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58 years of Beautiful Music comes to an end

Heck, it even got lots of play at singer Nydia Caro's disco in Puerto Rico, "Isadora's" in that era... and Isadora's was the equivalent of "Studio 54" back in the day... but with a lot more rum and a lot less "coke".
It does have enough uptempo to make club goers get up and "boogie" back then. Especially if turned into a 12 inch Disco single, like was done with that "Popcorn" song by Hot Butter.
 
Interesting that Mike Smith said if he had signed The Beatles, he wouldn't have known how to make them successful being"The wrong person" to be able to do that.. George Martin at EMI knew how to do it. So, if they had been signed by Decca, they may have only had the level of success of The Tremeloes, and music history would be very different today.
Producers matter. Look at Aretha Franklin before she went to Atlantic.
 
Here's a bit of trivia...we were talking earlier about Bert Kaempfert and his involvement with the Beatles as an early producer...well Bert Kaempfert's record producer, Milt Gabler was the comic Billy Crystal's uncle !
When listening to the Burt Kaempfert produced recordings by The Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best) as a demo for Decca Records, I find that they have mediocre production values, which would make sense for just a demo. I don't think Burt worked that hard on them.
 
To bring this discussion back to Beautiful Music, if I may....

I don't know where else to post this, so hopefully it's OK if I ask here (mods/admins, please move this post as appropriate, if needed):

I recently found some transfers of some old Bonneville Easy Listening tape reels on the Internet Archive (II suspect they date from the late 70s/early 80s), but no track listings were included.

I can recognize a few of the tracks readily (namely, I heard the original recordings of Barbara Streisand's Memory and Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind, and I'm sure there's a few others I haven't picked out yet), but most of them are unknown to me.

Maybe in a PM, if anyone here could help me figure out what the track listings of these reels are (or know where I could find them myself, like an old Bonneville archive or something), I'd appreciate it:
  • X-8704
  • X-8707
  • X-8709
  • E-1722
  • E-1794
  • X-4717
Thanks!

c
 
To bring this discussion back to Beautiful Music, if I may....

I don't know where else to post this, so hopefully it's OK if I ask here (mods/admins, please move this post as appropriate, if needed):

I recently found some transfers of some old Bonneville Easy Listening tape reels on the Internet Archive (II suspect they date from the late 70s/early 80s), but no track listings were included.

I can recognize a few of the tracks readily (namely, I heard the original recordings of Barbara Streisand's Memory and Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind, and I'm sure there's a few others I haven't picked out yet), but most of them are unknown to me.

Maybe in a PM, if anyone here could help me figure out what the track listings of these reels are (or know where I could find them myself, like an old Bonneville archive or something), I'd appreciate it:
  • X-8704
  • X-8707
  • X-8709
  • E-1722
  • E-1794
  • X-4717
Thanks!

c
Keep in mind that a significant percentage of Bonneville instrumentals were custom cuts, recorded just for the Bonneville service and not sold commercially.
 
Did "Take Five" also have this problem, like "Love Is Blue"?
"Take Five" is jazz. Beautiful Music stations never touched anything jazzy. The key was being smooth and melodic.
I just heard it on WERT.
WERT is a 250 watt daytimer outside of a metro area. The 5 mV/m of the AM covers about 19,000 people and the translator covers 16,000. It can't afford research to find out what it should be playing, so it plays everything.
 
WERT is a 250 watt daytimer outside of a metro area. The 5 mV/m of the AM covers about 19,000 people and the translator covers 16,000. It can't afford research to find out what it should be playing, so it plays everything.
That's literally true, but I mentioned that to explain why I asked about that song.
 
That's literally true, but I mentioned that to explain why I asked about that song.
I'm fond of that song. After a concert in the early 60's when I was with all-Jazz WCUY, Brubeck tried to teach me, as a 13 year old dumb kid, how to play the hook of Take 5 on the Green Room piano. He failed, but I've never forgotten that little act of kindness to a kid.
 
Keep in mind that a significant percentage of Bonneville instrumentals were custom cuts, recorded just for the Bonneville service and not sold commercially.
Of course, but someone had to know their names, no? How else do they get announced on air or ordered into a playlist? Did it matter for this format?

In the meantime, I listened a bit more closely to see if I could recognize any of the recordings, and I was able to match one so far by cross referencing it to my Amazon Music playlist (50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett's Girl from Ipanema). There's some maybes in there too, so if I keep at it, maybe I'll get most of them properly IDed eventually.

I'm fond of that song. After a concert in the early 60's when I was with all-Jazz WCUY, Brubeck tried to teach me, as a 13 year old dumb kid, how to play the hook of Take 5 on the Green Room piano. He failed, but I've never forgotten that little act of kindness to a kid.
Wow, how neat!

Take Five has always been one of my favorite pieces of his (I have an original vinyl copy of the album it comes from, Time Out, that I like to listen to occasionally, and even though vinyl as a high quality audio medium is technically quite inferior to digital, it still sounds fantastic when played back on a good system).

c
 
Of course, but someone had to know their names, no? How else do they get announced on air or ordered into a playlist? Did it matter for this format?
Most of the Beautiful Music syndicated formats did not announce artist and title.

In the case of my own syndicated format, we called all the custom music “Orquesta Música en Flor” which was the name of my syndicated service.
 
Most of the Beautiful Music syndicated formats did not announce artist and title.

In the case of my own syndicated format, we called all the custom music “Orquesta Música en Flor” which was the name of my syndicated service.
I see.

I guess I won't bother, then. I'll try to name what I can, and forget about what I can't.

That said, if anyone has any leads on where I might find archival copies of other tapes (or better, the actual tapes themselves), I'd love to know, as I'm working on building up a collection of various Easy Listening tapes for my Part 15 station.

c
 
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