Lloyd Wells


    Lloyd Wells is an American guitarist/arranger/orchestrator/composer now residing in Nashville, Tennessee. He grew up in Laurel, Mississippi, the same home town of jazz guitarist, Mundell Lowe. He did his first professional work playing for square dances while still attending high school. He attended the University of Southern Mississippi, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education.
    With encouragement from Lowe, Wells spent the years 1964-73 in New York as a working guitarist.  
    His Broadway credits of eighteen shows include "Cabaret", "Company" and "Zorba", "The Ed Sullivan Show", "The Tony Awards", "The Merv Griffin Show", "Sesame Street", "The Electric Company", "The Johnny Carson Show" and "The Skitch Henderson Show".
    Singer credits include Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, Guy Mitchell and Jane Russell.
    Big Band credits include Glenn Miller (w/Buddy DeFranco), Les and Larry Elgart and the Paul Winter Jazz Sextet.
    Movie tracks include "The Life of Norman Rockwell" (1971 Academy Award winning documentary), "The Subject Was Roses" and "Something For Everyone."
    Film scoring projects through Palomar Productions were under a grant from Hofstra University.
    In 1973, after moving to Nashville, Wells toured Russia with Tennessee Ernie Ford and a troupe from the "Opryland, USA" show park, and, as a result, became the Music Director of Opryland USA, a position he held for twenty-three years. During his tenure at Opryland, Wells was responsible for over five thousand vocal and instrumental arrangements and orchestrations in addition to penning original compositions for the major shows in the park.
    As a result of the Russian tour, Wells became Tennessee Ernie Ford's conductor/arranger for the last fifteen years of Ford's life and convinced the singer to donate all the musical arrangements and kinescopes of his television shows to the University of Southern Mississippi.
    Wells has written arrangements for Brenda Lee (two TNN specials); has arranged/orchestrated shows for the Community Concert series (including the only Gershwin estate sanctioned revue to tour the United States during the Gershwin Centennial celebration); has conducted the Nashville Symphony on several occasions (including the Grand Opening of the Tennessee Center for the Performing Arts and the dedication of the Bicentennial Mall); was arranger/conductor of one hundred and twenty television shows on TNN ("Opryland On Stage") and one hundred and twenty shows with Porter Wagoner ("Porter Wagoner At Opryland"); arranged/orchestrated/conducted the NBC Orchestra for the network special "50 Golden Years With Tennessee Ernie Ford."
    Wells' favorite stage production, for which he wrote the dialogue, original music, arrangements and orchestrations, was "Easter...in Song and Story", an Easter pageant performed in the Grand Ole Opry House during the Spring seasons of 1993-94.
    Wells has performed at the White House on two occasions, the "W.C. Handy Festival" for several years with Mundell Lowe and has held film scoring seminars at the "George Lindsey Film Festival" at the University of North Alabama.
    He is an inductee of the "Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame" and a member of the "Alumni Hall of Fame" of the University of Southern Mississippi.
    Wells has arranged/orchestrated productions for the "Ryman Auditorium", "The Opryland Hotel", the "Fiesta, Texas" theme park (San Antonio, Texas), the 1980 World's Fair (Knoxville, Tennessee), the "CBS Morning Show", the "Today Show", the "CMA Awards", Carnegie Hall and the "Voice of America."

CDs: "This One's For Charlie" w/Mundell Lowe Azica Records

       "I Wish You Love"          Solo
       "Invitation"               Solo           Bluport Records
       "Poor Butterfly"         w/Mundell Lowe/Jim Ferguson    "Two Helpins' o'Collards" Records

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

References

External links

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, April 30, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.