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58 years of Beautiful Music comes to an end

vchimpanzee said:
I read somewhere that the reason I like "Java" so much is that Captain Kangaroo used it.
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So much for introspection...

The best I can do is admit that at one point I used to like "Sugar, Sugar".
 
vchimpanzee said:
WERT today has also played "Last Date" by Floyd Cramer and "United" by Music Makers.
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Not sure if "Last Date" was ever a staple of Beautiful Music stations, but I remember bits of it being played often on KLRA Little Rock in the late '70s as top-of-the-hour filler before the CBS network news when the DJs would come up short in their shows' music scheduling.
 
CTListener said:
Not sure if "Last Date" was ever a staple of Beautiful Music stations, but I remember bits of it being played often on KLRA Little Rock in the late '70s as top-of-the-hour filler before the CBS network news when the DJs would come up short in their shows' music scheduling.
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It is a common song on standards radio.
 
DavidEduardo said:
And the world-wide biggest instrumental hit of that era, Paul Mauriat's Love is Blue. That was the only song recorded in France to become #1 in the US, and sold something like 20 million copies world-wide. The only instrumental to sell more was Richard Clayderman's Ballade pour Adeline which did 22 million, but was not a huge US hit despite it's immense popularity in the rest of the world.
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DavidEduardo said:
Huge, if you programmed Beautiful Music (I did, for about 70 stations in Latin America)

The difference is that Kaempfert had more of a "big band" sound and some cuts even had a bit of a jazz influence. Mantovanni sounded more orchestral in the sense it as fuller and did not feature solo instruments as much... more 50's and early 60's in style.

Percy Faith was a mainstay of US "good music" and "Beautiful Music" formats as he early on adopted the policy of doing covers of Top 40 hits. He was not a singles artist.

The biggest of all is Frank Pourcel. Mainstay of US instrumental stations, and at the forefront of the format outside the US, along with Paul Mauriat and others like Caravelli, James Last, and, later, the "French Invasion" of Clayderman and Borelli and the rest of the Dauphan label artists.
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It's interesting that Richard Clayderman is very popular with folks from south of the border, but hardly known here in the US among the non Hispanic population.

On another note, many people don't know that the late German bandleader Bert Kaempfert was not only a great composer, but many of his arrangements were positively unique: he used voices as instruments, creating an incredibly smooth sound.
Also I think it's odd that Kaempfert never covered (to my knowledge) any of the Beatles tunes. He was, after all, essentially their manager prior to Brian Epstein, and had much to do with what would be their future success.
 
TomásEstefan said:
On another note, many people don't know that the late German bandleader Bert Kaempfert was not only a great composer, but many of his arrangements were positively unique: he used voices as instruments, creating an incredibly smooth sound.
Also I think it's odd that Kaempfert never covered (to my knowledge) any of the Beatles tunes. He was, after all, essentially their manager prior to Brian Epstein, and had much to do with what would be their future success.
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I believe his work with The Beatles was as producer for their demonstration records made for Decca Records which failed to get them signed to Decca Records.
 
johnbasalla said:
I believe his work with The Beatles was as producer for their demonstration records made for Decca Records which failed to get them signed to Decca Records.
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I'm probably crazy, but I thought I read somewhere that it was Kaempfert who actually introduced them to George Martin over at EMI......
 
TomásEstefan said:
I'm probably crazy, but I thought I read somewhere that it was Kaempfert who actually introduced them to George Martin over at EMI......
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According to Wikipedia, Bert Kaempfert hired the Beatles to be the back-up band for Tony Sheridan. One album was produced. Bert recorded two songs with just The Beatles during the Tony Sheridan sesssions... "Ain't She Sweet" sung by John Lennon and the instrumental "Cry For A Shadow". In October, 1961, a customer went into the Liverpool record store owned by Brian Epstein and asked to buy a copy of "My Bonnie", credited to Tony Sheridan, but backed by The Beatles. Brian didn't have it, but made note of it. Intrigued by the idea of a Liverpool band releasing a record, he investigated. That lead to him finding and signing The Beatles. So, imho, Kaempfert was indirectly involved in the beginning of their success.
 
CTListener said:
Not sure if "Last Date" was ever a staple of Beautiful Music stations, but I remember bits of it being played often on KLRA Little Rock in the late '70s as top-of-the-hour filler before the CBS network news when the DJs would come up short in their shows' music scheduling.
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" Last Date" was played on KMEO, which had a more upbeat, up tempo Beautiful Music style, " Bright and Beautiful CAMEO K-M-E-O". The competition was KQYT (Quiet), which lived up to it's name playing softer, orchestral instrumentals, at a lower volume than KMEO. Occasionally, KMEO would play a vocal now and then, like "Love is in the Air" by John Paul Young, or Barbara Streisand "Memory".
 
johnbasalla said:
I believe his work with The Beatles was as producer for their demonstration records made for Decca Records which failed to get them signed to Decca Records.
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And there is a famous quote by a Decca executive that guitar music was on its way out at that time.
 
KilowattKat said:
" Last Date" was played on KMEO, which had a more upbeat, up tempo Beautiful Music style, " Bright and Beautiful CAMEO K-M-E-O". The competition was KQYT (Quiet), which lived up to it's name playing softer, orchestral instrumentals, at a lower volume than KMEO. Occasionally, KMEO would play a vocal now and then, like "Love is in the Air" by John Paul Young, or Barbara Streisand "Memory".
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KMEO used Bonneville (Marlin Taylor) syndicated programming while, IIRC, KQYT used Churchill after first having used SRP.

Very, very few Beautiful Music stations did their own programming; one of the few that did not use a syndicated format was Jerry Lee's station in Philadelphia.
 
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