Joseph Raymond Conniff (November 6, 1916 -- October 12, 2002) was an American bandleader and arranger best known for his Ray Conniff Singers during the 1960s. In 1959 he started The Ray Conniff Singers (12 women and 13 men) and released the album It's the Talk of the Town. This group brought him the biggest hit he ever had in his career: Somewhere My Love (1966). The title track of the album was written to the music of "Lara's Theme" from the film Doctor Zhivago, and was a top 10 single in the US. The album also reached the US top 20 and went platinum, and Conniff won a Grammy. The single and album reached high positions in the international charts (a.o. Australia, Germany, Great Britain, Japan) as well. Also extraordinarily successful was the first of four Christmas albums by the Singers, Christmas with Conniff (1959). Nearly 50 years after its release, in 2004, Conniff was posthumously awarded with a platinum album/CD. Other well-known releases by the Singers included Ray Conniff's Hawaiian album (1967), featuring the hit song "Pearly Shells"; and Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970), which included Coniff's original composition "Someone", and remakes of such hits as "All I Have to do is Dream", "I'll Never Fall in Love Again", and "Something".
Conniff recorded in New York from 1955 through 1961 and mainly in Los Angeles from 1962 through 2000. Later in the 1960s he produced an average of two instrumental and one vocal album a year.
Conniff was a quiet, modest sympathetic artist. He sold about 70 million albums worldwide, and continued recording and performing until his death in 2002.
He died in Escondido, California from a fall he suffered in a bathtub, and is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
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