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.

Sweet and Lovely
Claude Thornhill Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Sweet and lovely sweeter than the roses in May
Sweet and lovely heaven must have sent her my way
Skies above me never were as blue as her eyes
And she loves me, who would want a sweeter surprise

When she nestles in my arms so tenderly
There's a thrill that words cannot express
In my heart a song of love is taunting me, melody, haunting me

Sweet and lovely sweeter than the roses in May
And she loves me, there is nothing more I can say

Sweet and lovely sweeter than the roses in May
Sweet and lovely heaven must have sent her my way
Skies above me never were as blue as her eyes
And she loves me, who would want a sweeter surprise

When she nestles in my arms so tenderly
There's a thrill that words cannot express
In my heart a song of love is taunting me, melody, haunting me

Sweet and lovely sweeter than the roses in May
And she loves me, there is nothing more I can say

Overall Meaning

The lyrics to Claude Thornhill's classic jazz song "Sweet and Lovely" paint a picture of a perfect love. The first verse describes the object of the singer's affection as being sweeter than the May roses, a metaphor for the purest, most beautiful things in life. The second line suggests that the singer believes that his significant other was sent to him by a higher power, representing the idea that their love is truly meant to be. The following two lines continue to emphasize the beauty of his lover's eyes, which are compared to the clear blue sky. The verse ends with the singer expressing gratitude for having found such a sweet surprise in love.

The chorus is where the singer expresses the most emotion. When he's holding his lover, he's filled with a thrill that words cannot express, and he's haunted by the melody of a love song in his heart. The chorus repeats the opening lines that described the singer's love as being sweeter than the May roses. The last line of the chorus sums up the singer's feelings perfectly, with him admitting that he has nothing more to say because his love is so pure and true.

Overall, Claude Thornhill's song "Sweet and Lovely" is a classic love song that captures the feeling of falling in love and being swept away by the beauty of it all. Through his lyrics, the singer creates a picture of a perfect love that is pure, innocent, and meant to be.

Line by Line Meaning

Sweet and lovely sweeter than the roses in May
My love is sweet and lovely, as sweet as the roses that bloom in May.

Sweet and lovely heaven must have sent her my way
I believe that heaven brought my love to me because she is so sweet and lovely.

Skies above me never were as blue as her eyes
The blue of her eyes is so breathtakingly beautiful that it outshines even the sky above me.

And she loves me, who would want a sweeter surprise
Her love for me is the sweetest surprise anyone could ask for.

When she nestles in my arms so tenderly
When she snuggles up close to me with gentle affection...

There's a thrill that words cannot express
...the joy that fills me is almost too great for words to explain.

In my heart a song of love is taunting me, melody, haunting me
A melody of love is playing relentlessly in my heart, reminding me constantly of how deeply I feel for her.

Sweet and lovely sweeter than the roses in May
My love is sweet and lovely, as sweet as the roses that bloom in May.

And she loves me, there is nothing more I can say
What more could be said? Her love for me is all I need.