Robert Russell Bennett was an arranger that worked with Richard Rogers, Jerome Kerns, and George Gershwin. Russell was well known for his relationship with these composers, as he often worked with them when making his arrangements. His greatest arranging work was for "Victory At Sea," where he took the twelve themes contributed by Richard Rogers and arranged eleven and a half hours of music for the show. Bennett described his own philosophy: "The perfect arrangement is one that manages to be most 'becoming' to the melody at all points." Through this, he kept his commercial arrangements simple and straightforward, with a careful ear for balance and color. Most of these recordings were made under the direction of Russell Bennett. However, they were made in the mid-1940s on the Sonora Records label before RCA Victor Records offered a much more enticing contract, which Sonora could not beat.
Royale Records was king of the junk budget record labels of the 1950s. Eli Oberstien flooded the market with a seemingly endless stream of records in virtually all standard speeds and sizes for records of the period, except for 16 2/3 rpm, sadly. An unfortunately large percentage of eBay sellers think these are worth a lot of money; they are not, at least not more than a couple of dollars anyways.
