Martin Denny was born April 10, 1911 in New York City. A child prodigy, at age ten he studied piano under Lester Spitz and Isadore Gorn. For four years he toured South America with the Don Dean Orchestra, followed by a 43-month stint in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. Following his December 1945 discharge, Denny settled in Los Angeles,... [+] Read More

Martin Denny was born April 10, 1911 in New York City. A child prodigy, at age ten he studied piano under Lester Spitz and Isadore Gorn. For four years he toured South America with the Don Dean Orchestra, followed by a 43-month stint in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. Following his December 1945 discharge, Denny settled in Los Angeles, studying piano, composition, and orchestration at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. In early 1954 he relocated to Hawaii, contracting to appear at the Honolulu club Don the Beachcomber's. The following year Denny formed his own group, originally consisting of vibist Arthur Lyman, bassist John Kramer, and percussionist Augie Colón. In 1956, while appearing at steel and shipping magnate Henry Kaiser's Shell Bar -- a club inside the open-air Oahu resort Hawaiian Village, complete with a small pond adjacent to the stage -- the combo realized that the croaking of nearby bullfrogs blended perfectly with their tropical musical approach. On a lark, Colón also began imitating bird calls on-stage, much to the delight of the audience. Denny soon began incorporating South Pacific and Far East instruments into his arrangements as well, and by the time he recorded his Liberty Records debut, 1957's Exotica, his singular sound was firmly in place.

The release of Exotica proved perfectly timed -- as the '50s drew to a close, tiki culture was all the rage in mainland America, with Hawaiian shirts a fashion trend and tiki torches a staple of backyard parties. Moreover, the evolution from mono to stereo recording and playback had taken root, and with its bird whistles, jungle calls, and far-flung instruments, the many distinctive components of Denny's sound were ideal for channel separation. Originally composed by Les Baxter, the instrumental "Quiet Village" was a massive success, earning Denny and his group an appearance on TV's American Bandstand, and the accompanying Exotica LP topped the Billboard charts. But ironically, even as his music came to embody Hawaiian culture and its mythical allure, Denny himself was no longer a fixture of the island musical culture -- after a bitter contract dispute with Kaiser, he brought his group stateside, and they made their first mainland appearance at the 1957 Pebble Beach Crosby Open golf tournament party. Soon after, Kaiser lured Lyman back to Hawaii to assume Denny's vacated spot headlining the Shell Bar; Denny replaced him with Julius Wechter. Likewise, Kramer was later replaced by Harvey Ragsdale, and a second percussionist, Harold Chang, was also added the lineup.

For many listeners, the exotica craze proved short-lived, and Denny never again matched the success of "Quiet Village," although subsequent singles including "A Taste of Honey," "The Enchanted Sea" and "Ebb Tide" did find some favor on the pop charts. For connoisseurs, however, the story certainly does not end there. Denny continued making records in his trademark style throughout the '60s, many of them housed in eye-popping sleeves featuring model Sandy Warner, who was such a ubiquitous presence that she was even dubbed "The Exotica Girl." (Warner eventually recorded her own LP, Fair and Warmer, with Denny himself authoring the liner notes.) While his interests in African and Pacific Rim musical traditions yielded concept records like Afro-Desia and Sayonara, other efforts turned towards more conventional easy listening, which Liberty dubbed his "honey" sound. For the most part, however, Denny remained a restless innovator. For Primitiva, he recorded using a number of gongs, drums, and odd brass instruments acquired from a Buddhist mountaintop temple in Burma by friend and filmmaker John Sturges, on location to shoot the Frank Sinatra vehicle None But the Brave. (According to legend, the instruments were then carried down the mountain by a procession of Buddhist monks.) For 1969's Exotic Moog, his Liberty swan song, Denny even embraced electronics, much to the chagrin of his dwindling fan base.

