Bill Challis born 8 July 1904

Bill Challis (July 8, 1904 – October 4, 1994) was an American jazz arranger, best known for his association with the Paul Whiteman orchestra. 

William H. Challis was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He played piano and then took up saxophone and later led the student band at Bucknell University in the early-1920s. In 1926 he joined Jean Goldkette’s band as staff arranger, and began a close association with Bix Beiderbecke that continued when both men joined Paul Whiteman’s band in 1927. Challis wrote some of Whiteman’s most jazz-oriented arrangements, including Lonely Melody, Changes, and Dardanella, giving Beiderbecke ample solo space and sometimes scoring his cornet improvisations for the trumpet section.

He also wrote excellent scores for smaller groups formed for recording sessions from Whiteman’s band and led by Frankie Trumbauer. Challis’s best work of this period reveals a tasteful synthesis of jazz and dance-band elements, a sure grasp of the new jazz style, and an awareness of the strengths of Whiteman’s and Goldkette’s musicians. “He was a pioneer in the art of arranging,” said Warren Vache Sr., a band leader and for 20 years, editor of the music journal, Jersey Jazz. “At the beginning of orchestrating for a swing ensemble, Bill put much more life in” arrangements, said Vache. 

Jean Goldkette

Norman P. Gentieu, a jazz historian in Philadelphia, interviewed Challis many times over the years; “I won’t say Bill invented it, but Bill was very influential in establishing the format of what became the big bands.” Newell “Spiegle” Willcox, the trombonist and last surviving member of the Goldkette Orchestra, recalled the innovations Challis brought to the group. “Bill allowed the soloist to show off with certain background riffs,” said Wilcox. “He used built-up chords. He was far ahead of who was arranging in those days.”  

While writing arrangements for the popular Whiteman Orchestra, Challis highlighted the full, baritone voice of Bing Crosby, propelling the singer’s career. After leaving Whiteman in 1930 Challis became a freelance arranger for, among others, Trumbauer, Fletcher Henderson, the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra, the Casa Loma Orchestra, Lennie Hayton, Artie Shaw, and a number of radio orchestras.  He also worked for network radio shows including his own show, “Bill Challis and His Music.” 

                                   

He recorded 25 transcription tracks in 1936 for World Records, for radio broadcast only, using the best studio men, such as Artie Shaw, trumpeter Manny Klein, trombonist Jack Jenny, guitarist Dick McDonough; these were issued on two Circle LPs '83 and later nearly all on one CD as Bill Challis And His Orchestra: the sound is that of a big studio dance band with strings, without much jazz content and without the élan of the Whiteman band at its best. He carried on writing for Fletcher Henderson, Lennie Hayton, Claude Hopkins, Jerry Wald and others into the '60s turning to popular music. 

In 1974 he arranged Beiderbecke’s piano compositions for guitar quintet. In 1985, he rewrote his original Goldkette charts (which had been lost) and his protégé, Vince Giordano, led a hand-picked band on a recording that included original Goldkette trombonist Newell Spiegle Wilcox. The subsequent album was titled “Bill Challis: The Goldkette Project.” 

“We were happy to be working,” recalled Giordano, who at age 13 became Challis first student. “He was never heady about it. He never had a big ego.” Despite his achievements and his place as a seminal figure in swing jazz history, Challis was relatively unrecognized. He died in October 1994, at the age of 90, in Luzerne, Pennsylvania. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & Times Leader & New Grove Dictionary of Jazz)