Editing Jackie Gleason (section)

===Music===
[[File:Brendan Behan and Jackie Gleason NYWTS.jpg|left|thumb|Irish writer [[Brendan Behan]] with Jackie Gleason in Gleason's dressing room after a performance of ''[[Take Me Along]]'' (1960)|alt=Gleason standing with Irish author Brendan Behan, arms around each other]]
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Gleason enjoyed a prominent secondary music career, producing a series of bestselling "[[Beautiful music|mood music]]" albums with [[jazz]] overtones for [[Capitol Records]]. Gleason believed there was a ready market for romantic instrumentals. His goal was to make "musical wallpaper that should never be intrusive, but conducive".<ref>{{cite web|title=Jackie Gleason Albums |url=http://music.aol.com/album/the-romantic-moods-of-jackie-gleason/191846 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120712164054/http://music.aol.com/album/the-romantic-moods-of-jackie-gleason/191846 |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 12, 2012 |work=AoL Music |publisher=AOL Inc |access-date=August 16, 2012 |author=AoL Music |year=2012 }}</ref> He recalled seeing [[Clark Gable]] play love scenes in movies; the romance was, in his words, "magnified a thousand percent" by background music. Gleason reasoned, "If ''Gable'' needs strings, what about some poor schmuck from Brooklyn?"<ref name=NewYorkMag/>

Gleason's first album, ''Music for Lovers Only'', still holds the record for the longest stay on the ''Billboard'' Top Ten Charts (153 weeks), and his first ten albums sold over a million copies each.<ref name=billboard/> At one point, Gleason held the record for charting the most number-one albums on the [[Billboard 200|''Billboard'' 200]] without charting any hits on the Top 40 of the [[Billboard Hot 100|''Billboard'' Hot 100]] singles chart.<ref>Gael Fashingbauer Cooper (June 15, 2014). [http://www.today.com/entertainment/casey-kasems-american-top-40-reached-stars-2D79759364 Casey Kasem's 'American Top 40' reached for the stars] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140615181757/http://www.today.com/entertainment/casey-kasems-american-top-40-reached-stars-2D79759364 |date=June 15, 2014 }}. ''NBC News''. Retrieved June 15, 2014. "An unparalleled storyteller, Kasem loved to drop a teasing question about a song or a band, then cut to commercial, making his trivia so tantalizing that listeners just had to stay tuned to find out the answer. [...] Who had the most No. 1 albums without a Top 40 single? (Comic and mood-music expert Jackie Gleason, at least at the time.)"</ref>

Gleason could not read or write music; he was said to have conceived melodies in his head and described them vocally to assistants who transcribed them into musical notes.<ref name=NewYorkMag/> These included the well-remembered themes of both ''The Jackie Gleason Show'' ("Melancholy Serenade") and ''The Honeymooners'' ("You're My Greatest Love").<ref name=Hill>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Ry4tAAAAIBAJ&pg=5473,8881587 |title=Entertainer Jackie Gleason, the Great One, dies of cancer |author=Lester, Will |date=June 25, 1987 |newspaper=The Rock Hill Herald |access-date=January 20, 2011 }}{{dead link|date=May 2016|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> In spite of period accounts establishing his direct involvement in musical production, varying opinions have appeared over the years as to how much credit Gleason should have received for the finished products. Biographer [[William A. Henry III|William A. Henry]] wrote in his 1992 book, ''The Great One: The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason'', that beyond the possible conceptualizing of many of the song melodies, Gleason had no direct involvement (such as conducting) in making the recordings. [[Red Nichols]], a jazz great who had fallen on hard times and led one of the group's recordings, was not paid as session-leader. Cornetist and trumpeter [[Bobby Hackett]] soloed on several of Gleason's albums and was leader for seven of them. Asked late in life by musician–journalist Harry Currie in Toronto what Gleason really did at the recording sessions, Hackett replied, "He brought the checks".

But years earlier Hackett had glowingly told writer James Bacon:

<blockquote>Jackie knows a lot more about music than people give him credit for. I have seen him conduct a 60-piece orchestra and detect one discordant note in the brass section. He would immediately stop the music and locate the wrong note. It always amazed the professional musicians how a guy who technically did not know one note from another could do that. And he was never wrong.<ref>Bacon, James. ''How Sweet It Is''. {{ISBN|0-312-39621-X}}. p. 118.</ref></blockquote>

The composer and arranger [[George Williams (musician)|George Williams]] has been cited in various biographies as having served as [[ghostwriter]] for the majority of arrangements heard on many of Gleason's albums of the 1950s and 1960s.<ref name="great">{{cite book |title=The Great One: The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780385415330 |year=1992 |last1=Henry |first1=William A. |author1-link=William A. Henry III |via=[[Internet Archive]] |isbn=978-0-385-41533-0 |oclc=651898009 |publisher=[[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]]}}</ref><ref name="Bacon, James 1986">{{cite book|title=How Sweet it Is: The Jackie Gleason Story|author=Bacon, James|author-link=James Bacon (author)|year=1986|publisher=[[St. Martin's Press]]|isbn=0-312-90229-8|url=https://archive.org/details/howsweetitisjack00baco}}</ref> Williams was not given credit for his work until the early 1960s, albeit only in small print on the backs of [[album cover]]s.<ref name="great"/><ref name="Bacon, James 1986"/>

Gleason's lead role in the musical ''[[Take Me Along]]'' (1959–60) won him a [[Tony Award]] for [[Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical|Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical]].