Regarding Mantovani and Kostelanetz I'm suprised they were out.I have both of them on cd.Kosty's cd from Collectibles Music From the Orient Express is just a beautiful cd and a lot of these songs got heavy airplay on b/ez stations in the 70s especially his version of Chinatown one of the most beautiful versions I have ever heard.One of my favorite Kosty tunes was I'm Easy which featured heavy lush strings.This tune also got played a lot.Mantovani was another one of my favorite b/ez artist as he used his heavy cascading strings in most of his songs.I can understand why they would pick Percy Faith.Almost everything this guy touched he made beautiful.I have all of his 2 0n 1 cds from Collectibles.In my opinion Faith was the king of beautiful music however John Fox is a close second.Mantovani and Kosty also released classical music and didn't just stick with the beautiful music format where as Faith done mostly beautiful music.I love them all Faith,Manti,Kosti,Fox etc.To the untrained ear their music sounds alike.
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Where did all the beautiful music all go?
- Thread starter ruger22com
- Start date
sharklover said:
It's funny... I used to think that way, but with repeated listenings, you can definitely start to pick out certain artists. KHOY and WKTZ keep playlists up on their websites (I wish WGCY would), so you can check the artist as they're played. One whom I think has a unique sound is the piano of Ronnie Aldrich. I can usually pick him out every time.
If it's going to include new age count me out.klutch00 said:
I do like Diana Krall.
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dbdigital
Guest
sharklover said:
That is what I've read. The 'Bachelor Pad' connoisseurs also give a thumbs down to the 101 Strings but I actually enjoy their recording of Leroy Anderson's music. And the 101 Strings recording of the music of Spain is a minor classic. These guys look for innovation (or their version of it) in easy listening and seem to favor the quirky, off-beat and over-the-top, like Yma Sumac.
If you enjoy Mantovani and Andre Kostelanetz then continue to do so and don't be put-off by these self-appointed "experts." It's just their tastes against yours.
db
dbdigital said:
I also agree. When the big beautiful music stations running syndicated music started, they only played 1 or 2 vocals an hour (when SRP started). The thing that helped launch the formats popularity was the cover versions of pop music (along with be air talent and the one-to-one communication style that is so overlooked these days).. Those were the key to making the format a success.
Beautiful music stations even kicked off the sales of pop artists like chuck mangione (feels so good).
As the format developed over the years, more vocals were added and many of them original works (muscrat love, john denver, etc...etc.) until it topped out at 4 an hour. At Christmas, holiday music was added just like a/c's do today.
As for royalties...yep...When I worked at WCZY-FM, I had to fill out diaries a couple times a year for BMI and ASCAP, just like the rock stations. Composers ALWAYS get there money!
ruger22com said:
The first Beautiful I worked at, in 1966, had 6 three-song sets an hour, with a vocal in the middle. There were 6 stopsets an hour, too. Later, in 1970, when I was at EZ Communications, we had one vocal in every quarter hour.
Technically, the music was not syndicated but the format was. As the format developed, most of us who owned syndication companies used a goodly percentage of custom music, most recorded in Europe, just for radio use. Many of us named the recordings after our format name, even if many syndicators had the same cuts as they were done in groups of syndicators due to the cost.
Very few beautiful music stations were live hosted. Most used voice tracking outside of maybe the top 10 or 15 markets. And, for the few live announcers, that had to be the most boring job in radio history.
The earliest Beautiful Music stations were based on instrumental versions of standards and such... it was not till much later that pop songs started being the staple of the format.
The ASCAP and BMI logs were replaced by electronic detection, but they are still done today... for every format.
I'm not sure I remember much voice tracking as in mentioning titles and artists on the old BM stations..just an image guy saying "Just Beautiful Music...FM 99" or something like that. There might be a newsperson...I can remember WMEF in Ft Wayne, the sister of at the time WMEE in Ft. WAyne. You'd have a newscaster on AM doing blood and guts 20-20 news and the same newcaster doing a very mellow delivery for the FM. Most boring job in radio? I can imagine! I remember an old ad in Broadcasting looking for a BM announcer. It said "Mike open only one minute in 60 so you must be perfect".
DavidEduardo said:
In small and some medium markets, yes, voice tracking was done using these giant old cart drivin automation systems where the voice tracks were pre recorded. But ALL the major markets used live talent (The company I worked for owned one station in all the top 7 majors, and all were live 24 hours/7days). We did not even have voice tracking equipment or automation of any type.
Music tape reels had to be changed by hand every two hours, and when changing, they also had to manually have the heads adjusted (with an osciliscope and tone imbeded in the beginning of each reel) for perfect tape azmeth alignment, and trust me, as someone who survived the ratings wars and beautiful musics start to finish in Detroit, even the "beautiful music image voice" guys lived and died by the quarterly books. And while I was there from start to finish, I saw many guys hit the door when there numbers did not perform to expectation.
