I'll have to check that one out. Yes he did his own choral arranging back then which Percy Faith did not always in those days. Faith would do the orchestration but then get Ray Charles (of the Ray Charles Singers) or someone like that to write the choral work. Don't know if you are familiar with the Mitch Miller Sing Along With Mitch series of LPs from that era which was also a TV show in the states for a few years in the early 60s. The rhythm section you hear on a lot of those was influenced by Conniff's approach.
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Which Beautiful/Easy Listening Orchestras Were Better or Worse Than Others and Why
- Thread starter cc333
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Thank you, I had wanted to comment on Lawrence Welk. You have to hand it to him for leading a traveling dance band for almost 25 years and then settling down at the Aragon Ballroom in 1951 for 35 years on TV ar first from KTLA and then on ABC . In the late 1950s he had one of the most popular shows on American TV. Even the audiophiles tuned in because about 1958 it was one of the earliest shows broadcast in stereo. My parents watched it so I grew up with it from age maybe 8 or 9. I did not much care for it but he was not the fool that so many commentators liked to paint him. He knew what he was doing and he knew the score. I preferred more exciting , enveloping orchestral music and he was leading primarily a dance band. Now I count especially his "champagne music" style quite wonderful - light and airy and bubbly and upbeat. On TV they always did a couple of champagne-style numbers each week and at the end of the show he would dance with the ladies in the audience. His string section was OK for the show but too small for the kind of music that say Percy Faith played. Because he was on TV his LPs and singles sold, like it was with Liberace in the 50s,and he had a number of hit records in the 50s and early 60s. Sometimes covering popular hit records and out-selling them. All well-played but I never found them very inspiring. At least on TV. Same on LP - I have listened to a number of them and found them no more than pleasant at best. But as I said many years later I came to like and enjoy his champagne style of dance music but only occasionally and 15 minutes at a time.
I have a fondness for RCA's "Living" series (Living Strings, Living Voices, Living Guitars, etc.). Sadly the vast majority of it has never been officially re-released in digital form. Here's a sample from one of their last new albums, from 1980:
What do you recall David about the Ed Peters formats? I was never fortunate enough to hear them either back in the day or on airchecks. I have heard them criticized for being "old-fashioned" but he certainly got some mileage out of his "Two of Us" and updated it though later it seems he concentrated more of his other offerings. Were his three hour shows to be run sequentially reel after reel? Did he still have the spoken portions on the half hour? Did he have a Spanish language version or did your people do a translation? Thank you for acknowledging what Marlin and Phil and Jim did re segues. Phil Stout spent a LOT OF TIME on them and in their earlier years Schulke listened to and passed on each hour of programming. The higher SRP price tag was related more to the care they felt they had put into creating them than the frequency of replacement reels. Or that is my understanding. Later they were replacing some only seasonally and then by the later 70s just before the ARB Spring and Fall sweeps. The repetitions of selections they built into the format so that 19% of what was played , especially the more contemporary titles, consisted of selections that would be heard again within a few hours in other quarter hour segments. They did get some complaints about the repetition as people listening to the segments would unconsciously memorize the order which they had to deal with. And after the sale to Cox in the last few years they were obliged to employ a woman whose job it was minimize any repetition. Which sort of raised hell with what had been their original concepts. In the 1960s most Beautiful stations AM and many FM copied for quarter hour programming what Mclendon's people git from Charles Payne at KIXL - big sweeping orchestral followed by a vocal followed by a combo or soloist followed by a large orchestral - or some such variation over and over all day with little change. Thus to the random access menu when it was put on tape. But even programmers who did not use this common practice such as Marlin Taylor thought and kept track of their selection repertoire in their minds by such categories though they used much more sophisticated elements internal to the selections to create the flow. Which involved carrying so many selections in one's memory. And it was Marlin who pioneered this on FM - in 1967 he was programming not just by day parts or by tempo flow or quarter hour segments but around the clock in day and two-day sweeps which continued OVER THE QUARTER HOUR BREAKS which just cut in to the over-all flow. What became Schulke's "matched flow" (oh did he really borrow that term from pump and carburetor technology?) was their method of approximating or synthesizing and making more flexible what Marlin was doing. Many are unaware that what Stout and Schulke did came in large part from Marlin Taylor or was their take on what Marlin was doing. Schulke spent many hours with Taylor and Taylor gave him much valuable help in setting up and understanding the format. I would say that 70% of Stout and Schulke came from or was inspired by or a variation of what Taylor had worked out. And of course Stout had worked for Taylor at WDVR. Jim Schulke wanted Taylor to program for QMI Music Service which became SRP but Taylor didn't want to do it so recommended Stout. In the Beautiful Music format on FM from the mid 60s no question that Marlin Taylor was the central figure and primary mover and innovator. Though Schulke got the credit simply because he was a more effective salesman. Both Stout and Taylor stood by the matched flow idea as the most effective presentation for this music. And Bill Wertz, Tom Churchill, and Rich Wood (TM Programming in the 70s) all believed in matched flow. Though most stations opted eventually for random select because it was more flexible and they could more alter it to include their own selections so matched flow more and more disappeared from the airwaves as the 80s wore on. Interesting application of matched flow early on was what John DeWitt did with The Young Sound of CBS in 1966 - 68 which was also marketed to affiliates as well as some non-affiliates. Though they allowed stations to run the segments piecemeal if they do chose.
