Timeless Instrumentals that are Still Great to Hear Today!

[unitron]

Magnificent Seven & Bonanza - both Al Cailola I believe

Believe Bonanza was performed by David Rose.

To be picky, David Rose isn't known as a guitar player, but as an orchestra leader (house band for the Red Skelton show--the theme was "Holiday for Strings"), and there's a lot of guitar in the Bonanza theme.

 

[Thomps2525]

Holiday For Strings was the first hit song that David Rose wrote. It got to #2 in April 1944 (behind Jimmy Dorsey's Besame Mucho). Does anyone remember the episode of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in which Ruth Buzzi drunkenly laughed that song?

Here is the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQTsip8i1pU

 

[cd637299]

Holiday For Strings was the first hit song that David Rose wrote. It got to #2 in April 1944 (behind Jimmy Dorsey's Besame Mucho). Does anyone remember the episode of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in which Ruth Buzzi drunkenly laughed that song?

Here is the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQTsip8i1pU

"Police Squad!" had it played on tuba! It was from an old 8-track tape that the detectives found in a glove compartment, "Holiday Tubas."

cd

 

[howardm]

Anybody remember who Jackie Gleason called "The Flower of the Musical World"? It was Ray Block, right? Orchestra leader on the Jackie Gleason show.

 

[cyberdad]

Anybody remember who Jackie Gleason called "The Flower of the Musical World"? It was Ray Block, right? Orchestra leader on the Jackie Gleason show.

You're probably right, but I'm not the one who can answer that question. In addition to Gleason, I believe Bloch had multiple TV orchestration gigs.....some perhaps simultaneously.

As for Gleason's series of albums, my understanding is his personal involvement was rather minimal. So Bloch would seem to be a better bet than the next guy to have been involved in the heavy lifting.

 

[Thomps2525]

"Mmmm, you're a good one! And awaaaay we go!" The Jackie Gleason Show was broadcast on CBS from---bear with me here---September 1952 to June 1955, September 1956 to June 1957, October 1958 to January 1959, September 1962 to May 1968, and September 1968 to September 1970. Ray Bloch was the bandleader from 1952 to 1959 (136 episodes). (Bloch was also the orchestra leader for Blind Date, The Larry Storch Show, The Ed Sullivan Show and probably several other series.) From 1962 to 1970, Sammy Spear was the bandleader. Gleason seldom began a show without making fun of Sammy's coat and/or necktie.

 

[Thomps2525]

Well, I just found two of those "other series": Ray Bloch led the orchestra on Kate Smith's variety program and Steve Allen's Songs For Sale. Here is a tribute page....and it refers to him as "the flower of the musical world." There ya go! http://www.patphil.com/bloch1.html

 

[CTListener]

Gleason seldom began a show without making fun of Sammy's coat and/or necktie.

Or taking a swig of something and reacting with an exaggerated "WOWWWWW!" That show and Ed Sullivan (and later, the Smothers Brothers show) were staples of our weekend family TV viewing when I was a kid.

 

[Thomps2525]

Supposedly Gleason was just drinking coffee or tea and not liquor. Of course the audience thought he was drinking booze. Dean Martin, according to a posthumous biography written by his daughter, Deana, had a "drinking problem" but his on-screen persona greatly exaggerated it. Ah, those wacky 1960s---when alcoholism and drugs were so gosh-darned fun!

Before we get completely off-topic, here are some more classic instrumentals:

Pop Goes The Movies - Meco (1982)
Jersey Bounce - Jimmy Dorsey (1942)
Boogie Woogie - Tommy Dorsey (1938)
Boogie Woogie - Charlie McCoy (1974; a harmonica version of the above)
Let's Go Away For Awhile - Beach Boys (1966; B-side of Good Vibrations)
That Happy Feeling - Bert Kaempfert (1962; the kind of familiar tune that you hear and exclaim, "Oh, what is the name of that?")

 

[deltas69]

Wait..Wait...Larry Storch had..ANOTHER show..besides F Troop

 

[Thomps2525]

And why did F Troop have a fun explanatory theme song for the first season but then drop the lyrics and use just an instrumental theme for the second season? The Larry Storch Show---did he not have an agent to suggest that he change his last name?---was the 1953 summer replacement series for The Jackie Gleason Show. Storch was a 30-year-old stand-up comic at the time. On his show he did sevceral of the characters that were part of his nightclub act, such as a tv cowboy and a philosophy-spouting hobo. Storch also starred in a third series, The Queen & I, which ran on CBS from January 16 to May 1, 1969. He played Charles Duffy, the purser of an aging ship, the Amsterdam Queen, which the owners wanted to sell for scrap. The series also starred Billy DeWolfe (Good Morning World, The Pruitts Of Southhampton), Carl Ballantine (McHale's Navy) and Pat Morita (who would eventuially sell hamburgers to Richie and Fonzie and teach karate to kids).

