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Article Excerpt
LOUNGE CARAVAN: A SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY
BY MELISSA URSULA DAWN GOLDSMITH
PRECURSORS AND NOT-SO-DISTANT COUSINS
The genre designation "lounge" describes a complex network of music ranging from light instrumentals (easy listening) to experimental uses of instruments and cutting-edge technology (not-so-easy listening). The word "network" is used here instead of genre because lounge emerged from many different kinds of sources and embraces many different kinds of music, contemporary cultural influences, and technological innovations. Its roots may be found in the very beginnings of background or incidental music, in music that exhibits unusual uses of traditional western musical instruments as well as newly-invented electronic instruments, in avant-garde and futuristic music, in arrangements emerging from the era of light music on the radio (the 1920s and 1930s), and in instrumental versions or "covers" (i.e., recordings by other artists) of popular and classical songs. Lounge's musical influences and inspirations are a hodgepodge: Dixieland jazz; Latin dance; the croon; experimental music, and the gimmick song. Most lounge music is composed and performed to create a particular mood or to transport the listener to another place--often a jungle, an island paradise, or outer space.
There are numerous excellent monographs and discographies that focus on this large network of music. Joseph Lanza's Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong, now available in a second revised and expanded edition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004) provides a detailed history and discography focusing on easy-listening recordings. Other sources for discographies and reviews include back issues of Cool and Strange Music! Magazine, The Space Age Pop Music Page (available on the Internet at http://spaceagepop.com), and Weirdomusic.com (http://weirdomusic.com/index.html). The focus of this discographical essay is on lounge music that tends to impel listeners to pay attention to their stereos or radios, music that offers both listener and stereo a workout, as opposed to the notion of "easy listening." The discussion in the essay section will consider sound quality, variety (particularly of compilations), and accessibility of reissued recordings for the purpose of starting a library collection; these are also the inclusion criteria for the discography itself. Turning now to the milieu of lounge music, please adjust your VU meters, sit back, and read further.
"NOVELTY"
A typewriter dings after being cued by an orchestra; a waltz meows; a clock tick-tocks to a tune in common meter. From the late 1930s into the 1950s compositions by Leroy Anderson (1908-1975) were popular favorites among radio audiences as well as concertgoers (the Harvard-educated composer was an arranger for the Boston "Pops" Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler and later became a composer of Broadway musicals). Such descriptive or "novelty" songs predate the "gimmick" songs that gained popularity in the early 1960s. They demand the attention of listeners--causing them to sit and listen. With a sense of humor, Anderson transformed everyday sounds into music. The Leroy Anderson Collection (MCA Classics MCAD2-9815A and MCAD2-9815B [1988]) is a two-compact disc set that includes Anderson's best known works: "Blue Tango," "The Typewriter," "The Waltzing Cat," "The Syncopated Clock," "Sleigh Ride," and his theme song "Forgotten Dreams." The largest compilation of Anderson's songs available, this CD set includes selections (some monaural) from Anderson's Broadway musical Goldilocks (1958) as well as less well-known songs such as "Sandpaper Ballet," "Jazz Pizzicato," and "Clarinet Candy." A more accessible compilation of Anderson's popular songs is on the CD "The Typewriter": Leroy Anderson Favorites (RCA Victor 09026-68048-2 [1995]). The recording features performances by the St. Louis Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin.
