Quiz

Registered 364 compositions with ASCAP, then moved to BMI where he logged a further 508 titles.

Rugolo was intrigued by the music of Schoenberg, Bartók, Stravinsky, Samuel Barber and Edgard Varèse, and during a summer season at Mills he received tuition from Bartók himself. Traces of these influences would later give a distinctive flavour even to his commercial work.

While Rugolo continued to work occasionally with Stan Kenton in the 1950s, he spent more time creating arrangements for pop and jazz vocalists, most extensively with former Kenton singer June Christy on such albums as Something Cool, The Misty Miss Christy, Fair and Warmer!, Gone for the Day, and The Song Is June.

After the war, Rugolo worked for Stan Kenton. He and songwriter Joe Greene collaborated on songs that made Kenton's band one of America's most popular.

He spent World War II playing with altoist Paul Desmond in an Army band.

His family emigrated from Sicily to the United States in 1920 and settled in Santa Rosa, California.

After he graduated, he was hired as an arranger and composer by guitarist and bandleader Johnny Richards.

In 1962, he released an album of themes from popular television series, TV's Top Themes, which included his composition for the 1961 CBS sitcom Ichabod and Me.

He was an American jazz composer, arranger, and record producer.

He received a bachelor's degree from San Francisco State College and then went on to study composition with Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland, California and earn his master's degree.

He began his career in music playing the baritone horn, like his father, but he quickly branched out into other instruments, notably the French horn and the piano.

Rugolo's arrangements for the album The Four Freshmen and Five Trombones propelled the group to recognition in jazz circles. It was their bestselling album.

He provided scores for a number of TV movies and a few theatrical films, such as Jack the Ripper (1959), The Sweet Ride (1968), Underground Aces (1981) and Chu Chu and the Philly Flash (1981).

Among his albums were Adventures in Rhythm, Introducing Pete Rugolo, Rugolomania, An Adventure in Sound: Reeds in Hi-Fi, and Music for Hi-Fi Bugs.

By the early 1960s, studio work consumed all of Rugolo's energies, and he stopped recording except for soundtrack albums. He came out of semi-retirement to compose and conduct the score for "This World, Then the Fireworks." It demonstrated his gift for writing music that is both sophisticated and expressive.

Consequently, his importance to jazz lessened as the years passed.

He briefly led a big band in 1954.

He worked on film musicals at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and in the late 1950s he served as an A&R director for Mercury Records.

Rugolo's small combo jazz music featured in a couple of numbers in the film Where the Boys Are (1960) under the guise of Frank Gorshin's "Dialectic Jazz Band".

In the 1960s and 1970s, Rugolo did a great deal of work in television, contributing music to a number of series including Leave It to Beaver, Thriller, The Investigators, The Thin Man, Checkmate, The Fugitive, Run for Your Life, Felony Squad, The Bold Ones: The Lawyers, Alias Smith and Jones and Family.