The J.H. Squire Celeste Octet, from 1928--"Absent" and "La Cinquantaine"

I'd call this sort of music the roots of lounge, but that phrase has been trademarked, thank you. Those three words, in that precise combination, are owned by Beyond the Roots of Lounge ("Home for Hepcats"), which means that nobody else in the entire world can use them.

In other news, I have some golf courses for sale on the planet Jupiter. Golf on Jupiter--It's a Gas®.

Anyway, here we have a dreamy, elevator-y ("elevator-y"??) treatment of the 1899 hit Absent, and years before Kostelanetz and Gould were doing the same thing to the songs of Gershwin, Porter, and Kern:

Absent (John W. Metcalf), J.H. Squire Celeste Octet (1928). From Columbia 78.

The flip side is La Cinquantaine (The Golden Wedding) by French composer Jean Gabriel-Marie in 1887. Again, classic mood-music fare, though not, obviously, written for that genre:

La Cinquantaine (Gabriel-Marie), J.H. Squire Celeste Octet (1928).

While we're on the subject of early, early lounge music, here's a 1907 recording by Chris Chapman that, if given a Sydney Torch or David Carroll treatment, could pass for a hi-fi-era novelty instrumental. The record is pretty hammered, but I got a listenable file from it:

Dance California (George W. Gregory, 1894), Chris Chapman, Bells with orchestra, 1907. From Victor 78.

Sounds a little like the 1916 hit Nola, no? (Nola No? Wasn't that a musical comedy by Vincent Youmans?)

Anyway, the roots of lounge are right here at... Vintage Lounge.


Lee

More Majestic sounds from Percy Faith

Well, two more tracks, anyway. There are four, in all, on the second Percy Faith and His Orchestra set on Royale, but the sound on All Through the Night and Tia Juana is atrocious. Possibly, this is due to wear, but I suspect the pressing and transfers are mostly to blame. Good tracks, but I don't want to subject anyone to such awful fidelity. As it is, I'll be years with an audio therapist working past this awful experience.

By the way, do you notice anything interesting about the cover?


















Namely, that it looks an awful lot like Set No. 1?


















Just a little, no? Anyway, here is Temptation, from 1947, and Noche Caribe, from... same year, maybe.

Temptation (Freed-Brown), Percy Faith and His Orchestra, 1947. Originally released on the Majestic label.

Noche Caribe (Faith), Percy Faith and His Orchestra, 194?, Majestic label.

More lounge sounds to come!


Lee

Majestic sounds from Percy Faith

I love this cover--it's tacky in an arty sort of way. And the music contained within is easy listening at its most listenable. Two of the tracks are Vintage Lounge reruns, but they sound better than before, I think. Here, then (I mean, now), is Royale EP 119 in its entirety--four tracks recorded in 1947 for the Majestic label, though they may sound like later, hi-fi-era efforts. That's because, as we frequently note, this kind of music was around way before it was supposed to have been. Someday, this will become the official truth, but not today. Not so long as there is $$ in marketing this music as the progeny of lounges and hi-fi sets. And I have no idea what I just wrote. (I guess I've been wanting to use the word "progeny." To impress people, you know.)

Gotta have at least one big word per essay.

Meanwhile, Vintage Lounge will continue to tell the whole truth, without holes, about easy/lounge/exotica music. We're just gutsy like that.

Oops--I said I was going to present the music "now," and that was two paragraphs ago. So, to the Muzak, er, music. Oh, and please note that the really lousy-sounding portions were in the originals--Royale was either working with damaged masters or slightly hammered copies. They had an ultra-cheap reputation to uphold, you know:

Begin the Beguine (Cole Porter), Percy Faith and His Orchestra, August, 1947. From Royale EP 119.

Dancing in the Dark (H. Dietz, A. Schwartz), Percy Faith and His Orch., June, 1947. Same as above.

That Old Black Magic (J. Mercer, H. Arlen), Percy Faith and His Orch., June, 1947. Same as above.

The Touch of Your Hand (O. Harbach, J. Kern), Percy Faith and His Orchestra, August, 1947. Same as above.

I just got my hands on another Royale EP of Percy Faith. If it plays worth a darn, I'll work some MAGIX on the tracks and post them as a follow-up.

Faith may not rock, but he rules!


Lee

Two more from "Lure of the Tropics"

Andre Kostelanetz' Lure of the Tropics appeared in 1954 on the Columbia Masterworks label; then it reappeared in 1955 as part of the CL (popular) series. In fact, a number of Kosty's CL-series LPs are, in fact, reissues of earlier Masterworks albums, in case you didn't know. As if record collecting wasn't complicated enough already.

(Wait a minute--I already wrote this intro. Hold on....)

Sorry about that. I appear to be repeating myself. Not only that, I'm repeating myself.

So... these are the final two tracks from my four-track Lure of the Tropics EP (released on Masterworks, than you), and they're great, even if I had to do more than the usual de-clicking, etc. At Vintage Lounge, we love the straight-from-vinyl sound, but there's no point (click) in taking it too (pop) far (bam!). Granted, one goes with the other in analog formats (i.e., music and noise), but not if we can help it.

At several points in this first selection, the arrangement seems to be clearing the way for a Spikes-Jones-style interlude, but there's a nary a tin can to be heard:

The Moon of Manakoora (Frank Loesser-Alfred Newman, from the movie The Hurricane, 1937), Andre Kostelanetz, 1954. From Columbia Masterworks EP A-1838.

Andalucia (Ernesto Lecuona), Andre Kostelanetz, 1954. From Columbia Masterworks A-1838.

I love Andre Kostelanetz. My kind of easy listening. I'd take a shot of the EP cover, but my Kodak software slows my Dell down every time I use it, and I'm about to uninstall the dang thing! (This is a warning to the software. I hope it's reading this.) Seriously, I might remove it so I can reinstall it without the five thousand features I don't use. That might speed things up a little. It drives me nuts--all I want to do is take photos and load them into my computer and edit them. I don't want to be part of some worldwide network of Kodak users.

Thanks. I feel so much better after venting.

More easy/loungey sounds to come....

Lee

Two from "Lure of the Tropics"

Andre Kostelanetz' Lure of the Tropics appeared in 1954 on the Columbia Masterworks label; then it reappeared in 1955 as part of the CL (popular) series. In fact, a number of Kosty's CL-series LPs are, in fact, reissues of earlier Masterworks albums, in case you didn't know. As if record collecting wasn't complicated enough already.

1954 is kind of pushing the upper limits of the historical window for this blog, but a blogger's gotta do what a blogger's gotta do. (Besides, it's my blog, and I can do whatever I want to do.)

Seriously, I like to draw the line at 1953, but it's not like the Accuracy in Blogging Cops are heading this way as we speak. (Wait a minute--do I hear sirens?) Ohhhh, no. Better hide.

Meanwhile, here are Kosty's versions of Kashmiri Song (Pale Hands I Loved) and Jamaican Rhumba. The first number, a depressing but gorgeous art song, was first published in 1902 with words by Laurence Hope and music by Amy Woodforde-Finden. Laurence Hope was, in fact, the British poet Violet Nicholson, who poisoned herself in 1904 (at the age of 39) upon the death of her husband, General Malcolm Hassels Nicolson. Thomas Hardy was one of her admirers. Now you know. Information courtesy of this excellent article.

Dig the theremin on the first selection:

Kashmiri Song (Pale Hands I Loved) (Nicholson/Woodforde-Finden), Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra, 1954. From the four-selection Columbia EP Lure of the Tropics.

Jamaican Rhumba (Arthur Benjamin) , Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra, 1954. From same disc.

Lee