David Carroll And His Orchestra

Musical director for Mercury from 1951 to the early 1960s. As studio arranger and conductor, Carroll played on numerous Top 40 hits, backing the Crew Cuts on their #1 hit, "Sh-Boom" and Rusty Draper on his "Shifting, Whispering Sands". Under his own name, he recorded a string of LPs with the "dance" theme, mostly featuring his own compositions. He employed the cream of Chicago's session men on his albums, including percussionists Dick Schory and Bobby Christian, Earl Backus on guitar, and Mike Simpson, who also composed a number of innovative pieces for percussion on Carroll's albums, on reeds. Quincy Jones composed a couple of numbers for Carroll during his stint as a musical director for Mercury, and several cuts on Carroll's later LPs sound suspiciously like Jones arrangements. For some, the covers, featuring bold photos of sexy women in ecstatic poses, are more interesting than the music itself, but Carroll's Percussion Orientale and Percussion in Hi-Fi are worth seeking out. Among the acts Carroll worked with in his later years with Mercury were the Smothers Brothers, and he eventually left Mercury and toured with them, leading their road show band.