Norman Luboff
Luboff in 1963
Background information
Born	(1917-05-14)May 14, 1917 Chicago, Illinois, US
Died	September 22, 1987(1987-09-22) (aged 70) Bynum, North Carolina, US
Occupations	Choir director music arranger music publisher
Years active	1943–1987
Labels	Columbia, RCA
Spouses	Betty Mulliner ​ ​ (m. 1944; div. 1966)​ [a] Gunilla Marcus ​ (m. 1974)​

Norman Luboff (May 14, 1917 – September 22, 1987) was an American choir director, music arranger, and music publisher. Luboff was the founder and conductor of the Norman Luboff Choir, one of the leading choral groups of the 1950s and '60s. He won a Grammy Award in 1961 for Best Performance by a Chorus, and the holiday albums Songs of Christmas (1956) and Christmas with the Norman Luboff Choir (1964) were bestsellers for many years. In addition to recording, Luboff arranged and conducted for radio, television, and film. He also founded Walton Music, a choral music publisher.

Norman Kador Luboff was born on May 14, 1917 to a working class family in Chicago, Illinois. His music experience began at home, where Luboff, his older brother Avy, and their parents entertained themselves with group singing. He took piano lessons, and participated in his school choir and orchestra. He graduated from high school in 1935.^[1]

Luboff entered a music competition and won a scholarship to Central YMCA College, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in music in 1939. It was there that he became friends with Ray Charles, who like Luboff would go on to a distinguished career as a choir director. After graduation, he continued his studies at the University of Chicago and the American Conservatory of Music, including with noted composer Leo Sowerby.^[2][3] In addition to tutoring, Luboff picked up singing jobs to make ends meet, including as a caroler at Marshall Field's department store during the holidays. He was part of a quartet with his friend Ray Charles, professor Rus Wood, and future singing cowgirl Dale Evans that sang on Chicago radio stations. When he couldn't afford tuition, he sometimes audited classes to further his education.^[1]

Luboff served in the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II. After his military service ended in the spring of 1943, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in music.^[1]

In New York City, Ray Charles helped Luboff get an audition with Lyn Murray, an important contractor for singers in the city. He quickly found work singing baritone on various radio programs, including Your Hit Parade. It was there that, in addition to singing, he began to serve as the backup choral director. By 1945, Luboff had quit singing and was writing arrangements and conducting choirs full time.^[1][4]

Luboff moved to Los Angeles in 1948 to become the choral director for The Railroad Hour, a new radio program starring Gordon MacRae. The success of the show led to offers to conduct choirs for Hollywood films. The first film he worked on was Lullaby of Broadway starring Doris Day, released in 1951.^[1] Luboff went on to work on more than 80 motion pictures.^[4] He provided arrangements for films including The Jazz Singer (1952), The Desert Song (1953), and Rock-A-Bye Baby (1958), and served as a vocal coach for actors like Kirk Douglas in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and Grace Kelly in The Country Girl (1954).^[1][5] He also composed and arranged for television shows like the Bell Telephone Hour, the Dinah Shore Show, and Ford Star Jubilee.^[6]

Doris Day also recorded a companion album for Lullaby of Broadway, with Luboff again arranging and conducting the choir as he had for the film, credited as "The Norman Luboff Choir". This began a decade-long relationship with Columbia Records, providing choral accompaniment to Columbia recording artists such as Frankie Laine, Jo Stafford, Paul Weston & his Orchestra, and Frank Sinatra.^[1] The Norman Luboff Choir accompanied Jimmy Boyd on his 1952 No. 1 hit "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus". They also accompanied Bing Crosby on his 1955–1962 series of Christmas Eve radio specials on CBS and the accompanying album for Decca Records, A Christmas Sing with Bing Around the World (1956). Though not credited on the original release, they contributed to three songs on Harry Belafonte's RCA Victor album Calypso (1956), the first LP to sell one million copies.