With his recording career largely behind him, Denny maintained a busy touring schedule throughout the '70s and into the following decade. In 1985 he announced his retirement, settling in Hawaii with his longtime wife June, but three years later he grew restless, reuniting with Lyman, Colón, Chang, and adding bassist Archie Grant to return for a series of sold-out club dates. A Japanese tour yielded the live recording Exotica: The Best of Martin Denny. As the new decade began, he was the recipient of the Hawaiian Association of Music's Hoku Award for lifetime achievement; the honor coincided with the beginnings of an exotica/space age pop revival, and virtually overnight Denny's vintage LPs began disappearing from used record stores. He was also the subject a major CD reissue campaign on the Scamp label. Now a music icon for a new generation, Denny again returned to the road, making live appearances even into the 2000s. His last concert was held in Hawaii on February 13, 2005 at a benefit to aid tsunami victims. Just three weeks later on March 3, 2005 Martin Denny, icon and innovator, passed away at the age of 93. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide [-] Hide

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As the vibraphonist for Martin Denny's group, Lyman was instrumental in crafting the sound of exotica. Lyman didn't stay with Denny for long, however, leaving the ensemble in 1957 to start a solo career that was nearly as successful as Denny's. To no one's surprise, Lyman's albums sounded very much like Denny's, with even more of a somnambulent... [+] Read More

As the vibraphonist for Martin Denny's group, Lyman was instrumental in crafting the sound of exotica. Lyman didn't stay with Denny for long, however, leaving the ensemble in 1957 to start a solo career that was nearly as successful as Denny's. To no one's surprise, Lyman's albums sounded very much like Denny's, with even more of a somnambulent feel. Much of the public wanted to relax, though, and they sent his debut, Taboo, to #6 in the album charts in 1958. In addition to playing vibes on his group's recordings, Lyman also played some guitar, piano, and drums, as well as paying careful attention to using stereophonic sound.

Lyman also had a few hit singles, with "Taboo" and "Love For Sale" reaching the middle of the charts, and "Yellow Bird" (the only big exotica hit besides Denny's "Quiet Village") making #4 in 1961. Like Denny (though to a lesser extent), Lyman experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1990s, when the space age pop revival made it acceptable to drag out his old LPs and sit in tiki bars again. He continued performing for tourists in Waikiki until a year before his death from throat cancer on February 24, 2002. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide [-] Hide

In the mid-'90s, Juan Garcia Esquivel enjoyed one of the most unexpected resurgences of popularity -- and hipness -- in the annals of 20th-century pop. The composer and arranger skirted the lines between lounge music, eccentric experimentalism, and stereo sound pioneer in the late '50s and early '60s on a series of albums aimed at the easy... [+] Read More

In the mid-'90s, Juan Garcia Esquivel enjoyed one of the most unexpected resurgences of popularity -- and hipness -- in the annals of 20th-century pop. The composer and arranger skirted the lines between lounge music, eccentric experimentalism, and stereo sound pioneer in the late '50s and early '60s on a series of albums aimed at the easy listening market. Both cheesy and goofily unpredictable, these records were forgotten by all but thrift-store habitues for decades. With the space age pop/exotica revival of the mid-'90s, however, Esquivel was not just being rediscovered, but was being championed as a cutting-edge innovator by certain segments of the hipper-than-thou alternative crowd.

Esquivel (in the manner of Dion or Melanie, he billed himself with a single name) actually enjoyed a long and varied career, of which his space age pop recordings were only a portion. Born in a small Mexican village, the pianist became a popular performer on a Mexican radio station, and studied briefly at Juilliard in New York. The radio (and later television and film) work actually gave him valuable experience in the art of quickly devising varied background music and orchestral arrangements, which he'd put to good use when he began recording for RCA in the late '50s.

This was the era in which stereo albums were first starting to be marketed. Esquivel -- along with several other of "space age pop"'s leading lights -- took advantage of this development to use his albums as laboratories of sorts to explore the spectrum of recorded sound, as reflected in LP titles like Other Worlds, Other Sounds and Four Corners of the World. He employed then-exotic instruments such as the theremin, the ondioline, early Fender Rhodes keyboards, Chinese bells, bass accordion, and boo-bams (a 24-bongo kit tuned to F) to get what he wanted.

What kept Esquivel from serious critical appreciation at the time are, perhaps, the same factors that exerted a strange fascination upon listeners of the 1990s. In its form and content, Esquivel's material was lightweight martini-mixing fare, more geared toward suburban easy listening than challenging innovation. He threw in just enough sly, oddball quirks, however, to make one wonder whether he was in fact deftly satirizing the form, or at least using it as a forum to slip in some unbridled zaniness. Chipper white bread background chorus singers will slip into strange nonsense syllables like "boink, boink." Weird instrumental flourishes add unpredictable tension to bathetic easy listening instrumentals, sometimes almost jarring the listener from the state of bland relaxation for which the records were purportedly designed. The strains of cha chas and mambos (then in vogue among much of mainstream America) run through much of his work, though in a much more lounge-ish vein than what you would find in sweaty Havana ballrooms. Tempos and arrangements change with unnerving frequency and charge forward with unsettling manic energy, though never so often that the music sounds more experimental than pop.

