The Dancing Sounds Of San Francisco - Ernie Hechscher

Bluesette

The Dancing Sounds Of San Franscico

Ernie Heckscher and His Orchestra

Produced by Irving Townsend

Columbia CL 2256

1964

From the back cover: A few years back, at the outset of his music-making career, Ernie "retired" from the theater circuits as a teen-age banjo sensation – he was billed as "one of the five best banjoists in the country." Then, after Stanford University fellow students had danced their way weekend evenings to his campus band, he formed a new aggregation and played a solid four months' stand at San Francisco's Palace Theater. Ernie and the boys proved such a resounding hit there that they were engaged to follow Bob Crosby's outfit into the Mark Hopkins Hotel, a famous Nob Hill landmark. Again: enormous success. "The dance crowds were so good," Ernie recalls, "the management though we were padding the ballroom. When they realized we were just playing the best music we knew, the best way we knew, they asked us back to play that summer – and for several six-month engagements afterward."

End of success story? Not at all. An equally celebrated Golden City landmark, the Fairmont Hotel, beckoned, and over fifteen years now Ernie Heckscher has been known as leader of the most successful dance orchestra on the West Coast.

From Billboard - October 31, 1964: Ernie Heckscher had been playing some lilting dance music at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel but it's only been within the past year that the disk-buying crowd has caught up with him. Here again are the smooth Heckscher sounds on pops and show tunes for more dancing and listening pleasure.

The Girl From Ipanema

Shangi-La

Golden Boy

Bluesette 

Hello, Dolly!

Solé Solé

I'll Love You Till I Die

Wouldn't It Be Lovely

People 

Lullaby Of Birdland

The Very Thought Of You