It is fair to say that Don Sebesky’s work for CTI from 1967 to 1975 not only shaped the sound of the label but the very sound of jazz at the time. Sebesky (1937-2023) is, perhaps, one of the most provocative, yet sensitive and stimulating arrangers who worked in the post-big band age, combining the hues and timbres of jazz with classical orchestration and formulating readily accessible frameworks for a wide variety of soloists.
Studying many instruments and arranging at the Manhattan School of Music, Sebesky settled on trombone and played in the bands of Bill Russo, Tommy Dorsey, Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson, where he began contributing arrangements. By this time Sebesky decided to abandon his instrument and took up arranging full time. One of his earliest successes is the 1963 date A Jazz Portrait of Charlie Mariano, featuring Jim Hall, Mel Lewis and many of the session musicians regularly featured on Verve records of the time. This is the album that probably led Creed Taylor to recruit Sebesky for Bumpin’, Wes Montgomery’s second Verve album.
“Creed wanted to wed Wes’s unique, percussive guitar sound,” recalled Sebesky years later, “to an elegant string ensemble in a mix of standards and originals. But he trusted me to find the way to do it. We didn’t have a lot of discussions; Creed said ‘Just do it.’”1 And he did – beautifully.
Bumpin’ became Wes Montgomery’s first charting hit. Sebesky, who gets front-cover credit himself, provided Montgomery with a lush, elegant framework that superbly supported the guitarist – via inspired counterpoint – without ever drowning him in a sea of strings. The album laid the foundation for everything the producer and arranger collaborated on thereafter.
“It became the basis for the ‘CTI sound’, Sebesky notes. “The musicians come up with licks that I then adopt as motifs or use as segues between sections. Writing this way makes me feel like I am part of rhythm section, part of the nucleus of the ensemble.”2
Sebesky went on to arrange Montgomery’s California Dreaming as well as Verve sessions for Astrud Gilberto and Kai Winding. When Creed Taylor began his CTI production deal with A&M, Sebesky was his first choice as house arranger. Sebesky provided arrangements for all three of Wes Montgomery’s A&M/CTI albums as well as eight of the label’s releases between 1967’s A Day in the Life and 1969’s The Other Side of Abbey Road. (Eumir Deodato, by contrast, worked on six of the label’s records, including three Sebesky also worked on.)
Sebesky would go on to arrange for Creed Taylor’s independent CTI, crafting breakthrough records for Hubert Laws, Freddie Hubbard (the Grammy Award-winning First Light), Jackie & Roy and Jim Hall while recording his own superb all-star Giant Box (1973) and the regrettably-titled The Rape of El Morro (1975).
At the same time, Sebesky worked on TV commercials, film and Broadway scores, concert works, and went on to work with many singers including Rod Stewart, Barbara Streisand, Michael Bublé and Christine Aguilera. Sebesky would return periodically and significantly to CTI in the eighties (Studio Trieste) and nineties (Larry Coryell’s Fallen Angel, his final date for CTI) and helmed CTI-esque dates for Hubert Laws and Stanley Turrentine on the Musicmasters label in the early nineties.
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