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

Excellent fellas, thank you for the additional commentary.

We restored the Living Strings catalog to PCM 16bit plus and it was not easy. At the very least, The Old Dude as he called himself had a measurable amount of intellectual property rights in it at that point. Perhaps the next step is to get back in touch at Gracenote [Shazam] and start loading this material in properly credited, or at least a place holder for those ambitious enough to stake claim on it, not seeing it in Shazam is some hoakie kind of permission slip to pay the lawyers for the copyright.

Haha, you know this is fast becoming yet another form of legal fraud, not unlike patent-trolls. Yuck


Thank fellas have a great day.
 
Yet another example of the state of confusion and inconsistency we are seeing of recent. Just to be clear, I am citing examples that are not about infalliblity of the Shazam AI, mistakes that it can make in identification. It looks for patterns, it must have a reference pattern of the song in order to match it.

These examples are deliberate on original arrangements by who? (new?) copyrights, or whatever, nothing to do with Gracenote.

If I Shazam: Franck Pourcel - Make It With You
Album: Too Beautiful To Last
Label: Capitol Records – SM-11906
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: US
Released: 1979

I get this:
www.shazam.com

By the Sea - 임예진: Song Lyrics, Music Videos & Concerts

Listen to By the Sea by 임예진. See lyrics and music videos, find 임예진 tour dates, buy concert tickets, and more!
www.shazam.com www.shazam.com

Owner: 임예진
Album: Home of Golden Poem(Teacher, Let's Get Wet in the Rain, Happy)
Copyright: 오아시스레코드 뮤직컴퍼니

AI is only going to make all of this far worse.
I added the Pourcel track found on the link below in an attempt to argue.



 
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Erik Lindgren said:
Looking back at all this material listening to it now my preference:

SRP late 70s both BBC, and their own commissions. Those guys, Bernard Ebbinghous, Norrie Paramor, John Fox, David Francis (London Strings), golly that is nice stuff. I know why it was kept away from public sale, radio business models at that time, sure it was genius; but darn it all we lost out on a huge fan base that would live on today in my worthless opinion.

Greater Media’s Beautiful Hits, in my opinion the Sbarra/Gregory/Barber material is what SRP would have made into the 80s if such had been done. The qualities so enduring in the BBC and Paramor/Fox/Douglas fashion, they live on in those arrangements all the way into Ingman and Eales.

As big as Bonneville was the Million Dollar Sound “keeping up” with the times is a little too soft rock for me. More smooth-jazz, I like the quality of the early DeAzevedo material, especially 82-84, it became to synthesized for me in the late 80s. The 90s Ultra stuff, Valentino, Blom, Vanacore, and so forth is really not beautiful music, It lost its original meaning, and chased the original audience off that never really wanted it, and the old fellas were left to street for pickup it seemed. I get it, back in 1990 it was urgent at the time, I just wish radio was a different medium not so dependent on change to be financially responsible. We needed Spotify in 1983. Bonneville did greatly obviously and Marlin is an awesome friend and it’s so nice to correspond with him. The Fox late 80s material is astonishing, kept him recording and that was nothing short of a gift. I always enjoyed talking to John Fox, he and his wife Joy were amazing people.

My old friend said it right, when everyone removed the group-vocals that was too bad. Some of those like my mother used to say when I was little boy in 1980, “preachy”, but not all were and frankly today listening to them now, excellent stuff. Mike Sammes, Midas Touch, Neil Richardson, Encore, it’s great. A very important part of the sound that made us come back for more. It’s kept me on this quest since it all went away where I lived in Iowa around 1986 as a 10 year old. You programmers reached me, touched my soul, and I am never letting go of it.

Thank you guys for keeping the music in discussion alive. I am trying to share what I can on YouTube and Archive.net, it’s a load of work and a huge burden in my mobile data plan. But I keep adding more artifacts.

God bless you all.

