Wax of the Week #37...Arthur Lyman: Leis of Jazz (1959)

More of a straight easy jazz record than exotica, but still has its moments. Has an earlier catalog number than Taboo, but conventional wisdom says it came later.

Wax of the Week #36...Arthur Lyman: Taboo (1958)

Pound for pound, I reckon Lyman’s discography is at least as good as that of his former boss, Martin Denny. Maybe better. He was actually born of Hawaiian heritage on Kauai, and learned to play on toy marimbas. He was the one who added bird calls to Denny’s groundbreaking exotica hit “Quiet Village” (or was it Augie Colón?). Lyman was still playing weekend gigs in Honolulu right into the ’90s. Taboo was his debut LP.

Wax of the Week #35...Æthenor: Betimes Black Cloudmass (2008)

Meditative atmospheres from a pretty underrated label, VHF (home of Pelt and Sunroof). Features Stephen O’Malley of SunnO))), Daniel O'Sullivan of Guapo, and Kristoffer Rygg of Ulver.

Wax of the Week #34...Armando Trovaioli: Seven Golden Men (1969)

Soundtrack to a 1965 Italian crime/comedy soundtrack. Rome-born Trovaioli (1917–2013) was a prolific composer for his native cinema (THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS, BOCACCIO ’70, and THE LIBERTINE stand out). I haven’t seen this film yet; the only actor I recognize is Gabriele Tinti, a.k.a. Mr. Laura Gemser. This is mostly short cues in the vein of Italian crime jazz.

Wax of the Week #33...Armando Sciascia/New Dimensions Quartetto: Digressioni dal Vero (1968)

Choice crime/suspense library record from Sciascia’s own Italian label, perfect for scoring a giallo or a tense holdup scene in a poliziottescho. If I had the time and the players, this is the kind of music I’d like to play in nightclubs.

Wax of the Week #32...The Aquarians: Jungle Grass (1969)

An obscure but appealing Afro-Brazilian style jazz session (only names I recognize are guitarist Joe Pass and pianist Bobby Hutcherson). It even ventures into exotica zones at times. I think I first saw this mentioned on the old Soulstrut forum. Anyway it’s a nice, little record with some cool grooves.

Wax of the Week #31...Antonio Carlos Jobim: Tide (1970)

The guy who wrote “The Girl from Ipanema,” “Água de Beber,” “Insensatez,” “Meditation,” and “Desafinado,” and helped create and disseminate a whole new style of music in the late ’50s, combining the heady winebuzz coolness of west coast jazz with a danceable samba rhythm. Tide was his sixth or seventh studio record, if you count the soundtracks, but leave out the collaborations (Getz/Gilberto, Sinatra, etc.). It definitely has more of a glossy, easy listening sound compared to the more pure and authentic sounds of earlier records, but is still enjoyable. The bossa nova craze in the US had mostly died out by this point, but these original Brazilian artists never stopped creating, and you can find great records by many of them well into the ’80s.

Wax of the Week #30...The Anita Kerr Quartet: We Dig Mancini (1965)

Nice music from nice people for nice people. Kerr, born in Memphis in 1927, started as a backup country singer but by ’65 had a successful group of her own and moved to L.A. to expand her sound. I didn’t know she was behind those Living Voices records on RCA. She eventually moved to Switzerland and went gospel. Did you know Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme had lyrics?

Wax of the Week #29...v/a: Angel Dust (1988)

Savage Pencil, the nom de plume of English underground cartoonist Edwin Pouncey, compiled this classic collection of biker movie soundtrack highlights, nicely packed in a gatefold sleeve with picture disc vinyl and humorous Albini sleeve notes. Besides a few choice Davie Allen fuzz fests, there’s also incidental studio hack tracks, and the immortal lounge singer theme from “Satan’s Sadists.” FTW…

Wax of the Week #28...v/a: All Hell Let Loose (1983)

Italian-only vinyl version of the Neat cassette compilation 60 Minus Plus (minus four songs), and a pretty good New Wave of British Heavy Metal collection. The song by Crucifixion (from Essex) is a re-recorded version of a 1980 single. Alien (from Newcastle) also appeared on the 1982 Neat comp One Take No Dubs. Axis (from Stockton) released a good 1980 single.

Wax of the Week #27...Aline Mendonça Luz: Aline (1979)

Years ago I started getting into music from Brazil. Just a little at first. Mostly it was because I liked a lot of the ersatz bossa nova heard on many easy listening records from the ’60s, and eventually was slowly drawn to the siren call of the real stuff. Later I figured out I needed the positive vibes and joie de vivre (or alegria de viver) of Brazilian music to counter the natural negative tendencies of my personality. Luz (1946–2003) was an activist against the military regime running her country at the time. Apparently this jazzy LP (her debut after an aborted career at RCA) was one of the first independent albums from a Brazilian artist.

