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Which Beautiful/Easy Listening Orchestras Were Better or Worse Than Others and Why

There's a difference between beautiful music made for beautiful music radio and instrumentals that became hits.

Bert Kaempfert to me is one of the best in the second group.

Percy Faith is one of the greats in the first group. His version of "Where Is Your Heart" is superior to Mantovani's. But Mantovani's "Charmaine" to me is the best version of that song.

Serenade Radio is an online only British station that takes listener donations. They have a great mix of what we would call adult standards and beautiful music instrumentals. Stanley Black and John Fox are just two of the beautiful music orchestras that I think do great versions of songs.
 
vchimpanzee said:
There's a difference between beautiful music made for beautiful music radio and instrumentals that became hits.
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There is, indeed. The former is pretty much designed -- and destined -- for background listening.

The latter is going to have more conscious mass appeal. To use an example from earlier in the thread by an artist you mentioned just now: I don't think "Delicato" by Percy Faith ever got significant Beautiful Music airplay (if it did, it was probably at a station that was more uptempo in morning drive). But much of the rest of his library became staples in the format.

And, as I mentioned earlier in the thread which you probably haven't read all the way through yet, Kaempfert is one of my all-time favorites, but again was not a core artist for the more background format; he was more "foreground". And there we make the distinction between what Easy Listening was vs. what Beautiful Music was.

Carry that further, and it's easier to see what the difference was between Easy Listening and the earliest Adult Contemporary formats.
 
Questions I've always had about BM/EZ stations:
  • Did they rotate current songs in and out of the playlist like popular music formats on a weekly basis? I've never seen a programming tip sheet geared toward them ("Caravelli getting spins says K-Snooze PD", "New Mantovani getting requests at WYAWN") and most are associated with automated jukebox programming anyway. It almost seemed to me that programmers could play anything they wanted as long as it didn't rock the boat.
  • The bona fide pop crossover hits from the BM/EZ ranks ("Love's Theme", "Songbird", Kaempfert and Mancini's hits), did BM/EZ stations incorporate them into their playlists when those singles were at their peaks as well?
 
Beautiful Music stations didn't care about currents. If something new fit, the syndicators would usually incorporate them into the one of the next library updates. While songs such as "Love's Theme" were staples of the format, they were just another song on a reel.

Remember, the format was background. There was more attention paid to making the presentation consistent than to when a song was recorded.

Easy Listening stations differed in individual approaches. Some did play currents, taken from Billboard's chart for same which began in 1961, others just played whatever tracks on an album that fit. A lot of them incorporated Broadway showtunes into the mix; others focused on "standards" artists like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Tony Bennett and Al Martino.
 
Chad-Stevens said:
Questions I've always had about BM/EZ stations:
  • Did they rotate current songs in and out of the playlist like popular music formats on a weekly basis? I've never seen a programming tip sheet geared toward them ("Caravelli getting spins says K-Snooze PD", "New Mantovani getting requests at WYAWN") and most are associated with automated jukebox programming anyway. It almost seemed to me that programmers could play anything they wanted as long as it didn't rock the boat.
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What K.M. said, plus:

After the mid-late 60s, the vast majority of these stations were automated with music coming in from syndicators, so local stations didn't really have input---or want it. What they were after was a turnkey product that they could then sell advertising for without worrying about a PD's ideas or a jock staff.


Chad-Stevens said:
  • The bona fide pop crossover hits from the BM/EZ ranks ("Love's Theme", "Songbird", Kaempfert and Mancini's hits), did BM/EZ stations incorporate them into their playlists when those singles were at their peaks as well?
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K.M.'s answer covered Kaempfert and Mancini---as far as the 70s stuff ("Love's Theme", "Songbird"), that likely varied from syndicator to syndicator. And there was fierce competition between Bonneville, Schulke, The FM 100 Plan, Peters Productions, and even briefly Drake-Chenault.

As I was looking for competing print ads that might highlight differences between the services, the only one I could find was from Bonneville---and it was linked to to a site run by the guy who devised their format, Marlin R. Taylor. Here's what he had to say about his philosophy:

"These stations were of the genre which became known as “beautiful music,” a term I never particularly cared for … as, to me, the station was telling the listener what the musical programming was; whereas, it was always my desire to have the listener tell us that they found it “beautiful!”

