McCoy Tyner and Happy 1950s Pizzicato Orchestral Music

[Teasing the Korean]

As a kid, before I knew what it was called or where to look for it, I was a sucker for that upbeat, optimistic 1950s pizzicato orchestral music, along the lines of "Holiday for Strings," that suggests the bustling metropolis, happy shoppers, shiny new appliances, and progress.  Much of this music was written for libraries such as KPM, Chappell, etc., and I probably first heard it on 16mm educational/health & safety films in elementary school, but it nevertheless made an impression on me and probably on many of us within a certain age group.  

One of the devices those arrangers often used was voicing the strings to form 4 or 5 voices of a pentatonic chord, in open voicings, resulting in mostly intervals of fourths.  The string section would then follow the melody up or down the pentatonic scale, continuing to use open harmonies and lots of intervals of fourths.  It is one of the trademark sounds of that style of music.

Fast forward a few years:  When I first started getting into jazz as a teen, and I heard the classic John Coltrane Quartet, one of the things that drew me to them was that McCoy Tyner's piano chord voicings reminded me very much of that happy postwar pizzicato string writing that I so loved.  

I'm curious if McCoy Tyner ever commented on this, and if he realized that his approach to piano chord voicings followed the string-writting approach of several postwar composers and arrangers who wrote production music.

[Teasing the Korean]

No one gets what I am talking about with regard to Tyner's open voicings using notes of the pentatonic scale, and its similarity to happy pizzicato strings used in health and safety films, industrial films, and David Rose records?

[Dan Gould]

Maybe you should post examples, at least of the latter category.

[Teasing the Korean]

3 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Maybe you should post examples, at least of the latter category.

OK, I'll see what I can find on the InterTubes...

[Ted O'Reilly]

Maybe search under British Light Music.  If you want the best of it, Robert Farnon, such as 

 

[Teasing the Korean]

11 minutes ago, Ted O'Reilly said:

Maybe search under British Light Music.  If you want the best of it, Robert Farnon, such as...

Oh, I have TONS of this stuff.  I will simply need to take the time to sift through some of it to find a representative example.

IMO, the best of this stuff was done for the KPM library, and some of the key tracks were collected on the first volume of Music for TV Dinners.  But I will find some tracks that use the specific device I'm speaking of. 

Edited September 3, 2019 by Teasing the Korean

[Ted O'Reilly]

As an overall music experience, I've always liked the genre.  Top-shelf compositions and arrangers, to say nothing of the performing musicians and engineers.  Tracks recorded in the early '50s still shine brilliantly on a good sound system.  (May I say "hi-fi"?)

You're right about Music For TV Dinners...delightful stuff represented here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf1MXAWUDUeA7FGVTWIEPjA/feed