Biography
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Born
17 November 1927
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Born In
Charleston, Kanawha County, West Virginia, United States
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Died
13 May 2015 (aged 87)
Robert Drasnin played alto, clarinet, and flute in the jazz bands of such leaders as Tommy Dorsey and Red Norvo. His status as an artiste, however, rests upon an album that he might have considered as a trifle at the time. Voodoo, issued around the late '50s on the tiny Tops label, closely approximated the exotica sound of Martin Denny – under, apparently, instructions from the Tops A&R chief himself. Drasnin devised a satisfying approximation of Denny's tropical-Latin-lounge jazz hybrid, in somewhat of a more low-key fashion than Denny himself. Indeed, Drasnin later arranged Denny's Latin Village album. The rare Voodoo LP was reissued on CD in 1996. Robert Drasnin also has a host of television compositions under his belt, including work for Lost in Space, Playhouse 90, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission Impossible, and The Twilight Zone. From 1977 until the early '90s, he was the Director of Music for CBS Entertainment.
Re-issued on CD by Dionysus during the recent Exotica revivalist movement, exposure to the original Voodoo by a new generation has resulted in overwhelming demand for more. After a unanimously enthusiastic response to a live performance at the Hukilau festival in 2005, Mr. Drasnin was delighted at the opportunity to go back into the studio to create a follow-up to his singular masterpiece, almost five decades later. The CD was relased by Dionysus Records in Spring of 2007, and was performed live at the Hukilau in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on June 15, 2007.
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