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Today, from the Bond on Vinyl archives, we’re still listening to music featured in Goldfinger!
Richard Smith Vaughn was born in Glasgow (not the Scottish Glasgow, this one is in Kentucky), the son of a music-loving barber who also got Vaughn interested in music at an early age. When Vaughn contracted the measles at age three, he taught himself to play the mandolin, later learning guitar and alto saxophone.
When World War II started, Vaughn (now Billy) was in the National Guard, but was kept at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, from 1941 through the end of the war as the Major General there felt Vaughn was too valuable to the base’s big band as a composer and musician to have him deployed. Following his discharge at the end of the war, he attended Western Kentucky State College on the GI Bill and majored in music composition.
While in school, he followed in his father’s footsteps, doing some barbering to help support himself financially, in addition to playing the piano for local lounges and nightclubs. During his time at university, a group of fellow students formed a vocal trio called the Hilltoppers and recruited Vaughn to play the piano with them. In 1952, Vaughn shortly added his voice to the mix, and with the newly formed quartet, wrote their first hit song, “Trying”.
By 1954, Vaughn left the group and formed his own jazz orchestra, with the song “Melody of Love” going gold, selling over a million copies. He continued to have many more hits through the 1960s with 42 singles on the US Billboard charts, 36 albums on the Billboard 200, and many singles hitting #1 in countries around the world. Besides being the bandleader, Vaughn played the lead guitar on most of his songs. Though Vaughn passed away in 1991, the Billy Vaughn Orchestra, now co-owned and managed by his son, Richard Smith Vaughn Jr., was still a touring big band more than 25 years later.
This easy listening album from 1965 features a jazzy rendition of Goldfinger as its final track.
102. Billy Vaughn – Moon Over Naples
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