So when post-moderns tired of punk, grunge, and industrial music, and needed some suitably different (but still ironic) music to chill out to in their dank clubs and cafes, they turned to forgotten artists such as Esquivel. The man himself had passed his heyday as a recording artist after the early '60s. He remained active for years with his live act (Frank Sinatra was a fan of Esquivel's Las Vegas sets) and television and film scores. By the 1990s, he was confined to a wheelchair in his brother's home in Mexico, the victim of numerous back injuries. He wasn't so ill that he couldn't be interviewed, however. His lengthy profile in the first volume of the Incredibly Strange Music book kicked off the Esquivel revival in earnest. 1995 suddenly saw Esquivel reissues flooding the market (at least three appeared that year, with many more following). Respected alternative figureheads like John Zorn and R.E.M. sang his praises. Esquivel was no longer gathering mold in the attic -- he was the epitome of hip.

As is the case with other space age pop heroes such as Martin Denny, some listeners were dumbfounded, or even angered, by the modern appeal enjoyed by Esquivel. His work will never be treated with respect by the "serious" music community; his music is too consciously geared toward light entertainment for that. And just as one wonders whether Esquivel was mixing irony and entertainment in his recordings, one wonders whether some modern Esquivel fans were championing his cause out of a desire to be more jaded-than-thou. Did they groove to his sounds precisely because Esquivel's records sound so ridiculously outdated, or simply because they want to become hip by attaching themselves to the most unfashionable music possible? Easy answers are not forthcoming, but Esquivel wasn't complaining. In fact, he became something of the spokesperson emeritus for the whole space age pop craze, conducting regular interviews for national publications from his Mexico bed, and hoping to eventually recover some of his mobility. However, in late 2001, Esquivel suffered two strokes in three months. The first left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak, and the second one led to his death. He passed away on January 3, 2002, four days after the second stroke in his home in Jiutepec, Morelos, Mexico. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Nelson Riddle was quite possibly the greatest arranger in the history of American popular music. Over the course of his long and distinguished career, he was also a popular soundtrack composer, a conductor, a trombonist, and an occasional hitmaker in his own right. He worked with many of the major pop vocalists of his day, but it was his... [+] Read More

Nelson Riddle was quite possibly the greatest arranger in the history of American popular music. Over the course of his long and distinguished career, he was also a popular soundtrack composer, a conductor, a trombonist, and an occasional hitmaker in his own right. He worked with many of the major pop vocalists of his day, but it was his immortal work with Frank Sinatra, particularly on the singer's justly revered Capitol concept albums, that cemented Riddle's enduring legacy. Riddle was a master of mood and subtlety, and an expert at drawing out a song's emotional subtext. He was highly versatile in terms of style, mood, and tempo, and packed his charts full of rhythmic and melodic variations and rich tonal colors that blended seamlessly behind the lead vocal line. He often wrote specifically for individual vocalists, keeping their strengths and limitations in mind and pushing them to deliver emotionally resonant performances. As such, Riddle was perfectly suited to the task of framing vocal interpreters, as opposed to just singers; he was most in sync with the more nuanced and artistically ambitious vocalists, like Sinatra. Riddle knew how to lay back and bring certain lyrics or vocal subtleties to the forefront, and how to add countermelodies that emphasized other lyrics, or made important transitions. He could draw the listener in with catchy embellishments, challenge them with adventurous harmonies, and build to climaxes that faded into surprisingly restrained endings. In short, Riddle was everything a top-notch singer could ask for.

