The artists writing for, playing in, and conducting such orchestras never considered they were somehow "Beautiful Music" or "Easy Listening" performers. They were mainstream popular music artists, considered themselves as such, and were so received by those of us who bought their recordings in the 1940s through 1960s and sometimes beyond. In those days before the establishment and popularity of Beautiful/ EZ radio formats they merely made popular music we liked and purchased. The same as we did Elvis Presley or Perry Como or Norman Luboff or the Elgart Brothers band. Likewise we heard their orchestral music programmed on mainstream or generalist radio stations on hit singles, as program themes, popular LP cuts, and often featured by the generation of radio hosts and DJs who pulled their own music. As well as on relaxing daytime, Sunday afternoon, dinner music, and late evening mood music shows which became the genesis of the subsequent Beautiful radio format as such outlets proliferated in the late 1950s and earl 1960s. Instrumental music in those days was not considered anything super-weird or different or apart but was accepted and enjoyed and appreciated as normal mainstream popular music. This was because of the pervasive influence of network radio from the late 1920s which featured a large proportion of orchestral and other kinds or instrumental music and of motion pictures which were accompanied and illuminated and popularized by orchestral scores, often original, from the early and mid 1930s. From the mid 1960 as recordings by these artists began to sell less and less and record companies only made half-hearted attempts to cultivate new artists and as the many of the artists themselves retired or died the sources of product for the radio format which had became popular in the early 80s quite dried up, necessitating many of the stations and syndicators featuring it to commission and record their own music to their own specifications. Which were often rather tame in comparison to the work the public had bought when such music was a hit LP and single genre. Not all those musicians so commissioned possessed the skills or know-how or creativity of their predecessors and the result was often much less interesting and delightful to listeners than the older recordings on which the radio format had been based. Which hastened that format's demise at the end of the 1980s.
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Which Beautiful/Easy Listening Orchestras Were Better or Worse Than Others and Why
- Thread starter cc333
- Start date
The term Beautiful Music was always good enough for me and had within the business become pretty standard by the mid 1960s. Though some never cared for it. Many station owners and managers would insist that their employees refer to it as Easy Listening or MOR for whatever reasons of their own. Also over the years variously referred to as Pretty Music, Wall-To-Wall Music, Conservative Popular (well it had been considered not at all "conservative" but rather quite daring on radio in the 1930s!). Influenced by the success of campaigns on KBIG FM Los Angeles a number of the younger Beautiful GMs got together in 1980 advocating Easy Listening as they thought the term Beautiful Music connoted too passive a stance in regard to radio while Easy Listening betokened more active involvement. They wanted their listeners to become more involved in their stations. Which I guess was the other side of stations becoming involved in their communities. For many it was supposed to work both ways. They didn't want us to just listen. And I always wondered whether many of these younger station employees really longed to air cuts which were not beautiful at all but more the kind of thing they themselves would listen to like more vocals - and they felt the EZ term allowed them more freedom in expressing themselves. Anyway the EZ thing caught on by the mid 80s though some used Beautiful Music/ Easy Listening or BM/EZ for short.
People also called it "elevator music" or "Muzak" (even if it wasn't coming from the Muzak service).
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
This thread has become circular and Dick is back to writing long, run on paragraphs that are difficult to read, so I'm out.
I never in my life thought discussing a long dead format would run to 16 pages.
I never in my life thought discussing a long dead format would run to 16 pages.
Personally, I find the information interesting. Yes, it's detailed, but filled with info I never knew about Remember, RD is like a radio dial. If you don't like what you're reading just switch threads.
To be accurate, it's more like 14 pages, minus the Boss Radio derail.
Not really. In through the early 80's there was a large amount of production of pop instrumental music suitable for the format. But most recordings were versions of either the few most popular songs in North America or renditions of big songs from France, Italy, Spain or even Japan. So there were many versions of very few identifiable North American songs, and lots of big songs but "from the wrong places".
But the 80's produced a lot of very, very good instrumentals... just not in the United States. For example, the Delphine label in France brought us Clayderman, Goya, Borelli and others. There were other groups and orchestras, too, but much of what the recorded was not "American" enough for the U.S. format syndicators, so they had to do custom music.
However, "custom music" began early with Shuke and Bonneville in an effort to have songs others did not have in versions that were very much arranged for the format... and instrumentals of known pop songs that no commercial orchestra did a version of. That was, truly, the real reason for custom recording.
And one issue is that only a few of us actually programmed that format back in the 60's, 70's and 80's. I think I am the only one here who actually owned a syndicator and did the music selection and programming myself.
Everything else is "bar stool sports".
Never officially. That was more a designation by people trying to denigrate the format who did not care for it or understand its power. That whole "elevator music" thing was started by comedian Victor Borge in a routine from 1963 or'62. Historically the first recorded music was placed in an elevator via wire at the Hotel Fontenelle in Omaha during 1938 or 1939 by the Program Service Co. It was not Muzak. The first Muzak I have been able to find used in an elevator was at the Continental Supply Building in Dallas, 1946.
Please excuse my enthusiasm for and interest in a "long dead radio format". This music is alive exciting for many of us who play it at home and yes is still available on a number of internet stations.
To me, "Muzak" was a good thing. I confirmed that several malls and stores where I liked the music were using it.
Which is why your input on here has always been fascinating and informative. Thank you.
There was a lot of very skillful music that they made. I liked particularly the late 1940s through 1960s arrangements of Glenn Osser. I will admit to going into establishments which carried it in order to listen to the music.
