May was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He started out playing the tuba in the high school band. "I sat in the rear of the stand. [...] I didn't realize it at the time, but I was intrigued with becoming an arranger and an orchestrator." At the age of seventeen May began playing with Gene Olsen's Polish-American Orchestra.

At Capitol, May wrote arrangements for many top artists. These included Frank Sinatra on the albums Come Fly with Me (1958), Come Dance with Me! (1959) and Come Swing with Me! (1961); Nat King Cole on the albums Just One of Those Things and Let's Face the Music!, as well as numerous singles (all his work with Cole being packaged later on the 2-CD set The Billy May Sessions); Stan Freberg, with whom he was a longtime collaborator, featuring on many of the artist's comedy recordings; Peggy Lee on the album Pretty Eyes; Sue Raney on her second album Songs for a Raney Day; Vic Damone on the albums The Lively Ones and Strange Enchantment; Jeri Southern on the album Jeri Southern Meets Cole Porter; Keely Smith on the album Politely and on a duet single, "Nothing In Common"/"How Are Ya Fixed For Love?", with Sinatra; Bobby Darin on the album Oh! Look at Me Now; Nancy Wilson on the albums Like In Love, Something Wonderful, Tender Loving Care, Nancy - Naturally! and various tracks from the albums Just For Now and Lush Life; Matt Monro on several tracks from the albums Invitation to the Movies, Invitation to Broadway, and These Years; Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney on the albums That Travelin' Two-Beat and Fancy Meeting You Here; and Sir George Shearing on the albums Satin Affair and Burnished Brass, co-arranged with Shearing (May also conducted Shearing's album Concerto for My Love, on which Shearing had sole credit for the arrangements). May's orchestra was featured on many Capitol Records children's projects, including cowboy star, Hopalong Cassidy. He worked closely with early 1950s satirist Stan Freberg, using his arranging skills to help Freberg create his spoofs of current hits by creating musical backing often stunningly close to the original hit single.  On Freberg's Wun'erful, Wun'erful! a lacerating spoof of bandleader Lawrence Welk, May hired some of the best jazz musicians in Hollywood for his recording sessions, and they relished the idea of mocking the financially successful Welk sound, which they considered musically awful. The result was a note-perfect recreation of Welk's sound as Freberg and a group of vocalists created parodies of Welk's "musical family". Freberg has recounted that Welk was less than amused by the results.  May also composed and conducted the music for Freberg's short-lived comedy radio series on CBS, which ran for fifteen episodes in 1957. His send-up of trashy horror-film music ("Gray Flannel Hat Full of Teenage Werewolves") is notable.  May won two Grammy Awards including Best Performance by an Orchestra in 1958 and for Best Arrangement in 1959. Much of May's work for Capitol has been reissued on the Ultra-Lounge series of CDs.

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