ABSTRACT
Norman Luboff was born in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in that area during the peak of radio, the 1930s-1940s, and got his musical start in Chicago singing and writing for radio advertising. Luboff put together small groups for recording gigs and kept honing his arranging/composing skills. He moved to southern California in 1948 at the age of 31, signing with Warner Brothers to begin writing film scores for some of their projects. By the mid-1950s he had moved into an inner circle of Hollywood talent so that he knew the best studio singers and instrumentalists. Luboff was ready to begin his professional career as founder-arranger-leader of the Norman Luboff Choir. At first the group did backup choral effect for singing “stars,” but they soon joined the first ranks with one of their earliest and most memorable albums, Songs of the West (Columbia 657; 1955). The Luboff arrangement of “Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie” soon became a mainstay for glee clubs, male choruses, and male quartets.
