George Bassman was an American composer and songwriter. Born in New York to a Russian Jewish émigré couple, he was later raised in Boston and began studying music at the Boston Conservatory while still a boy. He studied orchestration and composition formally, but in his teens he left home against his father's wishes to play piano in an itinerant jazz group, and subsequently worked as an arranger for Fletcher Henderson in New York. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for George Bassman. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bassman
