Claude Thornhill (Terre Haute, Indiana, August 10, 1908 – July 1, 1965, Cal… Read Full Bio ↴Claude Thornhill (Terre Haute, Indiana, August 10, 1908 – July 1, 1965, Caldwell, New Jersey) was an American pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader. He composed the jazz and pop standards "Snowfall" and "I Wish I Had You", the last recorded by Billie Holliday.

As a youth, he was recognized as an extraordinary talent and formed a traveling duo with Danny Polo, a musical prodigy on the clarinet and trumpet from nearby Clinton, Indiana. As a student at Garfield High School in Terre Haute, he played with several theater bands.
Thornhill entered the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music at age 16. That same year he and clarinetist Artie Shaw started their careers at the Golden Pheasant in Cleveland, Ohio with the Austin Wiley Orchestra. Thornhill and Shaw went to New York together in 1931.
Claude went to the West Coast in the late 1930s with the Bob Hope Radio Show, and arranged for Judy Garland in Babes in Arms.
In 1935, he played on sessions for Glenn Miller's first recordings under his own name, as Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. He played on Glenn Miller's composition "Solo Hop," which was released on Columbia Records.
After playing for Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Ray Noble, Glenn Miller, and Billie Holiday, and arranging "Loch Lomond" and "Annie Laurie" for Maxine Sullivan, in 1939 he founded his Claude Thornhill Orchestra. Danny Polo was his lead clarinet player. Although the Thornhill band was originally a sophisticated dance band, it became known for its many superior jazz musicians and for Thornhill's and Gil Evans' innovative arrangements; its "Portrait of a Guinea Farm" has become a classic jazz recording.
The band played without vibrato so that the timbres of the instruments could be better appreciated, and Thornhill encouraged the musicians to develop cool-sounding tones. The band was popular with both musicians and the public; the Miles Davis Nonet was modeled in part on Thornhill's cool sound and use of unconventional instrumentation. The band's most successful records were "Snowfall," "A Sunday Kind of Love" and "Love for Love."
His most famous recording, "Snowfall," was released in 1941 as Columbia 36268. He released the song also as a V-Disc recording, as V-Disc 271A1.
Playing at the Paramount Theater in New York for $10,000 a week in 1942, Thornhill dropped everything to enlist in the US Navy to support the war effort. As chief musician, he played shows across the Pacific Theater with Jackie Cooper as his drummer and Dennis Day as his vocalist.
In 1946, he was discharged from the Navy. Then in April, he reformed his ensemble. He kept his same stylistic lines, but added some Bop lines to it. He got his old members of Danny Polo, Gerry Mulligan, and Barry Galbraith back together, but also added new members like Red Rodney, Lee Konitz, Joe Shulman and Bill Barber. Barber was a tuba player, who was considered as a "soft brass" player rather than a bass as to not interfere with (Joe) Shulman on the bass. Their creative and immaculately clean and delicate interpretation of Evans’s arrangement of Dizzy Gillespie’s fast bop theme "Anthropology" (1947) provides a particularly noteworthy example of Thornhill’s style, which influenced Miles Davis’s recordings in 1949 for Capitol and many musicians who followed .
In the mid 1950s, Thornhill was briefly Tony Bennett's musical director.
He offered his big band library to Gerry Mulligan when Gerry formed the Concert Jazz Band, but Gerry regretfully declined the gift, since his instrumentation was different. A large portion of his extensive library of music is currently held by Drury University in Springfield, Missouri.
After his discharge from the Navy he continued to perform with his orchestra until his death of a heart attack at 1:30 a.m., July 2, 1965, at his home in Caldwell, New Jersey. Claude was booked at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey, at the time, the engagement was kept in his honor with his music director in his place. He was survived by his wife, actress Ruth Thornhill, and his mother, Maude Thornhill (81 at the time), of Terre Haute, Indiana, still active at the time conducting choirs.

Claude Thornhill's compositions included the standard "Snowfall", "I Wish I Had You", recorded by Billie Holiday and Fats Waller, "Let's Go", "Shore Road", "Portrait Of A Guinea Farm", "Lodge Podge", "Rustle Of Spring", "It's Time For Us To Part", "It Was A Lover And His Lass", "The Little Red Man", "Memory Of An Island", and "Where Has My Little Dog Gone?"

In 1984, Claude Thornhill was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.

I Knew You When
Claude Thornhill Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

I knew you when
in the days that used to be
once your love belonged to me
it was divine
don't you recall
once you were mine

I knew you when

once I held you in my arms
once I thrilled to all your charms
you loved me too
that's what you said
but was it true

you only wanted amusement
you only wanted to play
but I learned just what the blues meant
when you went away

I knew you when
we were lovers long ago
now I'm someone you don't know
though you've forgotten

I can't forget
I knew you when

Overall Meaning

In Claude Thornhill's song "I Knew You When," the singer reflects on a lover from his past. He remembers a time when they were deeply in love, but ultimately the relationship ended when the lover grew tired of the singer and left. The singer is plagued by memories of this lost love, unable to forget their time together and dismayed that they have become a stranger. The lyrics contain a melancholic sense of longing and regret, as the singer grapples with the notion of what could have been.

Throughout the song, the singer emphasizes the past tense of their relationship, highlighting that the time of their love is long gone. He remembers the way it used to be, recalling moments of tenderness and passion, but he also acknowledges the harsh reality that his lover never truly loved him. He laments that he became aware of this too late, after his lover had already moved on.

The overall tone of "I Knew You When" is wistful and nostalgic, conveying the pain of lost love and the feeling of being left behind. The song is a poignant reminder of the power of memory and how the ghosts of our past can continue to haunt us.

Line by Line Meaning

I knew you when
I knew you in the past, in a time that has since passed

in the days that used to be
During an era in the past

once your love belonged to me
You used to be in love with me and no one else

it was divine
It was truly beautiful and wonderful

don't you recall
Do you not remember?

once you were mine
At one point, you were only mine

once I held you in my arms
I used to embrace you with my arms

once I thrilled to all your charms
I used to feel excited by your attractive qualities

you loved me too
You claimed to have loved me

that's what you said
That's what you claimed

but was it true
But did you really mean it?