Nelson Smock Riddle was born June 1, 1921, in Oradell, NJ. His father was an amateur musician who performed in a local band, and Riddle learned classical piano as a child, later switching to trombone at age 14. Debussy and Ravel were favorites early on, though he also listened to pop music and big-band swing. In 1940, he joined Jerry Wald's dance orchestra as trombonist and arranger; the following year, he moved on to Charlie Spivak's band, leaving to join the merchant marine in 1943. Exiting the service, he spent 1944-1945 as a trombonist with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, also writing a couple of arrangements ("Laura," "I Should Care"). In 1946, he returned to the New York area, where he arranged for big bands like the Elgart Brothers and Elliot Lawrence. By year's end, however, he had decided to relocate to Los Angeles, where he landed a job as an arranger for Bob Crosby. From there he moved on to become a staff arranger at NBC Radio in 1947, also composing background music for dramatic programs, and continued to study arranging and conducting with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Victor Young.

Riddle caught his first big break when Les Baxter recruited him to ghostwrite a few arrangements for Nat King Cole. One of Riddle's efforts, "Mona Lisa," became Cole's biggest hit ever in 1950 (though it was credited to Baxter). "Too Young" was another huge success in 1951, and Cole hired Riddle as his primary arranger; that relationship would endure for over a decade and produce classics like "Unforgettable." In 1952, Riddle wrote an arrangement of "The Blacksmith Blues" for Ella Mae Morse that turned even more heads at Capitol; soon, the label hired him on as an in-house arranger.

When Frank Sinatra signed with Capitol in 1953, the label encouraged him to work with the up-and-coming Riddle; Sinatra was reluctant, initially wanting to remain loyal to his chief Columbia arranger, Axel Stordahl. He soon recognized the freshness of Riddle's approach, however, and eventually came to regard Riddle as his most sympathetic collaborator. The first song they cut together was "I've Got the World on a String," and as Sinatra moved into the LP format, Riddle became a hugely important collaborator. Sinatra wanted to record conceptually unified albums that created consistent moods, and Riddle's arrangements had to draw out the emotional subtext of the material Sinatra chose. Riddle's work was alternately romantic (the 10" LPs Songs for Young Lovers and Swing Easy), desolate and intimate (In the Wee Small Hours, Only the Lonely), or confident and hard-swinging (Songs for Swingin' Lovers!, A Swingin' Affair!). The results were some of the finest and most celebrated albums in the history of popular music.

Capitol signed Riddle as an artist in his own right during the early '50s; leading his own orchestra, he recorded a series of albums (upward of ten) geared for the easy listening audience. In 1956, he scored a breakout hit single with "Lisbon Antigua," an instrumental of European origin that climbed all the way to number one on the pop charts. The follow-up "Port au Prince" made the Top 20, as did two albums, 1957's Hey...Let Yourself Go! and 1958's C'mon...Get Happy!. Plus, his 1958 composition "Cross Country Suite" won him his first Grammy. As the '50s wore on, Riddle got increasingly involved in the motion picture industry, thanks in part to Sinatra; he worked on the scores for the Sinatra films Johnny Concho (1956), Pal Joey (1957), A Hole in the Head (1959), and Come Blow Your Horn (1963), plus the Rat Pack vehicles Ocean's Eleven (1960) and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). Branching out into other film projects, he worked on the W.C. Handy biopic St. Louis Blues (1958) and Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, and earning Oscar nominations for his scores for Li'l Abner (1959) and the Cole Porter musical Can-Can (1960). He also served as the musical director on variety shows starring Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Rosemary Clooney.

In addition to Riddle's 1950s associations with Sinatra and Cole, he wrote arrangements for -- among others -- Betty Hutton, Jimmy Wakely, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, and Judy Garland, the latter of whom turned in two of her finest interpretive albums in 1956's Judy and 1958's Judy in Love under Riddle's guidance. At the end of the decade, he began a fruitful relationship with Ella Fitzgerald, cutting two sessions with his orchestra backing her up (Ella Swings Brightly With Nelson and Ella Swings Gently With Nelson) and contributing extensively to her mammoth Songbooks series, particularly the Gershwin, Kern, and Mercer volumes. Over the course of the '60s, Riddle went on to work with the likes of Rosemary Clooney (1960's Rosie Solves the Swingin' Riddle), Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Al Martino, Johnny Mathis (1961's I'll Buy You a Star), Shirley Bassey (1962's Let's Face the Music), Billy Eckstine, Jack Jones, Eddie Fisher, Keely Smith, and many, many others. His last full album with Sinatra was 1966's Strangers in the Night, on which Riddle's feel for contemporary pop in the post-rock & roll age helped Sinatra regain his commercial standing.

