Buck Ram

Had it not been for an accident at age 15, it's possible that Samuel Ram might've been a concert violinist, or a first-chair player with a symphony orchestra. As it was, thanks to that accident, Buck Ram, as he became known from childhood on, ended up one of the most successful producers, arrangers, managers, and songwriters in R&B, and amassed four decades of enviable achievements in all of those fields, in a career that bridged a chasm between the popular music of Oscar Levant and the crooning of Bing Crosby, the big-band jazz of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and the Dorsey B...