As for being boring? While there was not a lot of show prep, we did not simply read liners. Traffic reports, weather, a lot of donut spots, topical information prep it was all there. Not boring, but EXTREMELY relaxing, which was the idea. After doing morning drive at Rock and AOR stations for several years before that, it was a nice change of pace, the bucks were great as were the fringe benefits, and no more worries about an ulcer (except 4 times a year right before the book of course..chuckle) and our morning show and my afternoon drive gig was very similar to any mainstream A/C show with a host, news and weather team, traffic copter, and more. and 2 song sweeps between segments where most other day parts were 4 song sweeps.
ruger22com said:
That is what I said. In all but the largest markets, Beautiful Music was run without announcers; in the top 10 to 15 markets, most were live-announced. Nearly everywhere else, it was automated or run by board operators with voice tracked (which we had not yet learned to call by that name) carted or taped pre- and post-commercial liners. Only those stations that wanted to do the classic "... on Easy 107, we heard Moon River from Montovanni, Paul Mauriat played Indian Summer, Roger Whitaker sang The Last Farewell and Percy faith concluded with Blue Velvet" backsells. But by the time you got to markets like Sacramento or Richmond, few of the stations were live announced.
Some of the services, like SRP or Bonneville, had severely dayparted music, and the reels had to be changed completely at the changes in daypart segments. And the major market Shulke stations ran the matched flow service (where songs were in 12 minute segments as opposed to mixing songs from different reels) which required changing reels after each segment played.
While I know nearly every station cleaned heads after each tape played, I had never heard of a station realigning the heads. I would have thought that constantly adjusting the hears would have made the head assembly, particularly the set screws, loose and lacking in stability. Neat idea, though.
You were fortunate, since most of the Beautifuls, right down to the end in the mid-late 80's were simply backsells and very light weather and maybe a news summary... if they were even live. How did you do in ratings, vs. the rest of the market? And who was the format syndicator?
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bub
Guest
In the years before they went satellite, Music of Your Life used match flow sequencing in their reels as well.DavidEduardo said:
XM Radio Escape Channel 78 is programmed by Bonneville beautiful music guru Marlin Taylor, and it is a must hear in my book.
gr8oldies said:
Sort of. At least on the station I used to listen to it on, each quarter hour started out with two currents together, back announced ("that was... and before that..."). Then oldies alternating off a couple of reels, unannounced, to fill the quarter hour.
One of the other TM formats (maybe country?) did something similar, with 2 currents together but announced between the songs.
I'm sure I would agree if I really listened to each one knowing which was which. However, Percy Faith's "Where Is Your Heart" used to get played on standards radio. I heard the Mantovani version somewhere and it just seemed so watered-down.sharklover said:
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dbdigital
Guest
BlueHen said:
Usually, each orchestra had a unique but consistant sound. For example, the Hollyridge Strings had a full compliment of strings and woodwinds but only french horns for brass and that great Capitol Records reverb (a tile-lined room in the basement). Couple that with Stu Phillips (who crafted the Hollyridge Strings sound) and his great arrangements and you have an unmistakable sound that was carried throughout their entire catalog, (although Stu didn't arrange and conduct all of the Hollyridge Strings albums).
Probably the least predicable was Percy Faith. He experimented with different combinations of orchestration. His "Themes for Young Lovers" albums have a very different texture from his last recordings such as the "Black Magic Woman" album, which has a "drier" sound and the brass section is more predominate. His "Bouquet" album was strings only.
So there were some real stand-outs in that genre of music. And if someone carefully listens these orchestras they will hear the distinct difference between them.
db
I was long associated with SRP and Bonneville Beautiful Music stations in different markets. Does anyone else remember SRP experiment with matched flow AC?
I was involved with WEFM Chicago at the time 1981 I think, while matched flow worked well for BM, trying to do the same thing with AC vocals was a disaster.
Listeners would harrass the receptionist by calling and reading her a list of the
next ten songs we were going to play. Needless to say it did not last very long.
I was involved with WEFM Chicago at the time 1981 I think, while matched flow worked well for BM, trying to do the same thing with AC vocals was a disaster.
Listeners would harrass the receptionist by calling and reading her a list of the
next ten songs we were going to play. Needless to say it did not last very long.
DavidEduardo said:
At that time (1970's to early 80's) we ran several syndicators...if I remember right (and the brain gets a little fuzzy after all this time) we started with SRP....then went to Bonneville when our competitor dropped them...then finally went to tom churchills format..all over a span of about 7 years.
Detroit metro was like the #5 or #6 market back then...and we had 3..count em...3 beautiful music stations all at 100kw and all live announcers 24-7. WJR-FM WWJ-FM and us WCZY-FM and we also had an AM that we experimented with for a year...formally country giant WDEE-AM which we duplicated the churchill format with additional added vocals, but ran a much more uptempo a/c approach to everything else. But with the lousy directional signal, that switched to religious after a year. SO if you count that one, we actually had 4 stations doing BM at one period.
We spent a huge amount of money promoting the staion (WCZY-FM) with heavy outdoor (Classy glossy Black boards with gold letter saying Relax..easy listening 95.5 WCZY-FM) and a heavy TV campaign too. We ended up beating all the other BM's..AND grabbing #1 in 35+ and #3 in 25-52 women. our prime demos. We were running 8-60 second spot units and hour that they were selling for a fortune. Then Gannett came in and bought the entire chain from john bayless...and switched all the stations to a version of rock where they all immediately crashed and died....which is what happens when a newspaper chain with no broadcasting background buys a radio chain.
The overall key to our sucess was POSITIONING the station as a relaxing classy sip some wine after work deal. with heavy one to one communication with the announcers, not just card reading, while the competition DID stick to calling themselves the "beautiful music station" and reading liner cards with no variation. our easy relaxing friendly presentation killed there traditional bm style.
We also (chuckle) were the beautiful Music station that Killed Howard Stern in mornings when he was at WWWW-FM
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