Erik

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We can identify what would come to be known as "beautiful music" formatted radio stations going back to KIXL AM and FM in 1948. And before that we can identify radio programs devoted to that kind of material going back to at least the Second World War which is when enough of that material was available commercially and on ETs marketed to radio stations to make up a program of an hour to three hours of such primarily orchestral material. Most of them combined it with Semi-Classical fare. As did many "Classical" radio programs live or recorded. Before that it originated on network "good music" shows which offered operatic, folk, light classical, Operetta, Broadway and popular material both sung and played in orchestral versions. Such as those conducted by Nathaniel Shilkret, Harry Horlick, Frank Black, Andre Kostelanetz, Meredith Willson, Morton Gould and others going back to the late 1920s. Orchestral and instrumental music was often as much as half or more of these programs, some of which continued on the networks through 1957 - 1958. Many of the original Beautiful Music radio fans were listeners who had enjoyed these network programs through the years. So one of the things which beautiful Music offered was a bit of the old more formal network programming. And it is interesting that as a radio genre Beautiful Music really took off in the late 1950s after such network good music programming had left off. After Marlin Taylor and Phil Stout got hold of it - well then it was further changed to become more intimate and less rousing and brassy than it sometimes became previously in the 1960s as I remember it on stations such as WBOS Boston and WPAT NYC.
 
davideduardo said:
From the Bay Area Radio Museum at KABL 960 AM San Francisco, CA | Bay Area Radio Museum & Hall of

"KABL came into being in May 1960, when legendary Dallas broadcaster Gordon McLendon added the Bay Area to his stable of major market radio holdings. He purchased venerable Oakland station KROW from Sheldon F. Sackett, publisher of the Oakland-based Olympic Press weekly newspaper for $800,000 and set out to shake things up."

I heard that stunting in Cleveland, and what is not mentioned are the goofy ads for things like war surplus destroyers and tanks.
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May 1959. What came to be known as McLendon's "exotics" were actually invented and developed by his employees in Dallas and San Antonio 1956 - 1958, including Ed Winton, Chuck Blore, Don Keyes and others just fooling around.
 
Dick's History said:
May 1959. What came to be known as McLendon's "exotics" were actually invented and developed by his employees in Dallas and San Antonio 1956 - 1958, including Ed Winton, Chuck Blore, Don Keyes and others just fooling around.
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McLendon knew who to hire and how to get them to do ratings-winning things. He did not invent Top 40 (if anyone did, it was Todd Storz) but he put together groups of people who could do more than just copying a jukebox. He made the Top 40 concept work first in Dallas, Houston, San Anontio, El Paso and then Shreveport, Louisville and other places. He did not have a great an impact in Buffalo, Los Angeles and Chicago, but he should first be known for his ability to attract talented programming staff members.
 
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My first and favorite, probably because of my earliest exposure to the sound when I was a youngster is John Gregory.

I really like his commercial stuff with all that brass, (Cascading Strings) and it was the Greater Media projects that really caught my attention as a 10 year old in 1983 listening in on a Kalamusic station in Iowa. One in particular stands out to me, added below, I think if Schulkie continued to create new music into the 80s, I believe Gregory’s sound so elegantly captures the soft-rock sound without compromising the dynamics of a full orchestra. Gregory would have surely replaced Paramor after his untimely passing as SRP and, BBC’s maestro of easy listening.

John Fox obviously is a top contender but for truly MOR, Gregory forged the way. This guy was talented, they all were but like Tony Osborne, another we lost early to illness, same deal some of these guys, Nick Ingman included just got it. John Fox, widely known as the grand master of the Easy Listening sound who in his own words told me he mentored with Paul Fenhoulet and worked with Norrie Paramor. We lucked out on these, especially since they have been archived. Awesome stuff. Cherish it fellas. Never again.

I corresponded with John Gregory a few times and he was always a gentleman and was so eager to have his Greater Media projects we sent him. Great folks!

 
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Johnny Douglas, this guy, he really blows my mind.

As all of you know an extensive career for decades and his SRP/BBC work is incredible. Too many to share here, but some truly analog masterpieces, simply beautiful. Thank you to Phil and Jim for commissioning these incredible masterpieces by so many talented artists, wow!
 