Lots of great music on those. Ethel Gabriel was the producer. Johnny Douglas, Chucho Zarzosa, Anita Kerr were fine artists. Can't even count how many times over the years I have listened to Music of the Sea. The Douglas intro to Ebb Tide still gives me goosebumps after 65 years. Much used on radio and by syndicators.
Are you writing of Beautiful Music? I don't know about that. It was pretty erotic in the 60s if you were young and married and in love. And Gleason's recordings never formed its "backbone" though certainly they were used and sold extremely well in the 50s and 60s. You understand back then a lot of the slow and lush stuff really did help to relax and put in the proper mood many women who were high-string or burdened. And even for my generation (early baby-boomers) it was love-making music. So long as you didn't have to get up and turn over the record! By the time for that hopefully you were otherwise engaged.
I'm mid-Baby Boom (born 1956). My mileage varied. If I'd put on KBIG, KOST or KJOY with a girl, a lot of stuff would never have happened.
In fact, most of them would have looked at me and said your screenname.
What a sexist thing to say
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Taken out of context ... maybe.
But in the context of discussing the late Jackie Gleason's music, the description is appropriate. His music was designed to soothe frazzled nerves; that is, anyone who was high-strung or otherwise overwhelmed emotionally.
And his music was, as we have pretty much agreed, resonated with female listeners to a greater degree than males.
So to say, as Dick did, that "a lot of the slow and lush stuff really did help to relax and put in the proper mood many women who were high-strung or burdened" is fairly accurate.
"Music for the Two of Us" was not "matched flow". It was the usual 4-reel system that had tempo controlled reels and vocals mixed at random.
It was no different, other than the way the EOM cues were placed to cause an "overlap" rather than song-to-song separation.
They found a voiceover person in SoCal who did the liners in Spanish. We had to approve the translations, as the first ones we got were in Mexican Spanish. I also wrote hundreds of our own.
I was unaware of how the system worked internally, and that was quite interesting. For a while one of my competitors ran Bonneville, but their music was very "soft and traditional" compared to Peters and, later, FM 100. In those years, 1975-1978, we found that a service that had a lot more versions of Top 40 songs and less standards in newer orchestrations to fit our market. With FM 100, we added a reel that played two to three times an hour with Latin American "big songs" in instrumental versions.
And a really nice person. I have corresponded with him over the years.
As I recall, Shulke and Bonneville required live talent in studio doing the outros and intros and any local PSAs and the like in the top markets. The matched flow was more expensive, as there were more reels rotated and a bigger library size at each station.
When I syndicated "Música en Flor" we had a library of 120 "reels" and we sent out 6 replacement reels 22 times a year. That meant about 140 hours of music, and with random start times (I was the only one that required starts at different cut points on a "reel") there were millions of possible sets that could be generated.
Not familiar with that.. care to describe?
Thank you for your very gracious answers to things I have been curious about for a long time.