Wax of the Week #26...Alex Keack: Surfers Paradise (1963)

It's a tough slog going through old budget label LPs in search of something you'd want to hear twice, but it's worth it to discover little gems like this. Keack was a member of the vocal group The Islanders, but on here he plays some pleasant exotica, and not the slapped-together surf music one might expect. Budget labels have provided years of exploration for tenacious diggers. I remember well into the early ’80s these types of records were sold mainly in pharmacies and discount stores like Woolworth’s, for non-collector civilians who vaguely desired some music but rarely ventured into record stores. I used to pick up King’s Road exploito cover albums of hits of the day at Fay’s Drugs on upper 2nd Ave. in Lansingburgh. Crown pressed released of albums from 1957 to about 1972, a few of them quite enjoyable and many pretty curious or even strange. A few of the older blues LPs they pressed featured raw demos from the likes of B.B. King and Elmore James and aren’t easy pulls.

Wax of the Week #25...The Alan Lorber Orchestra: The Lotus Palace (1969)

The term "psychedelic" may be a cheap, grossly overused term in eBay descriptions, but to me it's not a genre onto itself. Most often when people refer to music as "psych" it's short-hand for psychedelic rock, mostly from the ’60s. In reality it's a template that can be affixed to various genres: rock, rap, jazz, even classical music. Here's an interesting novelty: a psychedelic easy listening record. Lorber was (is?) a producer/arranger who came up working on Gene Pitney and Leiber/Stoller records, and helped birth the Lovin' Spoonful/Mamas & Papas forerunner The Mugwumps. On this record he busts out the sitars (played by Vinnie Bell) and tablas, inspired by a commercial for a bank he wrote the music for and presumably the Beatles, and creates a healthy chunk of cash-in kitsch.

Wax of the Week #24...Al Hirt: The Horn Meets "the Hornet" (1966)

A better one, featuring some spy/suspense themes, including the Green Hornet theme used in the first Kill Bill.

Wax of the Week #23...Al Hirt: Latin in the Horn (1966)

Hirt (1922–1999) was a burly New Orleans trumpeter who got respect from even Miles Davis. Not a great record by any means but sports a few minor attractions.

Wax of the Week #22...Al Caiola: Blockbuster • Movie/TV Themes (1972)

 

Usually pick up any of these easy listening LPs that are basically compilations of movie themes, especially if they contain suspense or espionage titles. Some good ones on this, which doesn’t turn up as much as some others.

Wax of the Week #21...Al Caiola: Let the Sunshine In (1969)

At the end of the day, I probably have more easy listening records than anything else. Several reasons: they're cheap (still), tons of them came out, and most have at least a song or two worth hearing if you're into this crap. I started picking them up back in the ’90s, as they reminded me of the stuff I'd heard playing over department store P.A.s as a kid. Also, I got a kick out of the "now sound" records, where square old man orchestras would cover the hip rock songs of the day in a desperate attempt to be with it, often accidentally creating in the process records that in the rearview are surprisingly pleasurable and still modern-sounding. Jersey-born guitarist Caiola wasn't anywhere near the top tier of easy listening (we'll hear stuff like Enoch Light's Spaced Out and various John Gregory platters later), but some of his records contain songs that make for pleasant, passive listening. This one features some entertaining spy jazz and bossa-laden tunes.

Wax of the Week #20...Al Caiola: Sounds for Spies and Private Eyes (1965)

Not the most dynamic spy jazz record in the world (too brassy, for one thing), but it does include a couple of decent tracks. “Underwater Chase” was written by the record’s producer, LeRoy Holmes, and “Baker Street Mystery” is from the 1965 Sherlock Holmes Broadway play.

Wax of the Week #19...The Agents: Themes for Secret Agents (1967)

Spy jazz evolved out of crime jazz in the mid-’60s, mainly inspired by the early James Bond scores and the future-pointing feel of the era. It classed up crime with some twangy surf guitar and brought it out of dark alleys and smoky taverns, into mid-century modern lairs and cocktail parties. I'll be posting several superior examples of spy jazz in the future, but for now here's a low-key (and rather mediocre) studio musician cash-in example from Sunset/Liberty that veers more to the easy listening side.

Wax of the Week #18...v/a: Afro-American Spirituals, Work Songs, and Ballads (1952)

Astounding Alan Lomax recordings from 1930s southern prisons and work farms, released by our very own Library of Congress. An aural time machine with not an ounce of self-consciousness; it’s the “real deal” as they say.