Then, add in the fact that what I programmed I did not classify as being a pure “beautiful music” sound … whereas, our major competitor, the Schulke Radio Productions musical structure was much more in that realm, being a softer, smoother, slower tempo mix.

Mentally, but never before put into print, I described what I programmed as “kick-ass beautiful music,” in that it possessed more variety in tempo, in instrumentation, a more out-front presence! In many cases, when going head-to-head with another similarly-formatted station, if our station did a good job of executing the format, our programming achieved greater listenership … as it was meant to brightens one’s life and bring joy to their heart!"
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His post, including the print ad, is here:

marlintaylor.com

Two Cities ... Two Great Stations! | Marlin Taylor

marlintaylor.com marlintaylor.com
 
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There were many flavors of Beautiful Music. They all were just reels of music, typically given a certain number such as 100, 200 or 300 series. Music libraries typically were in excess of 200 hours of music. On one end a format may be 100% instrumental with a percentage of light classical. A typical format might center more on pop hits from the past decade or so covered by an orchestra, a portion of evergreen lush songs, a group vocal each quarter hour and perhaps a combo or small group each quarter hour.

On the opposite end, some syndicators were striving to lower the age of the typical listener by being a bit more 'contemporary'. By about 1980, a format was restricting songs to the past 15-20 years, centering on top 40 songs that had beautiful music covers including small groups and orchestras with more of a Love Unlimited Orchestra Love's Theme sort of feel. 25% were vocals that might be King of the Road by Roger Miller, Leaving on a Je Plane by Peter, Paul & Mary and Feelings by Albert Morris. Again, not currents reels and such. Just 100 series, 200 series and 300 series reels with an optional 500 series of 20 reels that I am not familiar with as the station I worked didn't use the 500 series so they weren't sent to us. We got a nws reel or two weekly, mostly a reworking of the songs less a couple and adding a couple of new ones.

So, Beautiful Music was sort of like Top 40 that had a rock slant, a rhythmic slant, a 'chicken rock' slant and a pure top 40 feel.

My dad, who went from MOR and Beautiful Music to Country, was impressd with Barry White and the Love Unlimited Orchestra which was new to him in the 1990s. Beautiful Music never touched it when he was listening in the 1970s...way to rock to work.
 
Did Seeburg and Muzak Corporations do any sort of syndicating to radio stations? AFAIK, they licensed library music, commercial recordings by orchestras, and utilized their own studio orchestras to syndicate background music to businesses, so all the ingredients should have been in place to sell to radio as well.
Were either of those companies behind the FM Subcarriers that were sometimes used to distribute background music?

The latest BM/EZ airchecks to be unearthed: Bob Purse, formerly of WFMU, shares two 1968 open reel recordings of "The Young Sound" recordings of WBBM-FM Chicago.
 
Chad-Stevens said:
Did Seeburg and Muzak Corporations do any sort of syndicating to radio stations? AFAIK, they licensed library music, commercial recordings by orchestras, and utilized their own studio orchestras to syndicate background music to businesses, so all the ingredients should have been in place to sell to radio as well.
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My guess -- since that was early in FM's development and thus before I was even born -- is that they would have been protective of their direct-to-business model and therefore would not even consider providing essentially the same product to radio stations that anyone could tune into free of charge.

Chad-Stevens said:
Were either of those companies behind the FM Subcarriers that were sometimes used to distribute background music?
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It's well-documented that Muzak leased FM SCAs for their service, especially in the larger markets.

In fact, use of SCAs was Muzak's idea in the first place:
 
Around 1980, Pittsburgh still had three BM/EZ stations I was lulled to sleep with every night: WPNT-92.9, WJOI-93.7, WSHH-99.7.

I think it's easy to overlook that FM radio took over 30 years to reach complete acceptance. Economy cars into the early 1980s were still leaving the factory with AM-only radios. And it was only by the mid-80s that the transition of popular music formats in metro areas from AM to FM was nearly complete, and the BM/EZ background music format vanished from the airwaves and soon afterward from in stores.
 
