DECEMBER 4

1943 - Werner Becker was born in Celle, Germany (aka Anthony Ventura) he is a German musician, arranger and music producer. From 1970, Becker was a member of the big band "The Studiker" where he developed his talent for arranging and studio work in Hamburg. After 1972 Becker worked as a pianist in the band Randy Pie. They were not commercial success and he continued working as an arranger. Werner Becker took over the arranging, recording and mixing with many orchestral soloists. His first album Je t'aime - dream melodies featured classic orchestral arrangements. Because of the Randy Pie engagement, Becker, appeared under a psudonym artist name Orchester Anthony Ventura. He thus successfully established his own orchestra sound for the great easy-listening market, and at frequent intervals until 1982, appeared on ten albums of the Je-t'aime series. Anthony Ventura has a total of ten million albums sold and received several gold and platinum album awards.

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1915  Eddie Heywood was born Edward Heywood, Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia and died 3 January 1989, in Miami Beach, Florida. He was a jazz pianist who became very popular in the 1940s. His father, Eddie Heyward, Sr. was also a jazz musician from the 1920s. Heywood, Jr. played with several popular jazz musicians such as Wayman Carver in 1932, Clarence Love from 1934 to 1937 and Benny Carter from 1939 to 1940 after moving to New York. In the 1950s, Heywood composed and recorded "Land of Dreams" and "Soft Summer Breeze" and is probably best known for his 1956 recording of his composition "Canadian Sunset," all of which he recorded with Hugo Winterhalter and his orchestra.

EDDIE HEYWOOD

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1910 Alex North, died September 8, 1991. He was an American composer who wrote the first jazz-based film score (A Streetcar Named Desire) and one of the first modernist scores written in Hollywood (Viva Zapata!). Born Isadore Soifer in Chester, Pennsylvania, North was an original composer probably even by the classical music standards of the day. However, he managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes. One of these became the famous song, "Unchained Melody". Nominated for 14 Oscars but unsuccessful each time, North and Ennio Morricone are the only film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award.

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