Джесси Фредерик Джеймс Конауэй: Американский композитор и певец

American composer and singer

Jesse Frederick James Conaway (born June 25, 1948) is an American film and television composer and singer. He wrote and performed the themes to TGIF television shows such as Perfect Strangers, Full House, Family Matters, and Step by Step for ABC.

Jesse Frederick James Conaway was born in Salisbury, Maryland, but was raised in Seaford, Delaware. He was the younger of two children. His brother, Everett Thomas “Tommy” Conaway, Jr. (1944–1956), died of cystic fibrosis at age 12 years. In his early childhood, Jesse was familiarly known as "Freddy" before he started using the middle name Frederick in his later teens. This was done in an attempt to distinguish himself from the legacy of his father, Everett T. "Conny" Conaway, Sr. (1915–2010). Conny was a prominent figure in the poultry processing industry. During his 70 year career, the senior Conaway designed and built some of the earliest processing plants for Allen Family Foods, Frank Perdue and Preston Townsend, all of which are still operating today. In early adolescence, Frederick attended Massanutten Military Academy for two years. Once he entered high school, his father put him to work, hoping to groom a protege in the industry. Frederick learned about the processing of poultry first hand as a plant laborer at many of his father's factories on the East Coast. In high school, Frederick starred in many school plays and although his primary musical instrument was classical trumpet, he demonstrated mastery of a variety of musical instruments. He graduated Seaford High School in 1966, before attending Shenandoah College and Conservatory Of Music. Under his father's tutelage, he studied mechanical drafting, and eventually worked as his apprentice in plant overhead conveyor layout designs, but continued writing and composing his own work.

Although he released some early single records in the Philadelphia area in his late teens, and recorded demos for Columbia Records while in college, it was in 1971, at the age of 23, Jesse was signed to Albert Grossman's Bearsville Records. His self titled debut album, recorded in Nashville and mixed in part by Todd Rundgren, was released in that year. Although the album gained Frederick a lot of respect from his peers, its sales success was limited. In 1973, Bearsville released a promo 45 featuring both stereo and mono versions of the first single from Frederick's second album, After the Rain, which would never be released. The single was entitled "I Belong to You". As the 1970s progressed, Frederick would sign with another label, spawning a third album in the process; as in the last project at Bearsville, it never saw the light of day. In a partnership with producer Jeff Koz (who had worked with Frederick on The Last Horror Film in 1982 and Treasure: In Search of the Golden Horse in 1984), Frederick formed the band The Kinetix and released the single, "Don't Stand In The Shadow" for Columbia Records, in 1984.

By the late 1970s, Frederick had changed his beat to movie and TV score composing. In 1980, he performed vocals for the character "Tommy Dee" (played by Paul Land) in the Taylor Hackford film The Idolmaker. A single from the picture's soundtrack, "Here Is My Love", was released in both stereo and mono formats. That same year, Frederick played Alice Cooper's roadie in the film Roadie. Also that year he performed in Goosebumps a rock musical stage show directed and choreographed by David Winters. It co starred Carl Anderson, and Shabba Doo. In 1982, Frederick reunited with director Winters and composed the score for his motion picture The Fanatic (aka The Last Horror Film). Many more major theatrical titles would follow, including that of Garry Marshall's 1984 hit The Flamingo Kid.

In the mid 1980s, as a result of his movie scoring work, Frederick began a partnership writer/composer (Paul) Bennett Salvay. The two musicians had both come off Garry Marshall produced projects at the time they began working together. Frederick had just completed his scoring for The Flamingo Kid, while Salvay had been music director in the later seasons of the hit series Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy, for Garry Marshall's Henderson Productions, Miller Milkis Boyett Productions and Paramount Television. The pair found they had a dynamic spark of creativity between them, and sought out work on original compositions that would be pitched to TV and movie projects. As Frederick worked on new musical material with him, Salvay would eventually lead them to new opportunities with his TV employers. When producers Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett left Paramount for Lorimar Productions in 1984, they retained many of their former Paramount staffers, including Salvay and (initially) music composer Charles Fox. Miller and Boyett quickly set out to develop new projects at Lorimar (minus their former Paramount partner, Edward K. Milkis), and in the process of keeping Salvay on their soundtrack staff, noticed his work with Frederick and commissioned the both of them to be songwriters for their projects, working separately from Fox. In 1985, Miller and Boyett assigned the pair to their new comedy project for ABC, which was titled The Greenhorn in its early stages. Although it was too early to predict at the time, Frederick and Salvay had just embarked on what would be a long running alliance with Miller Boyett Productions.

When ABC slated the new Miller/Boyett project to premiere on Tuesdays in March 1986, following some cast changes, it went into official production under the new title, Perfect Strangers. Frederick and Salvay penned their first TV title track, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now", for the series, which obliquely told the ballad of the show's two leads—Balki Bartokomous (Bronson Pinchot) and Larry Appleton (Mark Linn Baker) as the former had dreams of making it in America from the island of Mypos, while the latter had aspirations to make it in Chicago, after moving from Wisconsin. Perfect Strangers went on to become a hit, running eight seasons on ABC, and made Frederick and Salvay's songwriting weekly staples in millions of households across the country. While the lyrics were written by Frederick and Salvay, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now" was sung by David Pomeranz.

Beginning in the 1986 87 season, Frederick and Salvay were asked to score selected episodes of NBC's Miller/Boyett produced sitcom Valerie, which had premiered in March 1986, three weeks before the debut of Perfect Strangers on ABC. Charles Fox handled composing on Valerie for the show's first two seasons (in fact, it was the only Miller/Boyett series from the Lorimar era to use Fox), with Bruce Miller taking over regular scoring from seasons three through six. Frederick and Salvay scored three episodes: one which aired in November 1986, another in April 1987 (which they co scored with Steven Chesne) and a third in the spring of 1988, after the series had been retitled Valerie's Family.

He is married to his wife, Holly. Together, they have two sons, Kieran and Nikolas.