The Young Sound was CBS Radio's response to the FCC's 1964 FM 50% non-duplication ruling. The idea of admin Wm D Greene and programmed by John DeWitt who had worked at WRVR FM. As a result all 7 of the network's FM stations joined the NAFMB and eventually ran it for at least a couple to a few years. Surprised you are not familiar with it as it got a big build-up before and when it was launched Sept 1966. The idea was to offer a youthful, lively, more contemporary approach to good music FM programming. Seems to have been modeled to some extent on what Charles Whitaker and Lynn Christian were doing at WPIX FM from the Fall of 1964. Actually Christian and Whitaker marketed it in the South and Southwest had the franchise for that area - when they left WPIX. Greene and DeWitt were going for modern and lively and hip and "with it" but tasteful respectable. Not rock but pop-rock. Easy listening rock. I would consider it was Beautiful Music as it was 75% to 60 % instrumental. A pop approach to rock music. Contemporary pop hits and instrumental versions of what the kids were listening to. Lot of Tom Jones, Pet Clark, Nancy Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, Bachrach, Tony Hatch, Tijuana Brass, Brass Ring, orchestral treatments of youth hits by Faith, Mantovani, guitar instrumentals by Billy Strange , The Ventures, etc. You will remember that CBS at the time had an interest in Fender Guitar. Quite interestingly put together in obviously carefully-constructed quarter hour segments that even included measured silence over which local messages and ads were to be aired though I would suspect many stations merely injected their own. Not on category reels. Seem to have included back titling at the end of each segment. It was marketed to affiliates and other stations as well in markets where affiliates were not interested. They solicited agencies for advertising so may have carried commercials eventually as well. About 20 stations bought it. Besides the network O and Os which ran it. I never heard it in the 60s as far as I can recall but have heard extended recordings made from stations at the time. Library was 120 to 180 hour reels and 20 replacement hour every two weeks. 18 hrs daily programming to be run if desired 24/7 though most stations early on used it 15 to 18 hrs a day. Was also in stereo I think. More expensive at the time than what say IGM and Alto Fonic were offering. I guess it did well on a couple of stations but this was before FM had lots of listeners and most customers gave it up after two or three years. Very few standards in the programming and those in very updated versions which seems surprising as the target age group born between 1931 and 1946 would have grown up hearing standards. Number of hit vocals increased after Greene left the company and from 1969 it began shading into prog rock and folk. I have been told by listeners that about that time some of the CBS FMs began doing more prog-style programming with live DJs and only running The Young Sound overnights. Some stations were still using it as late as 1972 though I think DeWitt was only employed by CBS until sometime in 1971. They moved the base of his operations from WCBS to WBBM in 1970. Very tight and careful sequencing including overlaps and many times a selection starts on the same note the previous one ended with. Attention to mood consistency. Based upon what I have heard I would say at least some many rather colorless instrumentals weakened the interest. David McCallum the actor had an instrumental LP out which they featured!?
In 1966, I owned station in various markets in Ecuador, and my contact with the US was based on getting Broadcasting by surface mail and Billboard with a very expensive (about $400 in 60's dollars or S/. 8,000 to me) air mail subscription to Billboard. So some of those things, if not extensively covered, flew right over me.
I could go back to those and other publications, but in the 60's the format based on "101 Strings" was mostly called "good music". I don't know who or what station introduced the term "Beautiful Music" and made it stick. I had a "good music" station, Ecuador's (and northern South America's) first FM, in 1966 and my guides were stations like WVCG/WYOR (I think I got that right) in Coral Gables which I'd hear when going to or through Miami to buy parts or in transit to visit family or to go to Europe.
Among fave orchestral artists I would include Kostelanetz 1940 through 1967, almost anything Percy Faith did, anything Robert Farnon made, Wally Stott/Angela Morley, Johnny Douglas Living Strings and under his own name, Michel Legrand, Mantovani, Geo Melachrino 40s and early 50s and the stuff he recorded the last couple of years of his life, Peter Yorke who did some absolutely wonderful recordings for BBC transcriptions early and mid 60s, Morton Gould, selected Paul Mauriat, selected Frank DeVol, John Scott Trotter, the German 101 Strings, Winterhalter, Montenegro - these latter artists I enjoy some of their recordings but not everything they did.
