An article by William Zucker.
In this essay, I am dealing with four musical comedy medleys that were arranged by Leroy Anderson as staff arranger for Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. This aggregate recorded these settings during the early 50s, and though these were generally available in this form for some time, they have remained in relative obscurity. It is a shame, because these settings are of outstanding quality in their own right.
A conductor of a summer band series who was situated at the Manhattan School of Music for some time, Mr. David Simon, was familiar with the many musical comedy medleys of Robert Russell Bennett, outstanding in themselves, as well as numerous Leroy Anderson selections, and regularly conducted works from both categories. He was very surprised when I told him about the Leroy Anderson arrangements of these medleys; I urged him to sample them and possibly conduct them, with the words, "They really are very good," and his answer, in a way a tribute, as seemingly knowing what to expect. "I guess they would be." I don't at this point know how successful he was in tracking these down, or whether they remained at the time under any copyright protection or any ownership rights by the Boston Pops Orchestra or Arthur Fiedler, but either way, they should be clearly better known than they have been all these years, and perhaps for very unexpected reasons.