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Erik Lindgren said:
John Fox obviously is a top contender but for truly MOR, Gregory forged the way. This guy was talented, they all were but like Tony Osborne, another we lost early to illness, same deal some of these guys, Nick Ingman included just got it. John Fox, widely known as the grand master of the Easy Listening sound who in his own words told me he mentored with Paul Fenhoulet and worked with Norrie Paramor. We lucked out on these, especially since they have been archived. Awesome stuff. Cherish it fellas. Never again.
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We are missing those who I think were the greatest of all. Let’s start with the artists from French Delphine Records and the two ORIGINAL (not cover) composers de Senneville and Toussaint and artists like Clayderman, Goya, de Angeles and Borelli. Then there were orchestras like Caravelli that had originals as well as covers of mostly European hits (predominantly from France and Italy). Much of that was musically superior to the cover culture of England and, thus, the U.S.

Unfortunately, the songs by those artists produced for product on sale in North America consisted mostly of the 100th instrumental version of “yesterday“ and brought nothing novel and exciting to the format. There simply was not a programming culture that easily accepted, original songs rather than those overdone covers.
 
@davideduardo Indeed.

There's also Franck Pourcel of France, whose rendition of "Acceleration Waltz" I like very much (Frank Chacksfield (?) has an OK version too, recorded somewhat earlier in his career I think, before he was relegated to mostly pumping out covers of US hits).

There's also bunches of others we don't know about because that information's been misplaced (if not outright lost).

Which reminds me. I was going to make a new thread for it, but I'll put it here for now: I have found several Bonneville reels posted online and I'm going through them trying to determine all the artist and title stuff so I know what they are.

I've managed to find most of them so far, but I have a bunch of unknowns. If anyone with the know-how would be willing to help me fill in those unknown blanks (a few of them sound familiar, but I can't remember anything about them), I'd appreciate it very much.

c
 
You know, after writing all that I think I might turn it off. It’s a lot of work sharing all this. So far I’ve had some kind support but overall it’s been silent. The reactions like “I found it online someplace” as if it’s some easy random task to plop this stuff out there bothers me. I have been harvesting these materials since the early 1990s and worked with others that have been since before that. One friend told me; for your ears only, he was right. Keep to yourself, in the end the appreciation for this effort will go unappreciated. No one cares, it’s just human nature.

This is a wonderful forum, thank you for the opportunity to share and learn from you all. It’s a privilege. Thank you David, and please write down as much as you can about your amazing career.

Thank you guys.
 
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cc333 said:
@davideduardo Indeed.

There's also Franck Pourcel of France, whose rendition of "Acceleration Waltz" I like very much (Frank Chacksfield (?) has an OK version too, recorded somewhat earlier in his career I think, before he was relegated to mostly pumping out covers of US hits).
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He did that for the North American market. For France and Europe, he did content based on European hits, mostly from France and Italy with a bit from Spain.
 
Erik Lindgren said:
This is a wonderful forum, thank you for the opportunity to share and learn from you all. It’s a privilege. Thank you David, and please write down as much as you can about your amazing career.
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There is a bio with pics, ratings and the like at www.davidgleason.com.
 
Erik Lindgren said:
You know, after writing all that I think I might turn it off. It’s a lot of work sharing all this. So far I’ve had some kind support but overall it’s been silent. The reactions like “I found it online someplace” as if it’s some easy random task to plop this stuff out there bothers me. I have been harvesting these materials since the early 1990s and worked with others that have been since before that. One friend told me; for your ears only, he was right. Keep to yourself, in the end the appreciation for this effort will go unappreciated. No one cares, it’s just human nature.

This is a wonderful forum, thank you for the opportunity to share and learn from you all. It’s a privilege. Thank you David, and please write down as much as you can about your amazing career.

Thank you guys.
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Have you ever listened to serenade-radio.com? I don't know where they get their instrumentals but there are a lot of them.

I just heard Neil Richardson's "Moonglow" and it was great.

Only one show is devoted to "beautiful instrumentals", Simon McLean's from 7 to 8 Eastern. That's A.M. and P.M., by the way. Most of the weekday shows are repeated 12 hours later. Jane Markham's "Quiet Hour" from 1 to 2 Eastern seems to be down to two days a week, Monday and Tuesday. She also has a lot of instrumentals.
 


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