Individual players/singers skilled at improvising a tune are often referred to as 'jazz artists'.  Musicians who 'hear' multi-instrument (and vocal?) improvisations 'in their head' prior to writing out the music for an actual performance are an even rarer breed - the 'Arrangers'.  Many start out as 'jazz artists', but the skill of arranging seems to be a separate gift - distinct from virtuoso performance. Arrangers deserve special mention - since the character and actual sounds of much 'popular music' is the direct result of their work.  Arrangers come in all flavours.  Some work almost exclusively with material originally composed by others.  Some are also gifted composers themselves. They work for record, broadcasting, film and entertainment companies around the world, producing musical scores for everything from solo instruments/voice to full orchestral works.

The five arrangers below: Billy May, Nelson Riddle, Neal Hefti, Percy Faith and Henry Mancini, were involved with a significant portion of the "popular music" recorded in North America from the mid 1940's into the 1970's - big band orchestrations at first, then accompaniments for the vocal stars that had interned with the big bands ... straight through the rock and roll and folk music eras, landing safely in the much-maligned 'easy listening' category. In this new digital age, where large, live instrumental performances are rare outside classical concert halls, most professional arrangers now work for large entertainment conglomerates.

The low-budget Acrobat 'collections' from the UK provide useful chronologies of the early careers of these artists, but don't extend to some later, wonderful work, (e.g. Neal Hefti's film scores for Valley of the Dolls and Barefoot in the Park). Sad, too, that the actual music appears to be from analog sources of questionable lineage - so I have augmented them with (digitally-remastered) examples of each arrangers' work from the original label releases.  The excellent Henry Mancini anthology was produced by BMG, re-mastered from the original RCA tapes.