In 1929 the smart and eager 22-year-old was engaged as an arranger by CKNC (=CK National Carbon), a station owned by the Ever-Ready battery company. In 1933 he was appointed staff arranger and conductor with the newly-formed public service Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and there aired his first essays in ‘symphonic swing’, on programmes such as Gaiety And Romance, Mardi Gras and Bands Across The Sea: “we jazzed the classics and classicised the current pop music”, he later recalled. By 1938 CBC had awarded the 30-year-old arranger and conductor his own show, Music By Faith, but in 1940 the still ambitious Percy Faith went south across the border to Chicago, on an invitation from NBC to take over as musical director of Carnation Contented Hour from the European-born Mařek Weber (1888-1964), who had held that post for the previous two years. Percy Faith remained with the show until 1947. From 1946-1957 he was also variously MD for commercial radio programmes, notably for Coca-Cola and Woolworth’s. After a spell in Decca’s A&R department, in 1950 he was appointed a musical director at Columbia Records, working for oboist-turned-impresario Mitch Miller (alias Mitchell William Miller, born Rochester, NY, 1911).

Throughout all these early years, artistic and administrative work gave the workaholic Percy Faith little respite for composition. Even so, he wrote an operetta The Gandy Dancer (Chicago, 1943; for this Percy Faith netted a $1000 prize), works for piano and orchestra –‘The Snow Goose’ (1947) and ‘Brazilian Sleigh Bells’ (1950). The original piano solo version of ‘Noche caribe’ and works for soloists, chorus and orchestra, including
This Is My America, alongside numerous songs and film scores (notably Love Me Or Leave Me (MGM, 1955; co-written with Georgie Stoll and nominated for an Academy Award), The Third Day (Warner, 1965), The Love Goddesses (Paramount, 1965) and The Oscar –Paramount, 1966) all combine to an impressive roster. Percy Faith’s collaboration with Miller, it is said, was often stormy, but its results were phenomenal.

Percy Faith was born with an extraordinary musical curiosity. Far from ignoring Broadway
and Hollywood, for fresh ideas he would look –and listen – to Latin America and Scandinavia. We would hardly expect to find Swedish folk-fiddlers inspiring musicians in California, but it was a folk-fiddler from Rättvik who was behind our album title: Bubbling Over.

When Pop and Rock exploded in the 1960s Percy Faith did not ignore it, but adapted to meet it –his best-selling Themes For Young Lovers (1963) drew a younger generation to the Faith sound. To this day, all over the world ‘Beautiful Music’ (the US equivalent of ‘Middle Of The Road’) radio networks still play Percy Faith recordings in quantity, while even those that do not must recognise, however grudgingly, that he still enjoys a vast following. Percy Faith and Mitch Miller drew musicians from the finest American orchestras –among others, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Symphony Orchestras of Pittsburgh and St. Louis: from around 57 to as many as 80 players when brass and woodwind were required. 36 violins, 8 violas, 7 cellos, 2 double-basses, 1 harp, 1 guitar, percussion and the rest…. All Bubbling Over!

In the Percy Faith composition Flight 33⅓, strings and a brass-led jazz line bend an ear to ‘The Flight Of The Bumble Bee’, by Nikolai Rimsky-

Over the years all sorts of credits have been given on record-labels to The Hot Canary. The music (‘Le canari’) is by Raoul Poliakian (or should that be Poliakin…or Paul Yakim?). Ray Gilbert’s words date from 1949. A violin solo version of ‘The Canary’ reached the US Hit Parade. Also very ‘continental’, and a huge hit for the first French crooner, Jean Sablon (1906-94), Symphony (otherwise ‘Symphonie’) was composed by Alex Alstone (alias Siegfried Axelstein, 1903-82). Jack Lawrence (Jacob Schwartz) was again responsible for the English lyric. The Percy Faith arrangement brings piano and strings to the fore.

Next, courtesy of Faith, we find ourselves transported to the San Remo song festival, specifically January 30th 1952, the night that Carlo Concina won First Prize with Nilla Pizzi’s rendition of his ‘fox-serenata’ Vola, colomba (Fly, Little Dove), a song now better remembered via Roberto Murolo. Suddenly is based on the melody of ‘Im chambre séparée’ from the operetta Der Opernball (The Opera Ball), by the Austrian composer and conductor Richard F.J. Heuberger (1850-1914), first performed at the Theater an der Wien in 1898. In Faith’s adaptation strings and oboe take centre stage.

Richard Rodgers played piano at 4 and composed his first song at 14.
The March Of The Siamese Children from the record-breaking The King And I (New York, 1951 –1246 performances) is still a favourite with that most British of institutions – the Band of Her Majesty’s Grenadier Guards! Percy Faith was obviously familiar with another British institution –the Races– an acquaintance succinctly transformed in Fiddle Derby. Bubbling Over (in Swedish: Gärdebylåten) is by Hjort Anders Olsson (1865-1952). Born in the Swedish province of Dalarna at Rättvik, home of the famous Rättvik Fiddlers, Olsson was the first major folk fiddler to be recorded by what was then Radiotjänst (Swedish Radio). Faith arranged Bubbling Over shortly after his success with Alfvén’s Swedish Rhapsody, and it does not disappoint.