Buddy Arnold

Arnold took up the sax at age nine and turned pro while still in his teens. Arnold performed at the Apollo Theater with Georgie Auld's band. At age 18 he joined the Army and led an Army Dance Band from 1944 to 1946. Following this he played with Joe Marsala, Will Osborne (singer), Herbie Fields, Buddy Rich. His first recordings were cut in 1949 with Gene Williams and the Junior Thornhill Band with Claude Thornhill before leaving active performance to study music and economics at Columbia University. In 1951 he began playing regularly again, touring with Buddy DeFranco, then worked with Jerry Wald, Tex Beneke, Elliot Lawrence, Stan Kenton Orchestra, and Neal Hefti.

His debut release as a leader, Wailing, was issued on Paramount Records in 1956; he did further work for the label with Phil Sunkel.

Arnold's career was sporadic after the mid-1950s, due in no small part to continuing problems with drug addiction. In 1958, Arnold was imprisoned for attempted burglary, but returned in 1960 after his sentence ended to play and record with Kenton and the Tommy Dorsey ghost band.

In the 1970s his old habits returned; Arnold's arrest in Pasadena, CA, for forging prescriptions made front page news in 1977. Buddy died of complications from open-heart surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2003. He was 77.

In the 1980s he dropped out of music due to another prison sentence stemming from his addictions; upon his release he co-founded, with his second wife, Carole Fields (and the assistance of John Branca), an organization called the Musicians' Assistance Program or MAP for musicians with drug abuse problems. The program has helped many musicians from every era of music. In 2004, MusiCares acquired MAP and merged the two programs under the MusiCares banner.[1]

• Eugene Chadbourne, Buddy Arnold at AllMusic