Meanwhile, Riddle continued his soundtrack work, crafting some of his most notable material for television. He wrote the distinctive theme for The Untouchables in 1959, and his theme song to the series Route 66 was hugely popular, even making the pop charts when it was released as a single in 1962. Although Riddle didn't write the legendary theme song to the Batman TV series, he scored many of the individual episodes. He also worked on shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Tarzan, Emergency!, and Barnaby Jones, among others. In 1967, he signed on as musical director of the popular Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and went on to serve in a similar capacity on early-'70s variety shows hosted by Julie Andrews and Helen Reddy. He earned another Oscar nomination for his work adapting the score of Paint Your Wagon (1969), and notched his first Oscar win for the score of 1974's The Great Gatsby. Meanwhile, Riddle continued to work with Sinatra on special projects, including the singer's 1971 farewell concert at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles, and a 1974 comeback show at Madison Square Garden. As his music grew increasingly jazzy and driving, he also continued his own recording career on Sinatra's Reprise label for a time, later switching to Liberty/United Artists and a succession of smaller imprints.

By the mid-'70s, Riddle was largely retired, a combination of changing musical tastes and health problems that necessarily curtailed his activities. He emerged in the early '80s to work with Linda Ronstadt on a succession of traditional pop albums: 1983's What's New, 1984's Lush Life, and 1986's For Sentimental Reasons. The former two both earned him Grammys for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocals. Riddle's final completed project was Blue Skies, a 1985 collaboration with opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa. He passed away in Los Angeles on October 6, 1985. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Esquivel was one of the most interesting easy-listening composers of the 1950s and '60s, creating open, futuristic sonic landscapes. Part of his music's appeal is its pure campiness; "Mucha Muchacha," with its bad puns and exaggerated Latin rhythms and vocals, is hilarious. Esquivel, a collection of his "greatest hits," makes it apparent that... [+] Read More

Esquivel was one of the most interesting easy-listening composers of the 1950s and '60s, creating open, futuristic sonic landscapes. Part of his music's appeal is its pure campiness; "Mucha Muchacha," with its bad puns and exaggerated Latin rhythms and vocals, is hilarious. Esquivel, a collection of his "greatest hits," makes it apparent that the humor is at least partially intentional. Using dissonance and aural humor, along with intricately structured arrangements, Esquivel created records that were indeed "space-age bachelor pad music" -- they sounded out of this world and they swung. The music may sound dated, but it also sounds peculiarly fresh; no one made music like this then, and no one makes music like this now. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide [-] Hide

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Covering the extent of Brasil '66's output from 1966-1972, Four Sider is the best available retrospective for those new to Mendes' successful Brazilian pop outfit (the 45-song Very Best of Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 offers a more comprehensive, yet potentially daunting overview). Typical of the band's original albums, Four Sider includes a mix... [+] Read More

Covering the extent of Brasil '66's output from 1966-1972, Four Sider is the best available retrospective for those new to Mendes' successful Brazilian pop outfit (the 45-song Very Best of Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 offers a more comprehensive, yet potentially daunting overview). Typical of the band's original albums, Four Sider includes a mix of Brazilian material and '60s pop hits. Also on display is Mendes' winning blend of bossa nova rhythms and lounge-a-go-go elements (churning organ riffs and rock basslines), complimented by a variety of percussion, airy vocal harmonies, and his own jazz-informed keyboard contributions and horn charts. Highlights include renditions of the Beatles' "Nowhere Man" and Joni Mitchell's "Chelsea Morning," in addition to several Brazilian hits, like Jorge Ben's "Mais Que Nada" and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Wave." Other Brazilian luminaries are represented as well, including Edu Lobo, Dori Caymmi, and Oscar Neves, not to mention Mendes himself ("Look Around"). Wrapping up the set are a few Brasil '77 cuts, which spotlight the post-bossa nova sounds of tropicalismo (Ben's "Pais Tropical" and Mendes' "Promise of a Fisherman"). This is a fine collection; one that shows Mendes wasn't simply another space-age bachelor, but an innovative musician and arranger as well. ~ Stephen Cook, All Music Guide [-] Hide

All the high points from the ten-year dominance of Alpert and the Tijuana Brass; includes "A Taste of Honey," "Spanish Flea," and others. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide

All the high points from the ten-year dominance of Alpert and the Tijuana Brass; includes "A Taste of Honey," "Spanish Flea," and others. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide [-] Hide