Teasing the Korean

These are the first discs I reach for when selecting music for a party. There are no lyrics to distract, no one complains, and everyone has a good time. There are enough reference points to appeal to people from different age groups.

Thank you. I couldn't readily find the indices of any of these books online. How many references are there to Edd "Kookie" Byrnes and Maynard G. Krebs?

Well, it wouldn't be viewed as a forgery if you listed yourselves in the credits and included a blurb about the inspiration. It would be viewed as a concept album. Similar to how Philip Jose Farmer wrote the novel Venus on the Half Shell by the fictional character Kilgore Trout (from Kurt Vonnegut's novels).

This is the most upsetting thread ever.

Worth it primarily for the two percussion tracks! Space-age bachelor pad bliss!

RIP.

When you've got a Brooks Brothers suit habit to feed, something's gotta go!

If Basie is playing Neal Hefti arrangements behind Frank Sinatra in a Hollywood studio, is that jazz, Hollywood, or something in between?

Nice!

I picked up a very clean copy of this many years ago, intrigued by the cover art. I played it once and was underwhelmed. At one time, it was in my Unloadsville stack, but I decided to keep it for the cover. I filed it away in the Exotica section between Rimsky-Korsakov and Sabu, and kind of forgot about it. Fast forward to a few years ago. Righteous Records included a couple of tracks on one of their Lux and Ivy exotica compilations. And now, Righteous has included the whole album as part of their Lux and Ivy Dark Exotica compilation, which also includes Buddy Collette's Polynesia, John McFarland's Provocatif, and Stan Kenton's Cuban Fire. I am enjoying it much more this time. Dark exotica indeed. For those of you who don't have the LP, you will be delighted to learn that "His [Russo's] interests are broad in scope. They encompass literature and philosophy, the work of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, John Donne, Thomas Hardy, Wordsworth, Dickens, the thought of Plato and the profound theories of the late Elijah Jordan. He is fond of the dramas of Arthur Miller, but prefers films to the "psychoanalytic theatre in New York." He drinks brandy and Pernod (with ginger ale). He admires Brooks Brothers clothes and evening dress. He listens to the music of Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, Prokofiev and Hindemith." In other words, Russo is The Man who Reads Playboy.

I really love her versions of "They Say It's Wonderful" and "Something to Remember You By" on Broadway's Best. I think some of the tracks made it to CD, maybe grey market CDs, but I don't think the whole album has ever been reissued. I can find a four-track EP on Qobuz, but that's it.

In 1992, Rhino released an excellent 3-disc set titled The Beat Generation, which included a mix of jazz, poetry readings, audio documentaries, and cash-in/novelty records, all focused on beatniks or the beat scene. https://www.amazon.com/Beat-Generation-Various-Artists/dp/B0000032DM/ref=sr_1_2?crid=F22OECOAMAWB&keywords=the+beat+generation+box+set&qid=1672263988&sprefix=the+beat+generation+box+set%2Caps%2C98&sr=8-2 Righteous Records, as part of their excellent Lux and Ivy Dig series, have now released a 2-disc set titled Lux and Ivy Dig Beatniks. There may be a tiny bit of overlap, for example, "Kookie's Mad Pad," but not much. https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/lux-and-ivy-dig-the-beatniks-a-collection-of-finger-lickin-grooves-deep-thinkin-diatribes-and-exploitation-45s-various-artists-2cd/ I highly recommend both.

That's what my goldfish always tells me!

I'm all about the Hollywood sound! The more space-age sparkle, the better!

Weston's arrangements on Jo Stafford Sings Broadway's Best (Columbia) are fantastic. Some would say they are dated, but I love them. As I think I've mentioned, My parents, who were in the biz, were in the final lineup of the Pied Pipers, but they never recorded. When the final original member had to leave because of drinking problems, the group fulfilled their tour obligation with a replacement and then changed their name. My Mom idolized Jo Stafford.

Received this as a Christmas gift. A decent recording. Vocals sound great. The orchestra overall sounds good but the balances are a little off in places, as you may expect in a live setting. Interesting to hear her cutting loose a little bit amid the familiar arrangements.

The Gen-Xers, though, got the last laugh - leaving the overpriced Beatles and Led Zeppelin albums in the bins, and bringing home the 50-cent easy listening albums!

That Percy Faith album is very cool, one of the few Percy Faith albums that I own! I would concur with your assessment! In other words, I tend to go for easy listening that is not necessarily easy listening!

Just curious, how do you perceive the TTK approach?

In other words: "Our pressings are so good, they reveal the limitations of your stereo system. So if our product sounds bad, it is a reflection of how good it truly is."

I don't know the years, but it became a demographic trend. Popular music for people too old to listen to the Beatles. The market sorted itself out.

I'm not so sure that easy listening "collapsed" during that time. It morphed into other things, MOR and disco, for example. But the big budgets afforded to many obscure 1950s albums had become a thing of the past. "Easy Listening" and "Beautiful Music" were also radio programming philosophies. Easy Listening became a retroactively created descriptor. Albums that we now call Easy Listening were typically classified as "Popular" on 1950s-early 60s record label inner sleeves. The earliest examples of easy listening would have resulted from arrangers simply following their instincts of what makes a good instrumental arrangement of a pop song. They were not self-consciously making easy listening records. And it became very unwieldy. The idea of filing an album like Les Baxter's The Passions in the easy listening section made no sense.

Yes, there was a booming postwar economy that allowed for the creation of some very adventurous albums. That plus the fact that record labels had to quickly create hi-fi LP catalogs, and a few years later, stereo catalogs.

The short answer is that other genres or sub-genres of music essentially filled the "easy listening" void for more recent generations of listeners. For example, ambient and downtempo electronica for contemporary audiences are the functional equivalent of Jackie Gleason for the WWII generation. Your question, though, is complicated by the fact that a huge range of music got filed in the "easy listening" section because no one knew where else to file it.