Raymond Scott (1909-1994). Anderson's contemporary, was a band-leader, composer, pianist, recording and electronic music engineer, and producer. His early successes included the songs "Powerhouse" and "Toy Trumpet." His themes were put to use in Carl Stalling's incidental music for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. In contrast to Anderson's novelty numbers, which were generally harmonically predictable and lay at the intersection of popular and classical music, Scott's were sometimes called "jazz novelties." These songs are included on the CD The Music of Raymond Scott: Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights (Columbia CK 53028 [1992]). In 1946, Scott founded Manhattan Research, Inc. and devoted himself to advancing electroacoustic music. While he applied success-fully for U.S. patents for various inventions and is credited with building the first electronic music synthesizer, Scott was also a radio personality with his own nationally broadcast show and the bandleader for the radio (later television) show Your Hit Parade. He scored films and by 1950 had composed an extremely popular jingle for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Scott's most interesting work involved creating handmade electronic instruments and composing commercial jingles during the late 1950s and 1960s. An outstanding compilation of Scott's jingles and electronic music compositions is on the three-CD set Manhattan Research, Inc. (Basta 30-9078-2 [2000], reissued on LP as Basta 30-9045-1 [2001]), which includes liner notes of almost 150 pages with color photographs. This set includes, among many others, Scott's jingles for the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company, Vicks, Nescafe, and IBM, along with his original compositions "Twilight in Turkey," "Space Mystery," "Toy Trumpet," and "Cindy Electronium." In these pieces, Scott makes use of a wide variety of electronic instruments, ranging in complexity from an early analog synthesizer to the electronium (which employed artificial intelligence technology). (1)
The theremin, an electronic musical instrument invented by Leon Theremin in 1918, had grown in popularity by the middle of the twentieth century. Its unique, eerie timbre inspired original music and arrangements for the instrument. The three-CD set Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman and the Theremin (Basta 30-9093-2 [1999]) brings this instrument together with light orchestral music and choral music composed by English songwriter and film composer Harry Revel (1905-1958) and conducted by Les Baxter and Billy May. Revel is best known as a songwriter and composer for the Ziegfeld Follies and for films in the 1930s. The set is a collection of songs from LPs dating from 1947 and 1953: Music Out of the Moon (Capitol CC 47 [1947]) and Music Out of the Moon/Peace of Mind (Capitol T-390 [1953]). One album cover features a reclining woman, suggestively wrapped with a satin sheet; the other album cover features the same reclining woman, suggestively covered in cloudlike soap lather. One advertises "haunting themes for the theremin" and describes the listening experience as "an adventure." Samuel Hoffman (1904-1968), a podiatrist known by the stage name Hal Hope, is the only featured soloist. Some of the song titles suggest that the theremin sounds as if it comes from another world (for example, "Lunar Rhapsody") while others enable the (lonely?) listener to identify with the lonely theremin juxtaposed against the orchestra (especially "This Room Is My Castle of Quiet"). The theremin albums were so successful that Revel continued composing "space music" during the 1950s.
CHAMPAGNE ORCHESTRAS AND INSTRUMENTALS
Lounge music entered, and continues to enter, the mainstream from time to time. Its popularity must have been heightened by the emerging obsession men had with their stereo systems in the 1950s and 1960s. Magazines geared to the stereo system connoisseur, such as High Fidelity and HiFi/Stereo Review, juxtaposed or paired their stereo system articles and advertisements with advertisements for sound recordings that featured lounge music. In High Fidelity actor and bon vivant Ralph Bellamy--star of the motion picture Sunrise At Campobello (1960) and ex-husband of organist-entertainer Ethel Smith--is said to "(listen) to stereo on his Collaro Changer and Goodmans Triaxonal Speaker System." He is shown in a photograph sitting cross-legged in a comfortable chair, listening to his furniture-sized speakers; his image is superimposed above clouds of snow and in front of a snowy mountain peak in one advertisement; and in the deep woods of a forest in another (he uses a pipe as a prop). (2) Advertisements for stereo equipment and records were obviously aimed at those infatuated with their stereo systems. Stereo Spectrum Design sold records that allowed its customers to "get more in stereo" and included a free wiping cloth with every album. The advertisement for the Static Master, a device for removing dust from records, explained that "dust was the enemy." (3) HiFi/Stereo Review featured a column, "Sound and the Query," with questions and answers relating to the problems of stereo hi-fi. In the same magazine was an advertisement for the Sherwood Ravinia Model SR-3 3-Speaker System with a "hand-rubbed walnut" case and another for the large bookshelf-sized speaker, The Classic Mark II by University. The "Installation of the Month" showed a photograph of a stereo system installed in a listening room; an article about the installation itself followed. (1)
Coinciding with this interweaving of stereo system articles and advertisements and advertisements for sound recordings that featured lounge music were the very significant popular successes of several lounge songs. Hits charts of the period show that the second-ranked hit of the entire 1950s decade was an instrumental number, "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White," by Perez "Prez" Prado and his Orchestra (1955), and the twelfth-ranked hit of the entire 1960s decade was "Love Is Blue" by Paul Mauriat and his Orchestra (1968), just below Ray Charles's "I Can't Stop Loving You" (1962) and above "Big Girls Don't Cry" by The Four Seasons (1962). (5) Les Baxter's versions of "Unchained Melody" and "The Poor People of Paris" topped...
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