Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music
BLEYER, Archie
(b 12 June 1909, Corona NY; d 20 March 1989, Sheboygan WI) Arranger, bandleader. One of the best-known writers of stock arrangements for music publishers, he wrote hot arrangements as well, and young musicians like Buck Clayton found them challenging: playing in a dance hall, Clayton wrote many years later, 'I could see then that I had a lot to learn. ''Business In F'' and ''Business in Q'' ... used to hang me every night.'
Bleyer led his own dance bands e.g. at Earl Carroll's Club in Hollywood in the late '30s, and recorded for Vocalion. He arranged and conducted for shows, and became famous in the late '40s and 1950s as Arthur Godfrey's music director on popular radio and TV shows, and led the band on Godfrey's novelty records.
He formed the Cadence pop label in 1953, at first to record Julius LaRosa, also a regular on the Godfrey show, and later the Chordettes from the show. Godfrey famously fired LaRosa on the air in October '53 and a few days later fired Bleyer (see LaRosa's entry for that story). The following month Bleyer and LaRosa had one of the biggest hits of the year with 'Eh, Cumpari', a charming novelty that you couldn't get away from. Bleyer's own top 40 hits included 'Hernando's Hideaway' (from Damn Yankees), 'The Naughty Lady Of Shady Lane' '54, clever arrangements in first-class recorded sound. The label continued to have huge hits with the Everly Brothers, Andy Williams, and a seminal rock single, 'Rumble' by guitarist Link Wray. Bleyer married Janet Ertel, one of the Chordettes, who were from Sheboygan.
A subsidiary label, Candid, was started in 1960 for jazz and blues with Nat Hentoff in charge, recording Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Booker Ervin, Cecil Taylor, Otis Spann, Lightnin' Hopkins, Abbey Lincoln etc. In late 1962 Cadence released its biggest hit of all, the comedy album called The First Family, by Vaughn Meader, sending up the Kennedys: it was no. 1 in the Billboard album chart for three months and stayed in the chart for nearly a year, until the assassination. After the Everlys and Andy Williams had left Cadence, Bleyer closed it in 1964, retired to Wisconsin and sold it all to Williams, who formed his own Barnaby label.
British producer Alan Bates (b 26 August 1925, Derby; d 30 January 2023, Barnes) had formed Black Lion in the late '60s, recorded among other things valuable trio and solo performances by Thelonious Monk in London. He produced a delightful session in 1971 by Bobby Bradford with John Stevens and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, which came out in 1980 on Nessa in the USA. Bates as thinking about retiring when in 1989 he acquired Candid from Williams, and formed Candid Productions, reissuing the valuable recordings from the vault, and then, he said, 'I couldn't stop.' He made new albums by Donald Harrison, Claudio Roditi etc, and reissued items from the Choice label from the 1970s in NYC, and in the new century signed vocalists Stacy Kent and Clare Teal, as well as pianist/vocalist Jamie Cullum. Thus Bleyer's musicianship and good taste was carried on.