R.I.P. -- Sid Feller

Sid Feller, 89, Arranged Ray Charles Tunes

by Stephen Miller
New York Sun, February 17, 2006

Sid Feller, who died yesterday at 89, was a producer and
arranger whose 30-year partnership with Ray Charles produced
lushly arranged hits such as "Georgia on My Mind" and "I
Can't Stop Loving You."

As the head in-house arranger for Capitol Records and then
ABC Records, Feller also worked with Peggy Lee, Mel Torme,
Paul Anka, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gorme, and later in his
career was the musical arranger for "The Flip Wilson Show,"
and a host of other televised music specials.

But it was his special relationship with Charles that marked
the highest point in his career. The two men struck up a
close friendship around the time Charles left Atlantic
Records in a dispute over the ownership of record masters.
Feller helped woo Charles to the ABC label in 1959, and the
two turned out a series of albums starting with "Genius Hits
the Road." It was Feller who worked with Charles to produce
the two breakthrough albums "Modern Sounds In Country and
Western Music," which brought Nashville strings to Charles's
unique blend of country, rhythm, and blues. Among the tunes
on the two disks were "You Don't Know Me," "Careless Love,"
"You Are My Sunshine," and "Your Cheatin' Heart."

In the liner notes to the Rhino recording "Genius & Soul -
The 50th Anniversary Collection," Charles is quoted saying,
"Sid researched the hell out of it and came up with 250
tunes. I picked the ones I liked, and of the ones I picked,
they were all new to me except 'Bye Bye, Love.'"

Charles is reputed once to have said, "If they call me a
genius, Sid Feller is Albert Einstein."

Their relationship continued after Feller left ABC in the
mid-1960s to work in Hollywood, and Feller regularly toured
with Charles and conducted during his appearances with
orchestras.

Feller grew up in Brooklyn. His father, an Austrian Jew,
sold citrus fruit in the downtown Manhattan Washington
Market. Feller learned to play trumpet, his primary
instrument, while in the Boy Scouts. He also played the
piano, and credited his early interest in music and
arrangement to his mother consenting to have one hoisted
through the window of the family's Brooklyn walkup.

By the time Feller was in his mid-teens he was playing gigs
in the Poconos and small clubs in Manhattan. Feller was
completely self-taught as an arranger, and he told intimates
that he began figuring out the craft one day in the
Catskills on an hours-long sojourn in a rowboat, during
which he produced the arrangement for a song he had composed
himself.

In 1938, he was playing in the Hungarian orchestra at
Zimmerman's Budapest, a 48th Street restaurant, and also
taking lessons from a trumpeter playing in the orchestra at
nearby Minsky's Burlesque. It was there, while watching his
teacher play, that he first spotted Gertrude Hager, a
16-year-old chorine. Three years later, they were married at
Fort Knox, Tenn., where Feller was stationed as a warrant
officer leading a wartime entertainment unit.

Feller had played in Jack Teagarden's big band before the
war, and continued to provide Teagarden with arrangements
afterward. He toured with Carmen Cavallero ("The Poet of the
Piano"), and in 1951 signed on with Capitol as a producer,
arranger, and conductor. At Capitol, he worked with Jackie
Gleason, Nancy Wilson, and Dean Martin. He also led a band
on "USA Canteen," later renamed "The Jane Froman Show," a
short-format music show on CBS.

In 1955, Feller moved to ABC Records, where he provided
arrangements for Charlie Byrd and Woody Herman, among
others, before beginning his collaboration with Charles.

Although he had few writing credits, he did get one for the
song "You Can't Say No in Acapulco" for Elvis Presley's
movie "Fun in Acapulco" (1963).

Feller left ABC in 1965 and moved to Los Angeles and worked
as a freelance arranger and producer, working with Ms.
Wilson, Shirley Bassey, and Eddie Fisher. He added horn
arrangements on the Grass Roots' 1969 album "Leavin' It All
Behind," and horn and string arrangements to the "Osmond
Christmas Album" (1976). His list of credits from the 1970s
through this year as arranger, producer, or conductor
includes blues, Broadway show tunes, comedy, jazz, Latin,
and lounge.

Feller slowed down significantly after a heart attack in the
late 1990s, and moved to suburban Cleveland, where he was
coincidentally featured in a recent exhibition on Charles at
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was credited as producer
of eight of the 17 soundtrack songs on the recent biopic
"Ray."

"I cried through the whole move," Feller told the Cleveland
Plain Dealer. "Because as I watched Foxx's performance, I
really thought I was seeing Ray again."
_____

Sidney Harold Feller

Born December 24, 1916, in New York City; died February 16
in Beachwood, Ohio; survived by his wife, Gertrude, his
children Lois Feller, Bill Feller, Debbie Feller, and Jane
Toland, and five grandchildren.