Chuck Sagle born 28 July 1927

Chuck Sagle (July 28, 1927 - April 13, 2015) was an American jazz trumpet and bass player, composer, arranger, and orchestra leader of space age pop. He worked in four of the nation’s key music centers: Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Nashville and for such top record labels as Mercury, Epic, Reprise, Motown and ABC-Dot. 

Born Charles H. Sagle in Aurora, Illinois, he excelled at trumpet and keyboards as a high-school student and entered the University of Illinois at age 16. He served in the Navy during World War II, entertaining the troops in the Pacific as a musician and bandleader. When the war ended, he returned to the University of Illinois, where he completed studies in music and advertising and graduated in 1950. 

Chuck joined the Artists & Repertoire (A&R) department of Mercury Records, first in Chicago, then in New York. While with the company, he produced such “doo-wop” groups as The Dell-Vikings, The Danleers and The Diamonds (the 1957 No. 1 hit “Little Darlin’”). He also worked as a conductor for pop balladeer Joni James and r&b star Clyde McPhatter. Sagle apparently continued to do some freelancing, because he recorded a number album for Mercury as "Carl Stevens" and even "Karl von Stevens," a beer-hall band parody ala Fritz Guckenheimer. 

In 1958-59, he was the musical director for Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music. While there, he worked with Bobby Darin, Jack Keller and Barry Mann, among others. He arranged and conducted for Neil Sedaka (1959’s “Oh Carol” etc.) and discovered 17-year-old Carole King. He next worked in A&R at Epic Records in New York. He signed King to the label and arranged and/or produced records for her, Roy Hamilton, Jack Jones, Link Wray, Sal Mineo, Ersel Hickey, Lenny Welch and Tony Orlando. He also arranged and conducted on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show. Sagle recorded his first solo LP, Ping Pong Percussion, in 1961. 

                                   

Moving to Los Angeles in 1962, he joined Reprise Records as musical director. There, he arranged and/or produced records for the label’s Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney, Ethel Merman, Frank Sinatra, Soupy Sales, The Hi-Lo’s and Les Baxter. Among the first projects he produced for the label was his own album Splendor in the Brass. His tasteful arrangements skillfully juxtaposed various small instrumental combinations with each other and with the full orchestra, with deftly voiced French horns and saxophones revealing his fertile imagination and versatility. Garnishing these well-conceived performances are solos by such luminaries as Lou Levy, Shorty Sherock, Cappy Lewis, Buddy Collette, Bill Perkins and Emil Richards. This was followed by another Lp “Contrasts.” 

He produced jazz great Chico Hamilton in 1963 and later did arrangements for pop legend Gene Pitney and r&b queen LaVern Baker. In 1968, he arranged and conducted “Valley of the Dolls” for the close-harmony quartet The Arbors. He was an arranger in 1971-72 for the stellar r&b vocal group The Manhattans, notably on their LPs With These Hands and A Million to One and the top-10 r&b hit “One Life to Live.” During the same period, he served a brief stint as an arranger for Motown Records. 

Sagle moved to Nashville in 1972. He arranged music for ABC-Dot (Brian Collins, etc.) and for Starday-King Records and other labels. His first love was big-band music, and he returned to that in Music City by doing arrangements for The Establishment orchestra and Jack Daniel’s Silver Cornet Band. He returned to college around 1984 to study computer programming. Sagle worked in this field for the next decade retiring in 1994. 

Chuck pursued many interests with diligence and intensity. He loved photography and read voraciously, especially biography, history, and science fiction. He enjoyed bridge and Scrabble. He taught a class on Jewish music at West End Synagogue and composed a musical for the synagogue choir. In 2008, at age 81, he arranged and conducted a concert in celebration of his son Jacob’s bar mitzvah at Sherith Israel Congregation. 

He died at the age of 87on April 13, 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee from complications following a stroke. 

(Edited from Music Row, Space Age Pop & Dignity obit.)