Randle, Doug
Websites:
No
Origin:
Calgary, Alberta → Toronto, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:
Doug Randle (1928–2013) was a Canadian composer, arranger, conductor, and songwriter whose career bridged jazz, television, advertising, and socially conscious pop. Rooted in the Canadian jazz scene of the 1950s, he built a reputation for sophisticated orchestrations and sharp wit, qualities that would define his later work.
Born in Calgary, Alberta, Randle began as a pianist and arranger, quickly establishing himself among Canada’s postwar jazz elite. His early years laid the foundation for a lifelong fascination with orchestration, harmony, and the tension between popular entertainment and serious composition. In the early 1960s he moved to England, working as an arranger for figures such as Wally Stott (later Angela Morley) and Peter Knight, contributing to BBC productions and refining the polished orchestral pop sound that would later surface in his own recordings.
Randle returned to Toronto in 1966, where he became a staff composer and arranger at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In this role he contributed to CBC’s LM transcription series, which spotlighted Canadian singers and ensembles for broadcast use. He arranged and conducted Elan Stuart & Doug Crosley, Vocalists (LM 30, 1966), a jazz-pop vocal showcase, and Tommy Common, Vocalist (LM 10, 1967), a split LP shared with the Brian Browne Trio. These albums, distributed mainly to radio stations, capture Randle in his prime as an arranger, blending jazz sensibilities with light entertainment in the CBC house style.
In 1968 he collaborated with Ron Solloway on Lady Emma, an original musical commissioned by CBC’s Light Entertainment Department for television broadcast. With Randle providing music, lyrics, direction, and arrangements, and Solloway writing the book, the show dramatized the scandalous 18th-century affair between Lady Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson. Recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto with Cleone Duncan, Leo Leyden, Stevie Wise, and Ed Evanko, Lady Emma showed Randle’s flair for theatrical composition and conceptual work.
By 1970 Randle was ready to undertake his most ambitious project. Recorded at the CBC with producer Dave Bird and a band drawn from Toronto’s finest session players (Moe Koffman, Rob McConnell, Guido Basso, Peter Appleyard), Songs for the New Industrial State was issued in 1971 in a limited pressing of 500 copies on the short-lived Kanata label. Sung by Tommy Ambrose and Laurie Bower, the album merged sunshine pop, baroque orchestration, and biting social commentary. Randle’s lyrics dissected corporate greed, advertising phoniness, environmental decay, and the unease of middle age with startling candor, turning the language of jingles and commercial persuasion inside out. Songs such as Colored Plastics and Vive La Company lampooned consumer culture, while Nicolston Dam and One Way Swimming meditated on nature and escape. The album closed on a rare note of optimism with Life Will Be Worth Living After All.
Although Songs for the New Industrial State quickly disappeared due to poor distribution, its uniqueness was undeniable. Rediscovered decades later, it was reissued by Light in the Attic Records in 2009 and hailed internationally as a lost Canadian classic. Critics compared it to the conceptual pop of David Axelrod and the vocal harmonies of The Free Design, noting both its relevance and its eccentric originality. Pitchfork praised the record as “a work of singular vision that earns its second airing through Randle’s inventive sense of arrangement and to-the-point honesty.”
Randle continued working as an arranger and composer into his later years, and shortly before his death he completed a second full-length project, The Day Fats Waller Died. Featuring his daughter Joanne Randle on vocals and musical direction by Vancouver pianist Ross Taggart, the record assembled an ensemble including Campbell Ryga, Brad Turner, Sharon Minemoto, Ken Lister, and Craig Scott. Intended for release in 2013–14, the project reflected Randle’s enduring commitment to writing songs that balanced wit, pathos, and finely crafted arrangements.
Doug Randle passed away in 2013, leaving behind a career that spanned jazz clubs, children’s television, jingles, musicals, and one brilliant, unexpected pop masterpiece. From the CBC transcription records of the 1960s to the cult rediscovery of Songs for the New Industrial State, his work is now recognized for its honesty, sophistication, and enduring relevance.
-Robert Williston
