Recommended music: [Skip to 5:30 for You Only Live Twice]
For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re still listening to music from You Only Live Twice!
Robert Leo Hackett was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1915. The son of a blacksmith, and with eight siblings, Hackett left school at age 14 to earn money playing guitar and violin for a band at a local Chinese restaurant. After seeing a performance by jazz legend Louis Armstrong in the 1930s, Hackett was inspired and learned to play both the trumpet and the cornet. He spent a few years playing in bands around the northeast and moved to New York City in 1937. At this point in his career, Hackett started playing Dixieland and easy listening music, later joining both Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman swing music bands.
Following dental surgery, Hackett’s lip was in no condition to play cornet or trumpet, so Glenn Miller offered him a role playing guitar. Hackett’s 1947 recording of ‘I’ve Got a Crush on You’ with Frank Sinatra reached number 21 on the pop charts.
Following a 15-year run on the music staff at ABC, he was hired by Jackie Gleason in 1952 as lead cornet player and recorded seven of Gleason’s albums in the years to come. By 1965, Hackett toured with Tony Bennett, going on to many more big tours and playing on forty full albums by the time of his passing in 1976.
One of those albums is this 1967 jazz album from Project 3 Records. ‘A Time For Love’ features Hackett’s “fabulous cornet” with string instruments to back him up. The third track on the record is an easy listening bossa nova cover of the recently released ‘You Only Live Twice,’ written by John Barry. Even without the Leslie Bricusse lyrics or Nancy Sinatra vocals, it’s worth a spin.
141. Bobby Hackett – A Time For Love
#JamesBond
#Vinyl
#VinylLove
#VinylRecords
Dale's Toys 