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Neal Hefti (October 29, 1922 – October 11, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, songwriter, and arranger. He composed the theme music for the ''Batman'' television series of the 1960s, and scored the 1968 film ''The Odd Couple'' and the subsequent TV series also titled ''The Odd Couple''. He began arranging professionally in his teens, when he wrote charts for Nat Towles. He became a prominent composer and arranger while playing trumpet for Woody Herman; while working for Herman he provided new arrangements for "Woodchopper's Ball" and "Blowin' Up a Storm", and composed "The Good Earth" and "Wild Root". After leaving Herman's band in 1946, Hefti concentrated on arranging and composing, although he occasionally led his own bands. He is especially known for his charts for Count Basie such as "Li'l Darlin'" and "Cute". ==Beginnings== Neal Paul Hefti was born October 29, 1922, to an impoverished family in Hastings, Nebraska. As a young child, he remembered his family relying on charity during the holidays. He started playing the trumpet in school at the age of eleven, and by high school was spending his summer vacations playing in local territory bands to help his family make ends meet. Growing up in, and near, a big city like Omaha, Hefti was exposed to some of the great bands and trumpeters of the Southwest territory bands. He also was able to see some of the virtuoso jazz musicians from New York that came through Omaha on tour. His early influences all came from the North Omaha scene. He said,
These experiences seeing Gillespie and Basie play in Omaha foreshadowed his period in New York watching Gillespie play and develop the music of bebop on 52nd Street and his later involvement with Count Basie's band. In 1939, while still a junior at North High in Omaha, he got his start in the music industry by writing arrangements of vocal ballads for local Mickey Mouse bands, like the Nat Towles band. Harold Johnson recalled that Hefti's first scores for that band were "Swingin' On Lennox Avenue" and "More Than You Know," as well as a very popular arrangement of "Anchors Aweigh".〔Albert McCarthy. ''Big Band Jazz.'' G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1974.〕 Some material that he penned in high school also was used by the Earl Hines band. Two days before his high school graduation ceremony in 1941, he got an offer to go on tour with the Dick Barry band, so he traveled with them to New Jersey. He quickly was fired from the band after two gigs because he couldn't sight-read music well enough. Stranded in New Jersey because he didn't have enough money to get home to Nebraska, he finally joined Bob Astor's band. Shelly Manne, drummer with Bob Astor at the time, recalled that even then Hefti's writing skills were quite impressive:
Hefti wouldn't focus on arranging seriously for a few more years. As a member of Astor's band, he concentrated on playing trumpet. After an injury forced him to leave Bob Astor, he stayed a while in New York. He played with Bobby Byrne in late 1942, then with Charlie Barnet for whom he wrote the classic arrangement of ''Skyliner''. During his time in New York, he hung around the clubs on 52nd Street, listening to bebop trumpet master Dizzy Gillespie and other musicians, and immersing himself in the new music. Since he didn't have the money to actually go into the clubs, he would sneak into the kitchen and hang out with the bands, and he got to know many of the great beboppers. He finally left New York for a while to play with the Les Lieber rhumba band in Cuba. When he returned from Cuba in 1943, he joined the Charlie Spivak band, which led him out to California for the first time, to make a band picture. Hefti fell in love with California. After making the picture in Los Angeles, he dropped out of the Spivak band to stay in California. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Neal Hefti」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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