by Stephanie Harwood

Created on: August 09, 2009

Reminiscences about American music in the 1950s by and large focus on rock and roll and R&B, and perhaps branch out to include a little jazz and country and popular music. If they do touch on pop, perhaps they remember that in the spring of 1955 Billboard's number one hit was "Unchained Melody," by composer, arranger and conductor Les Baxter - a spot he would claim again in 1956, with "The Poor People of Paris."

And they would leave out the musical genre of the 1950s that Baxter is probably best remembered for today: Exotica.

Even though organist Korla Pandit (John Roland Redd) began recording his mystical solo performances in the 1940s, it is generally acknowledged that Exotica got its start in 1951, when Baxter recorded the album Le Sacre Du Sauvage (The Ritual of the Savage) for Capitol Records, with such tracks as "Busy Port," "Jungle Flower," and "Jungle River Boat." It also featured the classic "Quiet Village," which later became a hit for Martin Denny, who recorded his version in 1957. Here was a sound that combined the known comfort of popular orchestral music - strings, woodwinds, reeds - with new rhythms and sounds of faraway places. You could feel you were traveling somewhere exotic without ever leaving home.

In 1952 Capitol also released Legend of the Sun Virgin, by Yma Sumac, a Peruvian soprano who had come to the U.S. in 1946 with her composer and bandleader husband Moises Vivanco. This was a follow-up to her debut album Voice of the Xtabay (1950; Baxter produced) and in these recordings her South American folksong repertoire became "Incan Princess" stylized, enhanced by her multi-octave range.

The trend expanded its scope from the jungles to the islands with Denny's album Exotica (the term is credited to an executive at Liberty Records, which released the album in 1957). Denny recorded with a combo he had originally formed in Hawaii and his arrangements added a more Polynesian flavor to the genre, complete with tropical birdcalls. His Hawaiian vibraphonist, Arthur Lyman, would go on to form his own group and have a successful exotica career, recording the albums Taboo, Hawaiian Sunset, Legend of Pele and the popular single "Yellow Bird."

(During the decade there were a number of Polynesian "easy listening" recordings released, including Alfred Newman's Ports of Paradise, George Cates's Polynesian Percussion, and, earlier, Dimitri Tiomkin's 1953 soundtrack to the film "Return to Paradise." Popularized Hawaiian music has its own separate

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>