Pete Rugolo, Primetime Emmy-WInning Composer and Arranger
Before establishing himself in film and television, Rugolo was a key figure in the success of the jazz great Stan Kenton's band.
Pete Rugolo, a musician and composer who was chief arranger for the Stan Kenton Orchestra in the late-1940s and went on to create memorable music for television and film, including the series Richard Diamond, Private Detective, The Fugitive and Run for Your Life, died October 16, 2011, in Sherman Oaks, California. He was 95.
He was born Pietro Rugolo on December 25, 1915, in San Piero Patti, Sicily. He moved to the U.S. five years later, when his father, a baritone horn player, brought his family to in Santa Rosa, California. In his youth, Rugolo learned to play French horn and classical piano and became an admirer of the big bands of Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa and Ray Noble, which he listened to on the radio.
Rugolo earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from San Francisco State College, followed by graduate study at Mills College in Oakland, a decision spurred by the discovery that avant-garde composer Darius Milhaud would be teaching there.
He earned a master’s degree from Mills, then found work as a composer and arranger prior to being drafted into the Army. His fellow soldiers at Fort Scott, in San Francisco, included Paul Desmond, who would later become saxophonist in the Dave Brubeck Quartet.
While serving at Fort Scott he visited the Golden Gate Theater, where he gave some of his arrangements to Stan Kenton. After Rugolo’s discharge from the Army, Kenton hired him. For Kenton’s band, he created more than a hundred arrangements during the group’s most vital years.
After Kenton ended the band in 1949, Rugolo became music director of Capitol Records in New York. In that position, he produced records for Harry Belafonte and the Four Freshmen, and signed the Miles Davis Nonet.
The group recorded a dozen 78 rpm records with a distinctive cooled-down interpretation of bebop jazz. Although the records were not commercially successful at the time, but Rugolo persuaded Capitol to release the majority of them in 1957 on a 12-inch LP titled Birth of Cool, now considered one of the essential jazz albums.
Rugolo also recorded his own albums and wrote arrangements for such popular singers as Nat King Cole, June Christy, Dinah Washington and Mel Tormé.
Between between 1947 and 1954, the readers of Down Beat magazine voted Rugolo best arranger five times.
He moved into film composing and became a staff composer and arranger at MGM during the early 1950s.e contributee orchestrations to such films as Skirts Ahoy, Latin Lovers, Eve" and "Kiss Me Kate." He later wrote original scores for films including Jack the Ripper, The Sweet Ride and Chu Chu and the Philly Flash.
For television, Rugolo wrote the theme music for such series as The Thin Man, Run for Your Life and The Fugitive. He also scored for shows that included Leave It to Beaver, The Bold Ones: The Lawyers, Alias Smith and Jones, M*A*S*H, Carter Country and Family.
He won two Primetime Emmys — the first for the 1970 made-for-TV movie The Challengers and the second for a 1971 episode of The Bold Ones.
Survivors include In addition to his wife, a daughter, two sons and three grandchildren.