My criteria has been are they satisfying musical, do they make sense, are they interesting to listen to, do they tell a story, are they suitable expressions of a song's lyrics, and so on. I guess I have always listened much the way I do to Classical or concert music and expect the same of pop music recordings. I want to be delighted and inspired, excited and sometimes even thrilled. Though have been capable of listening sometimes just as background. Though usually my attention had always been drawn to whatever music I hear. I want them to make me feel good and improve my day.
Well many of the American Beautiful Music stations would claim their own or their syndicator's "orchestra" but they didn't really exist. Some syndicators did make custom orchestral and combo instrumental recordings of current and recent pop titles including TM using studio musicians hired by the recording date. TM made perhaps two dozen from 1973 to 1977 using Los Angeles studio musicians or perhaps Dallas musicians, but everything else you would have heard on there came from commercial recordings or in the 80s custom recordings made for the IBMA group of stations which got together to record Beautiful Music titles - TM belonged to that for several years. The 70s format your station ran was programmed by Rich Wood in Dallas who modernized and updated the original format which Wayne Mack had created for WDOK FM Cleveland in the late 60s and which TM acquired the rights to market.
Oh yes Ted and Betty Niarhos. Legendary stations. Preceded and competed with SRP-programmed WLYF FM. Lynn Christian worked for them. Researching the term "beautiful music" I have found that some stations used that term for such formats, or programs featuring such music, which in those days included as well light classical, going back through the 1940s. But that term came into general use within the business only in the early 1960s when Gordon McLendon characterized the format featured on his very successful KABL Oakland as "beautiful music" in 1959. And it within a few years caught on. As stations were trying to emulate his success at that station which was a version of what his friend Lee Segall had been doing at KIXL Dallas for 10 years. You will recall that in those days many shied away from highly rhythmic and youth-oriented music as "tasteless" so stations looked for alternatives for getting over without resorting to it which they found in the success of KABL.
Speaking of which - are there any excerpts from your 80s Musica format available for listening on Youtube etc.?
Haha I guess depended upon the person. Being 9 years older people my age were exposed to all the instrumental music on radio in the 60s and early 60s as well as recordings our parents and friends had which was just part of our growing up. But I guess depended on the person. I can remember once - don't know if we should be discussing this on here - through the second act of Massenet's Werther on the radio. Quite memorable.
I meant to write "high-strung" and was not trying to suggest that women were high-strung in general but only referring to those I thought who were in my experience. And in the 1960s and early 70s to mid 70s when many of us were more active. Mea culpa but maybe unavoidable in anything referring to sex.
But they didn't "evolve" into it - they just changed to go for a younger audience more advertisers would support. Some stations tried to their change to the listening public as an "evolution" in order to soft-pedal it but as soon as the vocals came to outnumber the instrumentals the Beautiful Music radio audience was gone. They hoped to attract a younger more general audience instead. I can't say I knew any listeners who went to AC. Some of us made our own collections of LPs and CDS etc. and some listened to Adult Standards radio but most turned their radios off and never listened to them again for the rest of their lives. Would guess some also tuned in to News/Talk. But the former music audience was gone. It was actually quite significant. I mean the way radio closed the door on the older adult audience in the late 80s and early 90s. Since 1990 in listening to radio I have made do the only Classical and occasionally Christian stations. As far as terrestrial radio is concerned. After a while a lot of Beautiful turned up on the Internet beginning around 2000 but many former listeners did not own computers or were not tech-savvy so never were able to enjoy them.
His recording of This Boy (Ringo's Theme) on the original Hard Day's Night soundtrack album was very big in the dormitory at school when released as a single in Summer 1964.
Beautiful stations were always part of MOR radio, just featuring instrumentals music rather than vocal music. So your 60s MORs in general would do half to three-quarters vocals where in Beautiful radio it would be &5% instrumental. The artists were the same. On AM radio. Later on - what you are referring to in the 1980s the younger agency time buyers did not much enjoy Beautiful Music and many did not understand its appeal so more shied away from buying time on such stations which catered to older audiences. So stations began adding more vocals hoping to attract younger demos. KYND programmed by SRP in 1983 went from c. 11% vocals to 17% vocals. KODA which was using Marlin Taylor's Bonneville format went from about 17% to sometimes 36%. Interestingly when Taylor started at WDVR FM in 1963 he was programming only 7% vocals and most of them choral which shows you how things changed.