Larry Russell

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Larry Russell was an American composer, arranger and conductor who worked mainly for the film industry. He was born in Indiana in 1913 and died in Los Angeles in 1954, at the age of forty. His first success was in 1941, the song Oh For Heaven's Sake, which Alvino Rey recorded for Bluebird Records. He was married to the film composer Inez James, and together they also wrote for films.

Music and breakthrough

Russell's best-known song is Vaya Con Dios, which he wrote in the early 1950s with Inez James and Buddy Pepper. It was recorded more than five hundred times and remained a standard. He wrote music for films such as Because of You from 1953 and conducted the orchestration of film scores for, among others, Crazy House, This Is the Life and Jolson Sings Again.

Influence

His work for Charlie Chaplin's film Limelight from 1952 brought him a posthumous Oscar. The film was not shown in Los Angeles until twenty years later, and under the rules of the time it therefore became eligible for the Academy Awards in 1972. Russell shared that prize with Raymond Rasch. In this way a composer who died young, with one song that went around the world and one Oscar that outlived his death, became a name in the history of film music.

Listening

In School of Rock

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