Chad-Stevens said:
Around 1980, Pittsburgh still had three BM/EZ stations I was lulled to sleep with every night: WPNT-92.9, WJOI-93.7, WSHH-99.7.

I think it's easy to overlook that FM radio took over 30 years to reach complete acceptance. Economy cars into the early 1980s were still leaving the factory with AM-only radios. And it was only by the mid-80s that the transition of popular music formats in metro areas from AM to FM was nearly complete, and the BM/EZ background music format vanished from the airwaves and soon afterward from in stores.
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A lot of that depended on where you were. Los Angeles and Houston are two cities that spring to mind where the most popular stations tended to be on FM by '78 or so.

Top 40 didn't fully penetrate until the early 80s, but CHR on FM was also different in terms of presentation and energy from late 70s AM Top 40. Country lagged a bit, but not by a lot.

What killed the Beautiful/Easy Listening stations was demographics. Very few Boomers "aged into" the format. And Cox, with KOST in Los Angeles, proved that you could make the switch to a soft AC as early as '82.
 
b-turner said:
Barry White and the Love Unlimited Orchestra which was new to him in the 1990s. Beautiful Music never touched it when he was listening in the 1970s...way to rock to work.
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At my high school in the 70s we had six periods in a day, and once a week one period of one day, everyone was supposed to read for an hour wherever they would normally have had a class. I brought the newspaper from home. And one of the beautiful music stations was played over the intercom. I didn't think the other students would like it.

But this one guy was on the golf team and "Love's Theme" was played and I heard him say that was the theme from golf. I guess one of the broadcast networks used it for golf coverage.
 
michael hagerty said:
Okay, wow...Marlin Taylor was pretty much a giant in this field. Here's his story of how the syndication part of Beautiful Music began, including a great shot of Taylor standing next to KBIG, Los Angeles' automation system in 1971:

marlintaylor.com

Radio Automation ... circa 1974! | Marlin Taylor

marlintaylor.com marlintaylor.com

Marlin was also involved in SiriusXM's Escape, EnLighten and 40s Junction channels before he retired ten years ago at age 80.
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He is still a member, though not a very active one, of a Facebook group I have been a part of for seventeen years.

Log into Facebook

Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
 
vchimpanzee said:
At my high school in the 70s we had six periods in a day, and once a week one period of one day, everyone was supposed to read for an hour wherever they would normally have had a class. I brought the newspaper from home. And one of the beautiful music stations was played over the intercom. I didn't think the other students would like it.

But this one guy was on the golf team and "Love's Theme" was played and I heard him say that was the theme from golf. I guess one of the broadcast networks used it for golf coverage.
Click to expand...

I'm not a golf fan, so I didn't know, but yeah---an internet search says ABC used "Love's Theme" for its PGA Tour broadcasts in the mid-late 70s.
 
michael hagerty said:
Gleason (Jackie, not David) was not big band. It was exactly what @Bongwater and @b-turner said...the music that typified Beautiful Music radio, recorded years before anyone made a format out of it. This one's from 1952:
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But my point is that it sounded more "old style" than the new wave, set by European conductors and arrangers such as Paul Muriat. In fact, many would consider "Love is Blue" the defining sound of the "new" type of instrumental versions of contemporary songs.

Percy Faith was probably the best example of an American orchestra leader who adopted the European style. And the several "house" orchestras of the BBC jumped on the style, pushed by their additional involvement in doing theme songs and music scores for TV shows on the Bebe.
 
michael hagerty said:
I'm not a golf fan, so I didn't know, but yeah---an internet search says ABC used "Love's Theme" for its PGA Tour broadcasts in the mid-late 70s.
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Wonder how much they paid the late Barry White to license that use ...
 
K.M. Richards said:
OOPS. You caught me, Mike.

I meant to say "made money for Capitol". I should stop trying to compose coherent posts when I've been awake for less than an hour.
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I find that a triple shot espresso on my Nespresso of Alto Grande dark from Puerto Rico will get me going. That is the closest to the "cortado completo" I'd buy in Miami.
 


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