Dick Halligan (August 29, 1943 – January 18, 2022) was an American musician and composer, best known as a founding member of the jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears.
Richard Bernard Halligan was born in Troy, but grew up in Glens Falls in New York. He was intently focused on the music of Stan Kenton, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and other big-band leaders. In 1967 he earned an MA in music theory and composition from the Manhattan School of Music and continued his studies in voice and piano. He turned down a teaching position when a jazz saxophonist friend, Fred Lipsius, asked him to join Blood, Sweat and Tears, an offer Halligan is said to have originally rebuffed before learning that it meant a much-wanted ticket to California.
 |
| Dick Halligan, Jerry Weiss, Randy Brecker |
He was BS&T's trombonist on their first album, Child Is Father to the Man, but when Al Kooper left the band after that first album, Halligan switched to keyboards and began playing flute as well for their second album, the self-titled, “Blood, Sweat and Tears.” for which he received a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Performance for "Variations on a Theme By Erik Satie." He also arranged many of the band's charts during this time period, and he wrote several songs including "Redemption" and "Lisa Listen to Me," significantly adding to the band’s signature jazz/rock sound, which earned several RIAA Gold album certifications, as well as a self-titled four-time platinum certified album.
Here’s “Variations on a Theme By Erik Satie” from above LP
Halligan left BS&T in 1971 after recording their fourth album, when the band began to shift to more rock-oriented music. In the 1970s and 1980s, Halligan composed and arranged music for more than 20 film and TV projects, his first being the Barbra Streisand film “The Owl and the Pussycat,” released in 1970, when he was still a member of Blood, Sweat and Tears. Some episodic work on shows like “The Bionic Woman” and “Holmes and Yoyo” followed, and by the late 1970s, features including “Go Tell the Spartans” (1978), “A Force of One” (1979), “The Octagon” (1980), “Cheaper to Keep Her” (1981) and “Fear City” (1984).
Although his film credits ended after 1984, his work was heard on the big screen in “Licorice Pizza,” which had on its soundtrack a song he co-wrote with Clayton-Thomas, “”Lisa, Listen to Me,” that was released as a single from the fourth Blood, Sweat and Tears album. After getting out of the film/TV world, Halligan wrote compositions for jazz and orchestral ensembles, which were recorded or performed by the Formosa Chamber Players, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Roy Poper and others. He also conducted his original works in Carnegie Hall.
In 2006, he was active as a composer and performer for various types of music, including jazz and chamber music. In 2011 and 2012 he developed and performed an autobiographical one-man show entitled "Musical Being". An early title for it was "Man Overboard" and in 2013 called "Love, Sweat & Fears".
Halligan died from natural causes in Rome on January 18, 2022, at the age of 78. His daughter, Shana Halligan, was the vocalist of trip hop duo Bitter:Sweet.
(Edited from Wikipedia & Variety)