One more timeless instrumental to get us back on topic...and it's also another tv theme: Lawrence Welk's Theme From My Three Sons, which got to #55 in 1961. "She was makin' goof-eyes at me, Dad." "Goof-eyes, Chipper?"

 

[Thomps2525]

"Sevceral" up there should, of course, be "several." These darned keys are too close together!

Someone mentioned the Ventures' Sleigh Ride. There aren't very many Christmas instrumentals that get airplay at this time of year. The biggest is the Boston Pops' Sleigh Ride from 1949, which I enjoy hearing even though one section of it reminds me too much of all the high-school marching bands that try to duplicate it. Booker T. & the MG's had a fun version of Jingle Bells in 1968. Paul Whiteman's Parade Of The Wooden Soldiers (1923) might be considered "timeless." I'm not including Kenny G's Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas because it puts me to sleep.

 

[firepoint525]

Not really sure how "Linus and Lucy" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio gets classified as a "Christmas" song, or why it is even credited to just Linus and Lucy. I associate it with all Peanuts characters. And doesn't it appear in almost all Peanuts specials at one point or another? I know that it features prominently in A Charlie Brown Christmas, but isn't it used (at least in part) in other Peanuts specials as well?

Seems to me that this piece would be a good fit for jazz stations, if there are any still around.

 

[cd637299]

Not really sure how "Linus and Lucy" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio gets classified as a "Christmas" song, or why it is even credited to just Linus and Lucy. I associate it with all Peanuts characters. And doesn't it appear in almost all Peanuts specials at one point or another? I know that it features prominently in A Charlie Brown Christmas, but isn't it used (at least in part) in other Peanuts specials as well?

Seems to me that this piece would be a good fit for jazz stations, if there are any still around.

That's true about "L & L", but suffice it to say that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" will always be the landmark Peanuts special. That, and the fact that "Christmastime is Here", also from the special, gets some Christmas play, I think that they go hand in hand.

I hope someday to find that Love 94 (former smooth jazz FM in Miami, now only on HD2) Christmas CD I made from 2003 or so....

cd

 

[howardm]

Anybody remember instrumental "Kem-o-sabe" by Electric Indian?

 

[cd637299]

Anybody remember instrumental "Kem-o-sabe" by Electric Indian?

Yes, I do....I believe it was discussed way way back here. I won't go back in the thread either!

cd

 

[Thomps2525]

Okay, boys and girls, it's time for one of my amazing stories which is only tangentially related to the topic of this thread. In September 1969, the Electric Indian's Keem-O-Sabe got to #2 on the KHJ Boss 30 here in Los Angeles. (It was kept out of the top spot by Bobby Sherman's Little Woman.) Nationally the instrumental got to #16. You may be wondering about the origin of the word (or words). In 1933, The Lone Ranger premiered on WXYZ in Detroit. The series would soon go national on the Mutual Network and later move to NBC's Blue Network (which would become ABC). New episodes aired until 1954. "Kemosabe" is what the Lone Ranger was called by his Indian scout, Tonto. Jim Jewell, the series' first director, took the name from Kamp Kee-Mo Sah-Bee, a boys' camp established by his father-in-law near Mullett Lake in Michigan. The name supposedly means "trusted friend" or "trusted scout" but Webster's Dictionary says the phrase has different meanings in different Native American languages.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled "timeless instrumentals" discussion.

 

[CTListener]

And no, the Electric Indian was not Ravi Shankar (RIP) on an amplified sitar!

 

[radioman148]

Okay, boys and girls, it's time for one of my amazing stories which is only tangentially related to the topic of this thread. In September 1969, the Electric Indian's Keem-O-Sabe got to #2 on the KHJ Boss 30 here in Los Angeles. (It was kept out of the top spot by Bobby Sherman's Little Woman.) Nationally the instrumental got to #16. You may be wondering about the origin of the word (or words). In 1933, The Lone Ranger premiered on WXYZ in Detroit. The series would soon go national on the Mutual Network and later move to NBC's Blue Network (which would become ABC). New episodes aired until 1954. "Kemosabe" is what the Lone Ranger was called by his Indian scout, Tonto. Jim Jewell, the series' first director, took the name from Kamp Kee-Mo Sah-Bee, a boys' camp established by his father-in-law near Mullett Lake in Michigan. The name supposedly means "trusted friend" or "trusted scout" but Webster's Dictionary says the phrase has different meanings in different Native American languages.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled "timeless instrumentals" discussion.

And I always thought that "kemosabe" was originally used by Dan Ingram ;D

 

[Thomps2525]

It may also surprise you to know that "Cousin" Brucie Morrow was not the first person to call other people "cousin."