I developed a nice friendship with the programmer of Muzak in the 80's. What I learned was that their key criteria was something like "music for people to hear but not to listen". In other words, it was an accompaniment to shopping, not a distraction.
A key secondary reason to have Muzak or any background music was to cover up noises in a store or establishment... the A/C fans, the mechanical cash register of that era, people talking nearby, something dropping on the floor and assorted sneezes and coughs.
The music could not be too foreground... no strong soloists or songs that might distract a customer from deciding what to buy. And the segues had to be smooth, not distracting.
As a radio programmer, I did the opposite: segues should have contrast to make listening interesting, and some songs should be like Clayderman's "Adeline" which was the kind of tune that our listeners would stop what they were doing and play their "air piano" for!
Very interesting subject. They used to advertise that their music was not "art" but rather "science" and to be heard but not listened to and things like that. Which reflected very much a mid-century point of view - because they couldn't sell to factories and offices and businesses who thought their employees might be potentially listening to music instead of working!
Similarly it was decided in the 1930s and 40s that only instrumental music could be serious "background music" and this viewpoint remained persuasive into the 1980s offices and businesses started taking a vote among their workers of what which radio station everybody was to listen to. That whole point of view dissolved just like the emperor's new clothing!
Paul Weston (who never wrote for Muzak as far as I know but whose recordings were employed as background in many settings at that time) referred to the technique as "under-arranging". Which meant you write not to call attention to yourself or the music. Which never meant necessarily the loss of any artistic or creative impulses or musical values but instead just a simpler approach.
Later on Muzak admitted, and this was after the original artist recording faction were running the company and the Muzak many of us occasionally loved when we were younger was very much on the way out, that in fact it had ALWAYS been about the music. Which I somehow always understood. Without good product you have nothing to really sell except noise.
Muzak and other kinds of music written for background use commercially must stand or fall inevitably on their musical values. Over the years there were many fine arrangements recorded for Muzak as well as many quite terrible ones. As far as what I have heard, and I have heard only a portion of what they made.
Very true about the noise-masking, especially in factories.
Oh was it Rod Baum you knew?
Muzak also came up with the "scientifically proven" theory that factory and office workers were more productive if they listened to (or were subjected to!) 15 minutes of music alternating with 15 minutes of silence. But that conveniently also was their way to use one FM subcarrier to serve two sets of subscribers, by having a signal to turn one on while the other was muted.
Indeed. Although that kind of alternation existed before SCA delivery which for Muzak started in 1956 experimentally. When they moved to tape from ET delivery in 1954 they put the two formats side by side on the tape. But at the time they offered five formats. Being toe Office, Public Space, Factory, Restaurant, and another which somehow escapes my memory at this time. Along the way some became combinations of the others.
Earlier on they recommended and delivered less music per working day than they later did - only a couple of hours a day total spread out in strategically placed segments. Music all the time was considered at that time too wearing for workers - they were afraid it would lose its effectiveness through constant exposure. But generally they gave employers what they wanted. If they desired half hour on followed by half hour off they got it, if they wanted constant they got it.
Restaurants and factories and offices that had "Music By Muzak" were very attractive earlier on. From 1940 through the mid-1960s they would advertise it not just to patrons but to potential employees seeking work in those locations. As a benefit. It was considered very special and even precious. You begin to start finding criticism in the press from the mid 1960s on a small scale. I was fascinated by Muzak in the 1960s but most of my friends who were teenagers then or young adults regarded it as inferior to stuff they would have preferred to listen to like Jazz or Classical or Rock or Top 40. They were thinking in terms of musical preference rather than what would work best in those particular situations.
Haha I remember that "air piano" stuff. I guess employers would not have wanted their workers to spend time on that! Though eventually it seems most came to the realization that even the best workers all spent a certain amount of time goofing off.
I would be interested in knowing just how you put together your Musica en Flor programs. That is if other readers would not consider it too boring or old-fashioned. I have always admired Beautiful Music programmers. You must have become accustomed to carrying around thousands of musical selections in your memory. Wouldn't the random access delivery have limited your segue choices? Did you put your trigger tones under the close of a selection to ensure tighter segues as Drake-Chenault did? You have mentioned South American audiences like current titles more than U.S. standards but you seem to have had a category for Latin standards. What were your guidelines, besides contrast. No matter how exciting a program of instrumentals would some people there as well have dismissed it as "background music"?
Around 25 years ago I still walked in a local mall. There was an 800 number you could call to find out what was played. And I did. I was listening. It was definitely the Environmental format. The only artist I can think of right now that I learned about that way was Lenny Dee.
Last time there was music in that mall it was the big FM AC station. It's being converted to county offices. Walking for exercise is still possible.
2000 would have been near the very end of that format. They had already stopped recording new selections for it. Between 1992 and 2002 most subscribers had been converted to their "Audio Architecture" which consisted of original artist recordings to suit the atmosphere desired in each location. Of course they were offering OA programs in the 80s which were the origin of what later became standard. Field bought the company in 1987 as well as the OA company they were using and merged them. Then the OA people ended up running Muzak.
The environmental format was still available in digital audio channels and for all I know may still be now as the Canadian company which bought Muzak c. 2011 had to fulfill their contract for that service as a channel. Which may have been what you heard in 2000.
Well they had a pioneer Sausalito Beautiful FM KDFC I think which was duplicated by KIBE AM in Palo Alto. Which both turned to Classical once KABL got going under McLendon.