The Norman Luboff Choir began to release recordings under their own name in 1952, when they produced the 7" EP Christmas Carols. An expanded 10" LP version with the same title was released the following year, along with an album of children's lullabies titled Sweet Dreams. Their first full-length (12") album was Easy to Remember in 1954. They went on to record dozens of albums over the next fifteen years.^[b] Luboff won a Grammy for Best Performance by a Chorus at the 3rd Annual Grammy Awards for the 1960 album Songs of the Cowboy, beating out his old friend Ray Charles, who was nominated in the same category for Deep Night by the Ray Charles Singers.^[11] On February 8, 1960, Luboff was awarded a star for Recording on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1620 Vine St.^[12]

In 1961, Luboff left Columbia Records and signed with RCA Victor, where he continued to record for the rest of the decade. RCA offered the opportunity to record with larger choruses and orchestras, prompting Luboff to make the change.^[1] He was nominated for a Grammy again at the 4th Annual Grammy Awards for This Is Norman Luboff! (1961), losing to the Johnny Mann Singers.^[11] The following year he was nominated for Grammies in two categories: Best Performance by a Chorus for A Choral Spectacular (1962), and Best Gospel or Other Religious Recording for Inspiration: Great Music for Chorus and Orchestra (1962) with Leopold Stokowski and the New Symphony Orchestra of London. Neither album won.^[11]

The studio choir was an ad hoc group of session singers.^[1] There were frequent contributors like Norma Zimmer, Betty Noyes, and Thurl Ravenscroft, but membership varied from one recording session to the next depending on the requirements of the project and the availability of the performers.^[13] In 1963, Luboff assembled a touring choir for live performances. This version of the choir consisted of 20-30 regular members who traveled with Luboff to perform concerts, sometimes appearing in more than a hundred shows per year.^[14][4][3]

By the end of the 1960s, declining record sales and changing musical tastes brought the Norman Luboff Choir's recording career to a close.^[1] However, the touring choir continued to perform until Luboff's death in 1987.^[15]

Luboff claimed to have composed more than 6000 arrangements during his career.^[1] During the 1950s, he founded Walton Music to publish his works.^[7][c] Later it became an important outlet for both domestic and international choral composition, allowing composers such as Waldemar Åhlén of Sweden and Egil Hovland of Norway to have their works published in the United States.^[6][12] After Luboff's death in 1987, his widow Gunilla continued to operate the company until it was sold to GIA Publications in 2013.^[16]

In 1965, Luboff published an anthology of folk music that he co-wrote with Win Stracke. Titled Songs of Man: The International Book of Folk Songs, the book details 180 folk songs from around the world with music and illustration.^[17]

One of Luboff's fellow singers on Your Hit Parade was Elizabeth "Betty" Mulliner.^[1] Born November 15, 1916 in upstate New York, she attended Syracuse University before moving to New York City. Luboff and Mulliner began dating, and they were married on November 6, 1944.^[18] Betty continued to sing on radio, including on Your Hit Parade and The Railroad Hour. She also sang soprano in the Norman Luboff Choir and as a session singer in Los Angeles. She had several recording credits, often under her maiden name, including "Some Day My Prince Will Come" from the 1944 Decca album Selections from Walt Disney’s Feature Production Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and early Mickey Mouse Club recordings from the 1950s.^[19][20] The couple divorced in the mid-1960s.^[a] On May 19, 2006, Betty died in Santa Monica, California.^[21]

The couple had two children: Peter Luboff, born 1945, and Bettina "Tina" Luboff, born 1948. Peter Luboff, a 1967 graduate of Dartmouth College, was a singer-songwriter who co-wrote songs for Patti LaBelle and Bobby Womack in the 1980s. He died at the age of 77 on May 21, 2023.^[22][23][24]

As his recording career diminished in the late 1960s, Luboff continued to find himself in demand as a guest conductor and educator, participating in choral workshops at home and abroad, especially in the Scandinavian countries.^[8][10] During a trip to Sweden in 1971 to conduct the Swedish Radio Choir, Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Television produced a documentary about his visit titled Norman Luboff i Sverge (Norman Luboff in Sweden). Luboff became acquainted with the producer of the program, Gunilla Marcus, and two and a half years later they were married.^[1]

Luboff and Gunilla moved from New York to Bynum, North Carolina, in 1985 to enjoy the rural lifestyle. It was there that Luboff died on September 22, 1987, after a ten month battle with lung cancer.^[9][10] He was cremated, and his wife took his ashes to Gotland, Sweden, where they had a summer home.^[2]

Much of his personal archives were donated to the Library of Congress in 1993 as the Norman Luboff Papers.^[25]

• Carter, Julie Lane (1993). Norman Luboff: His Life, Career, and Professional Choir (DMA thesis). Arizona State University. LCCN 95139626.
• Norman Luboff i Sverge [Norman Luboff in Sweden] (Television). Sweden: Sveriges Television. March 1972 – via YouTube. (titles in Swedish, dialog in English)
• Norman Luboff at AllMusic
• Norman Luboff at IMDb
• Norman Luboff at the TCM Movie Database