#4: Oklahoma! by Ray Conniff Orchestra

City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: July 1959
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Cashbox Top 100 Best Sellers ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Oklahoma!”
Lyrics: “Oklahoma!”

Joseph Raymond “Ray” Conniff was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts, in 1916, long known as “The Jewelry Capital of the World” for all of its jewelry manufacturers. He studied music arranging from a course book. In 1938, he played trombone on “Livery Stable Blues”/”High Society” with Bunny Berigan And His Orchestra. This was the first of three singles he was in the recording studio with Berigan on in the late ’30s. In 1940, he wrote “Prelude in C Major” for Artie Shaw, and later the “Feather Merchant’s Ball” for Teddy Powell and His Orchestra. Conniff served in the U.S. Army in WWII, and joined the Artie Shaw and His Orchestra. In 1942, he wrote “Just Kiddin’ Around” for Shaw, which became at Top 30 hit. Ray Conniff played trombone on several sides for Art Hodes and His Chicagoans, Jerry Jerome and His Cats And Jammers, Yank Lawson’s Jazzband, Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, and the Cozy Cole Orchestra. He wrote songs for Ray Linn’s Hollywood Swing Stars, Harry Hayes And His Band, Sonny Burke and His Orchestra, and the Billie Rogers Orchestra. He also variously wrote, arranged and played on songs recorded by Harry James and His Orchestra.

In 1954, he was hired to work at Columbia Records as the label’s home arranger, working with several artists. These included Rosemary Clooney, Frankie Laine, Johnnie Ray, Guy Mitchell, Johnny Mathis, and Marty Robbins. He arranged “Yes Tonight, Josephine” for Johnnie Ray, “Singing The Blues” for Guy Mitchell, “Band Of Gold” for Don Cherry, “Wonderful! Wonderful!”, “Chances Are”, “Twelfth Of Never”, and “It’s Not For Me To Say” for Johnny Mathis, “A White Sport Coat” and “El Paso” for Marty Robbins, “Moonlight Gambler” for Frankie Laine, and many more.

According to AllMusic.com, in March 1959, Ray Conniff released his album. Broadway in Rhythm. It featured “Oklahoma” along with three other songs from Oklahoma!: “People Will Say We’re In Love”, “The Surrey With The Fringe On Top”, and “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning”. The album also included four songs from South Pacific, and two songs each from The King and I, and My Fair Lady. The track, “Oklahoma!” was released as a single.

“Oklahoma!” was written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Richard Rodgers was born in 1902 into a Jewish family in Queens, New York. He studied at the Institute of Musical Art (the forerunner of the Juilliard School). After studying at Columbia University, Rodgers was introduced to Lorenz Hard in 1919. Their first musical opened on Broadway in 1920 titled Poor Little Ritz Girl. His 1925 revue – Garrick Gaieties – featured the pop standard “Manhattan”. Other pop standards emerged in successive musicals for the songwriting duo. These include”You Took Advantage Of Me” from Present Arms (1928), “Dancing On The Ceiling” from Ever Green (1930), “Ten Cents A Dance” from Simple Simon (1930), and “Where Or When”, “The Lady Is A Tramp”, “I Wish I Were In Love Again” and “My Funny Valentine” from Babes In Arms (1937), “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” from Too Many Girls (1939), “It Never Entered My Mind” from Higher and Higher (1940), and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” from Pal Joey (1941).

Lorenz Hart died at the age of 48, spurred on by alcoholism. Before Hart died, Rodgers and Hart had composed over 500 songs for Broadway musicals. The year Hart died, Richard Rodgers began to collaborate with Oscar Hammerstein II. The pair wrote many notable musicals including Oklahoma, State Fair, Carousel, South Pacific, The King And I, The Flower Drum Song and The Sound Of Music. The latter musical earned songwriting duo a Grammy Award in 1960 for Best Show Album (Original Cast). Rogers and Hammerstein won Tony Awards for Best Musical for both South Pacific and The King and I. Additionally, they received Tony Award nominations for Best Musical for Pipe Dream and Flower Drum Song. In 1996, a Broadway production of State Fair earned Rogers and Hammerstein a Best Original Score nomination at the Tony Awards. Between 1943 and 1959, Rogers and Hammerstein wrote and produced eleven musicals.

Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was born in New York City in 1895. His father was from a Jewish family and his mother was British. Hammerstein studied law at Columbia University. When he was 19, in 1914, he was in his first play. He quit law school and pursued theater. He began as an apprentice and went on to form a 20-year collaboration with Harbach. Out of this collaboration came his first musical, Always You, for which he wrote the book and lyrics. It opened on Broadway in 1920. In 1927, Hammerstein collaborated with Jerome Kern to mount Show Boat, a musical about the lives of performers, stage hands and dock workers on the Mississippi River show boat the Cotton Blossom. 

In 1938, Hammerstein was nominated for a Best Song Academy Award for “A Mist over the Moon” from The Lady Objects. In 1941, he won an Academy Award for Best Song for “The Last Time I Saw Paris” from the musical film Lady Be Good. In 1943, Hammerstein wrote the book and lyrics for Carmen Jones, an adaptation of the Bizet opera Carmen. The production was performed by an all-black cast. A 1954, film adaptation starred Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge. In 1945, Hammerstein again won an Academy Award for Best Song, this time for the State Fair tune “It Might As Well Be Spring”. In 1946, he was again nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Song category for “All Through the Day” from Centennial Summer. Hammerstein received his fifth Academy Award nomination for Best Song in 1951 for “A Kiss To Build A Dream On” from The Strip. In 1960, Oscar Hammerstein II died of stomach cancer at the age of 65.

“Oklahoma!” is the title song from the musical Oklahoma! It is a song about the state of Oklahoma. The lyrics offer up a list of natural qualities about the weather in the state. Oklahoma is a state:
1) where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.
2) where the waving wheat can sure smell sweet
3) when the wind comes right behind the rain.
4) where the people know they “belong to the land, and the land we belong to is grand.”

Original Broadway poster (1943)

Oklahoma! is set in farm country outside the town of Claremore, Indian Territory, in 1906. It tells the story of farm girl Laurey Williams and her courtship by two rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain and the sinister and frightening farmhand Jud Fry. The original Broadway production opened on March 31, 1943. It was a box office hit and ran for an unprecedented 2,212 performances, later enjoying award-winning revivals, national tours, foreign productions and an Oscar-winning 1955 film adaptation. In 1944, Rodgers and Hammerstein won a special Pulitzer Prize for Oklahoma!

Ray Conniff’s single release of “Oklahoma!” peaked at #1 in Hull (QC). The single also charted most notably in Denver and San Bernardino (CA).

In 1959, Conniff started The Ray Conniff Singers, consisting of 12 women and 13 men. Between 1957 and 1968, Conniff had 28 albums in the Top 40 of the Billboard pop album chart. The most famous one was Somewhere My Love in 1966. The title track was a #9 hit single on the Billboard Hot 100, featuring The Ray Conniff Singers. The single topped the Adult Contemporary chart for four weeks in the summer of ’66. He had a #2 hit on the Adult Contemporary chart later that year titled “Lookin’ For Love”. It was his last appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, stalling at #94. Ray Conniff and one last Top Ten hit on the Adult Contemporary chart in 1968 titled “Winds of Change”. He charted seven more singles onto the Adult Contemporary chart into the late ’70s. Over his career, Ray Conniff released over 90 studio albums. Over his career, Ray Conniff sold over 70 million albums.

Conniff died in 2002 at the age of 85.

November 15, 2024
Ray McGinnis

References:
Meryle Secrest, Somewhere For Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers, Knopf, 2001.
“Oscar Hammerstein 2d Is Dead; Librettist and Producer Was 65; Did ‘Oklahoma!’ and ‘South Pacific’ With Rodgers — Lyricist of ‘Show Boat’ Oscar Hammerstein 2d Is Dead of Cancer at 65,” New York Times, August 23, 1960.
Dennis McLellan, “Ray Conniff, 85, Popularized Choral Sound,”  Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2002.
“Bandleader Ray Conniff dies,” Associated Press, October 14, 2002.
Ray Conniff And the Singers, “Somewhere My Love“, Columbia Records, 1966.

CKCH 970-AM Hull (QC) Top 15 | August 8, 1959