Bruce Chase

Robert Bruce Chase (March 22, 1912 – June 29, 2001) was an American composer and music arranger.

Robert Bruce Chase was born on March 22, 1912 in Muscatine, Iowa. His parents were locally prominent musicians; his father a violinist and his mother a piano teacher, and he began to play violin at a young age. By his early teens he was performing concerts locally. After his graduation from high school, Chase found that concert work for violinists was scarce and he began to play with dance bands, mostly as a pianist. He gradually began to make music arrangements for the dance bands - which needed music arranged to suit their instrumentation - and proved not only adept but also able to create them quickly.

In 1939 Chase created an arrangement of "I Got Rhythm" (from the Gershwin musical Girl Crazy) for a Pops concert played by the Kansas Philharmonic (now the Kansas City Symphony) while he was a member of the violin section. The arrangement was enormously successful and he took it as an example of his work to NBC Radio in Chicago, where he was initially hired as a part-time violinist and music arranger. Within a short time, he was employed full-time as a staff musician, arranger and conductor. Among the popular shows for which he worked were The Red Skelton Show, Fibber McGee and Molly, and The Carnation Contented Hour. For two years during World War II Chase was stationed in the Great Lakes Naval Training Station where he was chief arranger, writing music arrangements and conducting.

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