Gil Melle
Encyclopedia
Gil Mellé was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

, jazz musician and film composer.

In the 1950s, Mellé's paintings and sculptures were shown in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 galleries and he created the cover art for albums by Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

, Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...

 and Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins
Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St...

. Mellé played the tenor and baritone saxophone with George Wallington
George Wallington
George Wallington was a highly regarded American bop pianist and composer....

, Max Roach
Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...

, Tal Farlow
Tal Farlow
Talmage Holt Farlow was an American jazz guitarist. Nicknamed the "Octopus", Farlow's extremely large hands spread over the fretboard as if they were tentacles. He is considered one of the all-time great jazz guitarists. Michael G...

, Oscar Pettiford
Oscar Pettiford
Oscar Pettiford was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer known particularly for his pioneering work in bebop.-Biography:...

, Ed Thigpen
Ed Thigpen
Edmund Leonard "Ed" Thigpen was an American jazz drummer, best-known for his work with the Oscar Peterson trio from 1959 to 1965...

, Kenny Dorham
Kenny Dorham
McKinley Howard Dorham was an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and composer born in Fairfield, Texas. Dorham's talent is frequently lauded by critics and other musicians, but he never received the kind of attention from the jazz establishment that many of his peers did...

 and Zoot Sims
Zoot Sims
John Haley "Zoot" Sims was an American jazz saxophonist, playing mainly tenor and soprano.-Biography:He was born in Inglewood, California, the son of vaudeville performers Kate Haley and John Sims. Growing up in a performing family, Sims learned to play both drums and clarinet at an early age...

, and led a number of sessions recorded for the Blue Note
Blue Note Records
Blue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...

 and Prestige
Prestige Records
Prestige Records was a jazz record label founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock. The company was located at 203 South Washington Avenue in Bergenfield, New Jersey, and recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz musicians of the day, sometimes issuing them under the names of several...

 labels between 1953 and 1957.

It was Mellé who introduced engineer Rudy Van Gelder
Rudy Van Gelder
Rudy Van Gelder is an American recording engineer specializing in jazz.Often regarded as one of the most important recording engineers in music history, Van Gelder has recorded several thousand jazz sessions, including many widely recognized as classics, in a career spanning more than half a century...

 to Alfred Lion
Alfred Lion
Alfred Lion was a Jewish German-born American record executive who co-founded Blue Note Records in 1939 Blue Note recorded many of the biggest names in jazz throughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.-Biography:...

, Blue Note Records
Blue Note Records
Blue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...

 founder in 1952. Lion had been impressed with the sound of Mellé's recordings, which were engineered by Van Gelder. Van Gelder was responsible for hundreds of recordings on Blue Note, virtually every session on the label from 1953 to 1967.

As a film and television composer, Mellé was one of the first to use electronic instruments (which he built himself), either alone or as an added voice among the string, wind, brass, and percussion sections of the orchestra. He was the first to compose a main theme for an American television series arranged entirely for electronic instruments (Rod Serling
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...

's Night Gallery
Night Gallery
Night Gallery is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1970 to 1973, featuring stories of horror and the macabre. Rod Serling, who had gained fame from an earlier series, The Twilight Zone, served both as the on-air host of Night Gallery and as a major contributor of scripts, although...

).

His film credits span 125 motion pictures including My Sweet Charlie
My Sweet Charlie
My Sweet Charlie is an American television movie directed by Lamont Johnson. The teleplay by Richard Levinson and William Link is based on the novel of the same name by David Westheimer. Produced by Universal Television and broadcast by NBC on January 20, 1970, it later had a brief theatrical...

, That Certain Summer
That Certain Summer
That Certain Summer is a 1972 American television movie directed by Lamont Johnson. The teleplay by Richard Levinson and William Link was the first to deal sympathetically with homosexuality. Produced by Universal Television, it was broadcast as an ABC Movie of the Week on November 1, 1972...

, The Savage is Loose
The Savage is Loose
The Savage is Loose is a 1974 psychological melodrama that addresses incest within a small marooned family on a deserted island. It starred George C...

, The Andromeda Strain
The Andromeda Strain (film)
The Andromeda Strain is a 1971 American science-fiction film, based on the novel published in 1969 by Michael Crichton. The film is about a team of scientists who investigate a deadly organism of extraterrestrial origin that causes rapid, fatal blood clotting. Directed by Robert Wise, the film...

, Starship Invasions
Starship Invasions
Starship Invasions is a 1977 Canadian science fiction film produced by Ed Hunt and filmed in Toronto, Ontario.-Production and release:The film began production under the title Alien Encounters, and a previous working title was War of the Aliens...

, The Judge and Jake Wyler
The Judge and Jake Wyler
The Judge and Jake Wyler is an American television movie directed by David Lowell Rich. The teleplay was written by Richard Levinson, William Link, and David Shaw. It was produced by Universal Television and broadcast by NBC on December 2, 1972....

, several Columbo TV movies, Frankenstein: The True Story
Frankenstein: The True Story
Frankenstein: The True Story is a 1973 American made-for-television horror film loosely based on the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It was directed by Jack Smight, and the screenplay was co-written by novelist Christopher Isherwood....

, The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man is an American television series about a former astronaut with bionic implants working for the OSI...

, Night Gallery
Night Gallery
Night Gallery is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1970 to 1973, featuring stories of horror and the macabre. Rod Serling, who had gained fame from an earlier series, The Twilight Zone, served both as the on-air host of Night Gallery and as a major contributor of scripts, although...

and Kolchak: The Night Stalker
Kolchak: The Night Stalker
Kolchak: The Night Stalker is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974-1975 season. It featured a fictional Chicago newspaper reporter — Carl Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin — who investigates mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly ones law...

.

Mellé died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

 at his home in Malibu, California.

As Leader

  • Gil Melle Quintet (Blue Note, 1953)
  • New Faces, New Sounds (Blue Note, 1953)
  • Five Impressions of Color (Blue Note, 1955)
  • Patterns in Jazz
    Patterns in Jazz
    Patterns in Jazz is an album by American saxophonist Gil Mellé recorded in 1956 and released on the Blue Note label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine awarded the album 4½ stars and stated "Gil Melle's debut album for Blue Note, is filled with bright, bold colors and...

    (Blue Note, 1956)
  • Primitive Modern (Prestige, 1956)
  • Gil's Guests
    Gil's Guests
    Gil's Guests is an album by American saxophonist Gil Mellé recorded in 1956 and released on the Prestige label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album 3 stars and stated "Baritonist Gil Melle's recordings are usually a bit unusual and this CD reissue is no exception.....

    (Prestige, 1956)
  • Quadrama (Prestige, 1957)
  • Tome VI (Verve, 1967)
  • Andromeda Strain (1969)
  • Waterbirds (1970)
  • Mindscapes (Blue Note, 1991)
  • The Organization (Intrada, 2010). World premiere release of the original soundtrack of the 1971 film. Produced by Douglas Fake. Liner notes by James Phillips. Art Direction by Joe Sikoyak.

External links

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