stanley Black] (1952), Charley Moon (1956), The Heart of a Man (1959), The Lady Is a Square (1959) and Michael Powell's highly regarded Peeping Tom (1959). His jaunty accompaniment to riders in Hyde Park, "Rotten Row", is very familiar, and he dedicated "A Canadian In Mayfair" to Robert Farnon. He wrote and conducted for Chappell Recorded Music Library, which often supplied music for films, and Broadway arrangements for Reader's Digest mail order releases. "Wally Stott was at the top of the range," said his fellow arranger, Tony Osborne. "We all looked up to Wally because we knew that he was second only to Robert Farnon, and it was a pretty close run thing at that!"



Despite this huge workload, Stott also worked for the BBC and when another composer, Stanley Black, became ill in 1954, he was assigned to write the music for a new comedy series Hancock's Half Hour. He wrote a cantankerous signature tune, played on a tuba by Jim Powell. Although Stott had never met him, it conveyed Hancock's personality perfectly. When they did meet, Hancock congratulated him on his work. He also wrote a parody of The Archers signature tune for Hancock by playing its theme, "Barwick Green", backwards.



Stott also conducted the orchestras for "Ring-a-Ding Girl" and "Say Wonderful Things", Ronnie Carroll's entries in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1962 and 1963.



Stott was involved in rock'n'roll, too, arranging Marty Wilde's album, Wilde About Marty (1959), as well as several of his hits. He arranged Dusty Springfield's "All I See Is You" (1966) and several of Scott Walker's interpretations of Jacques Brel's deeply troubled chansons, including "Jacky" (1967). Stott arranged Walker's 1969 album, Scott 3. Walker commented that "Working with Wally Stott on Scott 3 was like having Delius writing for you."



He scored the films, The Looking Glass War (1969) and Where Eight Bells Toll (1971) starring Anthony Hopkins.



If Brel had known about Stott's private life, he might have been tempted to write about it. Stott's first marriage, to the choral arranger Beryl Stott, had ended in divorce, and he had recently remarried. However, when Stott returned from a holiday in Scandinavia in 1972, Johnny Franz was astonished to find him dressed as a woman. He had undergone a sex change operation, causing one of Philips' artists, Harry Secombe, to remark that, "I've heard of leaving your heart in San Francisco, but this is ridiculous." Musicians can be coarse and blunt, and rather than be a figure of ridicule, Morley told Franz that she would no longer be conducting. Franz persuaded her to continue and, largely because of her superb musicianship, she was accepted. Morley's transformation was also acknowledged by Christine Parker, Stott's second wife, who decided to remain with Morley.



Morley received Oscar nominations for arranging the scores of Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner's music for The Little Prince (1974) and for Robert and Richard Sherman's musical version of Cinderella, The Slipper and the Rose (1978). In 1977, Morley took over from an ailing Malcolm Williamson on Watership Down, and although the best-known music sequence, "Bright Eyes", was written by Mike Batt, Morley's "Keehar's Theme" for alto sax and orchestra is often included in concert repertoires.



Moving to Los Angeles, she worked on several TV series including Dallas, Dynasty, Cagney and Lacey, and Wonder Woman, and won three Emmys for her work. She assisted John Williams in arranging his gargantuan scores for Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980) as well as many other film scores that she either arranged or conducted. She arranged Mel Tormé's Christmas Songs in 1992 and turned her attentions to the recording of her own music.



In 1994, after being close to an earthquake, Morley moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. She was involved in the recording of two CDs of her music by the John Wilson Orchestra and she often lectured on film scoring at the University of Southern California.



Spencer Leigh



Walter Stott (Angela Morley), composer and orchestrator: born Leeds, 10 March 1924; married twice (one daughter, one son); died Scottsdale, Arizona 14 January 2009.

[EHV_Emmetts]

R.I.P. Ms. Morley.

[julian_craster]

This recent CD may be of interest to those wishing to explore Angela's

film and television scores further.......







John Wilson & His Orchestra

THE FILM & TV MUSIC OF ANGELA MORLEY



Guest soloists: Tony Fisher (Flugel horn), John Harle (alto sax)



Recorded at Abbey Road Studio No.2, London

13-14 May 2003



Dutton Vocalion:







TRACK LISTING:



Introduction and Waltz from 'The Slipper And The Rose'

Transformation Music and Wedding March

Theme from TV film Madame X

Theme from film 'When Eight Bells Toll'

A Tender Mood

Theme from film 'The Looking Glass War'

White Wing from TV series Hotel

Snow Ride

Blues For Alexis from TV series Dynasty

Rotten Row

My Autumn Love

A Canadian In Mayfair

Music from film 'Watership Down: Venturing Forth, Through The Woods, Kehaar's Theme, Final Struggle And

Triumph