17, 1910, in Battle Creek, Mich., and grew up in Zanesville, Ohio, where his parents taught music. From 1974 to 1984, he led his own nine-piece orchestra, which played in New York's Rainbow Room. For a decade beginning in 1947, he worked as a musical director for Decca and other record companies.įrom the late 1950s, he was a free-lance arranger for America's stellar entertainers, including Frank Sinatra, Ethel Merman, Sammy Davis Jr., Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters and the Mills Brothers. He was hired away by Tommy Dorsey, for whom he arranged from 1939 through the late 1940s. Oliver gained fame as a trumpeter, vocalist and arranger with the Lunceford band from 1933 to 1939, helping to make that group one of the most successful of the swing era.
His other compositions included "Swing High," "Easy Does It," and "Yes Indeed." "Sunny Side of the Street," "My Blue Heaven" and "Ain't She Sweet" were among his most acclaimed arrangements. One of his most notable hit songs that he composed for the Tommy Dorsey orchestra was "Opus One," which, with its powerful two-beat style, sent millions of teen-agers dancing in the early 1940s.
His compositions of "Dream of You," "For Dancers Only," "Organ Grinder Swing" and "Tain't What You Do," are ranked among jazz's finest arrangements. NEW YORK - Sy Oliver, 77, a trumpeter and jazz composer who worked with the Jimmie Lunceford band, the Tommy Dorsey orchestra and with other noted musicians, and became one of the Big Band era's most influential and imitated arrangers, died of cancer May 27 at a hospital here.
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