George Handy
b. 17 January 1920, New York City, New York, USA. After studying piano and composing at both Juilliard and New York University, Handy was tutored by Aaron Copland, the renowned American classical composer. In the early '40s he worked with Raymond Scott's orchestra at CBS studios in New York, but then turned his attention to arranging for the more progressively-minded big band leaders. Among the bands for which he wrote were those led by Alvino Rey, a popular guitarist who led an advanced and often overlooked big band in the mid-40s, and Boyd Raeburn, for whom he made his most notable contributions to jazz. It is difficult to be too precise about which of Raeburn's successes were actually written by Handy as a dispute arose between Handy and Raeburn on the one hand, and Eddie Finckel on the other over authorship of several of the band's best charts. At times Handy played piano with Raeburn, but proved an eccentric personality who was also somewhat unreliable (drummer Irving Kluger recalled that at one time Handy dyed his hair green and would occasionally lapse into unconsciousness over the keyboard). Handy made a few records of his own compositions under his own name, but by the late '40s had left the jazz scene. He reappeared briefly in the mid-50s recording and working with Zoot Sims but drifted out of sight again. In 1964 he was writing for the New York Saxophone Quartet but this too proved to be only a temporary creative burst from an erratic individual, whose greatest failing might be that he came onto the jazz scene several years before it was ready for him.