Lloyd "Skip" Martin was an American jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 saxophonist, clarinetist, and music arranger.

Martin was active principally as an arranger for some of the most popular swing jazz bands of the 1930s and 1940s. He worked with Count Basie

Count Basie

William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...

, Charlie Barnet

Charlie Barnet

Charles Daly Barnet was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader.His major recordings were "Skyliner", "Cherokee", "The Wrong Idea", "Scotch and Soda", "In a Mizz", and "Southland Shuffle".-Early life:...

 (1939–40), Benny Goodman

Benny Goodman

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...

 (1941), and Glenn Miller

Glenn Miller

Alton Glenn Miller was an American jazz musician , arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands"...

 (1941–42); doubling as a reedist with the last three. In the Goodman orchestra he played alto sax alongside Gus Bivona

Gus Bivona

Gus Bivona was an American musician.This reed player—covering a range of clarinets, saxophones, and flute—was at the height of the big band era. Following World War II, he was a staff musician for the MGM Studio Orchestra, playing on countless soundtracks and sessions...

 and recorded with the legendary trumpeter Cootie Williams

Cootie Williams

Charles Melvin "Cootie" Williams was an American jazz, jump blues, and rhythm and blues trumpeter.-Biography:...

 in the early 1940s as well.

Later in the 1940s he worked with Les Brown

Les Brown (bandleader)

Les Brown, Sr. and the Band of Renown are a big band that began in the late 1930s, initially as the group Les Brown and His Blue Devils that Brown led while a student at Duke University. He was the first president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences...

 (memorably the big-band chart for I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm

I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm

"I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" is a popular song written in 1937 by Irving Berlin. It was introduced in On the Avenue by Dick Powell and Alice Faye. Les Brown's instrumental version, arranged by Skip Martin and recorded in 1946 as Columbia #38324, became a million-seller and Billboard top ten...

), then moved to Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 in the 1950s, where he did extensive work as a staff and freelance orchestrator, studio conductor (e.g. Astaire's

Fred Astaire

Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...

 Royal Wedding

Royal Wedding

Royal Wedding is a 1951 Hollywood musical comedy film known for Fred Astaire's dance performance on a ceiling and another with a coat rack. The story is set in London in 1947 at the time of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and stars Astaire, Jane Powell, Peter Lawford, Sarah...

) and popular song arranger (often for Tony Martin

Tony Martin (entertainer)

Tony Martin is an American actor and singer.-Career:Tony Martin was born on Christmas Day, 1913 as Alvin Morris in San Francisco, California to Jewish immigrant parents. He received a saxophone as a gift from his grandmother at the age of ten. In his grammar school glee club, he became an...

, The Pied Pipers

The Pied Pipers

The Pied Pipers were a popular singing group in the late 1930s and 1940s. Originally they consisted of eight members who had belonged to three separate groups: Jo Stafford from The Stafford Sisters, and seven male singers: John Huddleston, Hal Hopper, Chuck Lowry, Bud Hervey, George Tait, Woody...

, the Andrews and De Castro sister groups, or Barbara Ruick

Barbara Ruick

-Youth:Ruick was the daughter of actors Lurene Tuttle and Melville Ruick. She grew up acting out scenes with dolls, employing her mother as an audience. She attended Theodore Roosevelt High School , Burbank High School , and North Hollywood High School. She did little acting in high school but...

).

Martin also recorded three albums as a leader and produced material for West Coast jazz

West coast jazz

West Coast jazz refers to various styles of jazz music that developed around Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a sub-genre of cool jazz, which featured a less frenetic, calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music tended to be more heavily arranged,...

 and swing concept albums (e.g. 1959's Scheherajazz with Gus Bivona

Gus Bivona

Gus Bivona was an American musician.This reed player—covering a range of clarinets, saxophones, and flute—was at the height of the big band era. Following World War II, he was a staff musician for the MGM Studio Orchestra, playing on countless soundtracks and sessions...

) for Somerset Records. In 1963 he joined Nelson Riddle

Nelson Riddle

Nelson Smock Riddle, Jr. was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s...

 on a dream team of arrangers working on the Sinatra-

Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

Burke

Sonny Burke

Sonny Burke was a big band leader. In 1937, he graduated from Duke University where he had formed and led the jazz big band known as the Duke Ambassadors....

 compilation albums for the ambitious Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre

Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre

Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre is a series of albums released in 1963 , and released in this box set in 2000.The four discs feature the scores of four popular Broadway musicals of the time, namely Finian's Rainbow , Kiss Me, Kate , South Pacific and Guys and Dolls .-Track listing:Disc One -...

 project, featuring the singing members of the Rat Pack

Rat Pack

The Rat Pack was a group of actors originally centered on Humphrey Bogart. In the mid-1960s it was the name used by the press and the general public to refer to a later variation of the group, after Bogart's death, that called itself "the summit" or "the clan," featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean...

, plus Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....

, Rosemary Clooney

Rosemary Clooney

Rosemary Clooney was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the novelty hit "Come On-a My House" written by William Saroyan and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian , which was followed by other pop numbers such as "Botch-a-Me" Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 –...

 and Jo Stafford

Jo Stafford

Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American singer of traditional pop music and jazz standards and occasional actress whose career ran from the late 1930s to the early 1960s...

.

In Hollywood, Martin was one of the stellar team of orchestrators contributing to Singin' in the Rain

Singin' in the Rain

Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 American comedy musical film starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with Kelly also providing the choreography...

and Guys and Dolls

Guys and Dolls (film)

Guys and Dolls is a 1955 musical film starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine. The film was made by the Samuel Goldwyn Company and distributed by MGM. It was produced by Samuel Goldwyn, and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also wrote the screenplay...

. He frequently shared arrangement credits with Conrad Salinger

Conrad Salinger

Conrad Salinger was an American arranger, orchestrator and composer, who studied classical composition at the Paris Conservatoire. He is credited with orchestrating nine productions on Broadway from 1931 to 1938, and over seventy-five motion pictures from 1931 to 1962...

, such as on Summer Stock. But perhaps his greatest work was as the sole credited orchestrator for Judy Garland

Judy Garland

Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...

's 1954 comeback vehicle A Star in Born

A Star Is Born (1954 film)

A Star Is Born is a 1954 American musical film directed by George Cukor. The screenplay written by Moss Hart was an adaptation of the original 1937 film, which was based on the original screenplay by Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell...

, which contains many memorable arrangements by him of Harold Arlen

Harold Arlen

Harold Arlen was an American composer of popular music, having written over 500 songs, a number of which have become known the world over. In addition to composing the songs for The Wizard of Oz, including the classic 1938 song, "Over the Rainbow,” Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the...

 and Ira Gershwin

Ira Gershwin

Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century....

 ballads, principally The Man that Got Away

The Man that Got Away

"The Man that Got Away" is a popular song, published in 1953 and was written for the 1954 version of the movie A Star Is Born. The music was written by Harold Arlen, and the lyrics by Ira Gershwin...

and It's a New World.

External links