Philips kept making instrumental covers of pop hits for their background music service into the 1990s, but by then, instead of a full orchestra, it sounded like some guy with a Casio keyboard.
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Which Beautiful/Easy Listening Orchestras Were Better or Worse Than Others and Why
- Thread starter cc333
- Start date
Never heard it then on Beautiful radio and very much doubt it. Though I would have enjoyed it on Beautiful radio then. Rhythmically too modern and youth oriented for the format as it was done at that time. Which were after all from say 1974 through 1979 its most successful years and you had an average of about 20% of radio listeners nationally turning on Beautiful Music stations. Some markets less, some markets a lot higher average. And they were thinking OK if it ain't broke don't change it at the time.
From the 1940s through the mid 1960s what came to be called Beautiful Music WAS current - it is what people were buying on records. After that most adults had stopped buying records and so they turned to listening to it on Beautiful Music radio which is what made it so popular especially on FM mid 60s through 1990 or so when all the stations had changed to other formats. But from the 1970s there was little new commercial recorded product available in that genre which is why some of the syndicators and stations turned to commissioning and recording their own music.
What Walt Powers who worked at Bonneville, then BP, then Jones Radio used to call the "one-man-band sound". Not very good unless quite skillfully handled as Nick Ingman often did but he in what I consider his best stuff always used live instrumentalists as well as synthesized sounds.
I will try to answer those. The format was not based on airing currently popular hits although some stations did use them. It was more about creating and holding on to certain moods at different times of the broadcast day. So not like it changed just depending on what was or was not currently popular. Which was a reason it was difficult for many radio people to understand because they were entirely hit-oriented. Now within that they did want to be able to keep current as far as being able to offer versions of recent hits or hit titles but in versions which fit the format. So there were changes but they were mostly pretty subtle. Because listeners tuned in for the instrumental sound and the way it was presented and some variety was necessary. Otherwise they could have just played the same two tapes over and over as some FMs did in the 1950s and 60s which was not very successful for anyone. So a station would create or lease from a syndicator say a library of 120 or more hours programming which they would replace or update at regular intervals - for Beautiful Music every month or two weeks though later less frequently they would get a few replacement tapes and they were supposed to send those tapes replaced back to the syndicator. But in general the tapes they received or made were good for a longer period than hit music stations. And of course many cuts which had not been hits at all on generalist pop stations became popular on Beautiful stations so stations left them in the library and continued to use them just like for instance on a jukebox back in those days when a number received a lot of play they sometimes left it in for years.
Stations and syndicators sometimes did incorporate currently instrumentals as well as vocals if they fit their over-all sound and the mood desired. But because one of the keys to getting over to their audience was title familiarity and the new titles would not have been generally familiar to most of their audience they would usually wait a little to see if the popularity of a current title lasted or to wait until a usable orchestral version of that title was marketed. Some syndicators and station programmer consciously avoided using hit records because they feared they would attract the wrong kind of listeners - in other words people just looking for the latest rather than those who appreciated and were into the Beautiful genre.
Muzak came out with Programatic in 1958 for main FM channels though AMs used it as well. A two tape deck setup with the music regularly updated. Initially from the Muzak transcribed library though delivered without the flat equalization they used for their environmental music business. After a couple of years they included cuts from commercial records as well and the man who created it took it over when Muzak no longer wished to carry it about 1964.
Regular Muzak background music franchisees by the mid and later 50s started requesting to use background Muzak on their main FM channels and that was their response.
Ditto with Seeburg but a year or so later they began marketing a turntable setup to radio stations and later even even taped programming. These were not so successful and could be used to occupy a main FM channel but never attracted listeners. Both faded out radio station marketing by the mid 1970s.
Seeburg and Muzak mostly commissioned their own library music and it was more designed for functional use than for listening so running it on a station made for pretty drab listening unless you were really into the background music genre.
Wouldn't think that would have been long enough but you never know. Wasn't there a popular movie of that with Julie Andrews?
Well is "foreground" if you listen to it, "background" if you have it on but don't listen. Which is true for any music on radio. Or anywhere else.
Delicado by Percy Faith was by some accountings among the top-selling single record of 1952 so was played on radio a lot. In those days radio stations generally played plenty of instrumentals because that is what the public was buying. You had dance bands like Ray Anthony, orchestras like Percy Faith and Mantovani, and jazz and pop combos as well like Shearing and The Three Sounds. So DJs who then selected their own music would play them because they got requests, or because they were hit records, or because they thought their audience would enjoy them. And they were used as radio show themes so those of us who grew up then got used to hearing instrumental music regularly.
The clip is from that movie---"10".
That may have been the joke---it's only 15 to 17 minutes, depending on who's playing it.
They were made for mass appeal and sold well. Stu Phillips. The idea was that many Beatles hits and other compositions would get a new audience if offered in a style more presentable and less offensive to adults. people would hear the cuts on their stations and call in and ask hey what was that, that was great! And would not believe that The Beatles were capable of writing any melody so good or likable. Then maybe they would go out and buy the LP. Don't forget Capitol sold the Beatles in the US as well as the Hollyridge Strings.
I remember seeing that movie advertised on TV when it came out.
"Easy listening was a term used in radio as far back as the 1920s. Initially it simply meant music that was easy to listen and enjoy. In other words nothing too highbrow or too lowbrow such as torrid dance music. Historically both easy listening and beautiful music, as well as a lot of other terms, were used to describe what in the 1960s became generally termed Beautiful Music. But many who worked at such stations in the 60s and 70s and beyond were told by their bosses at a station to refer to it as one or the other according to their taste and perception of what it meant to them at the time. In the 1960s "easy listening" referred to MOR stations as well and indeed Beautiful Music was an approach to MOR. Then about 1960 certain generally younger GMs started getting together and decided they didn't care for the "Beautiful: designation as to them it connoted to passive rather than an active involving approach so revived the term "Easy Listening" which some stations had been using all along and which pretty much caught on over the next few years. And you had some stations and syndicators using "BM/EZ" too - that was pretty common.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
As I said somewhere back there, I am reasonably certain that it was Gordon McLendon, who used the imaging phrase "beautiful music over San Francisco" for KABL and highlighted the phrase in his print advertising when he flipped both XTRA and KOST to that format.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Yes, that was pretty much what we have been saying all along in describing the term "good music" used by most of the early MOR stations. It wasn't until the BM format descriptor came along that the old term started to fade from use.
Most "good music" stations eventually went in one direction or the other (if they didn't execute a more radical format change) -- Beautiful Music or Adult Contemporary.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
While Andrews was indeed in that movie (second billed after Dudley Moore), the premise was that Bo Derek's character was a "10" as in "on a one to ten scale" in appearance and desirability.
I have never seen anything in terms of interviews and the like with Blake Edwards -- who, typically, not only directed and co-produced the movie, but also wrote it -- that Ravel was in any way part of his thought process in terms of the title.
Trivia: The start of shooting was delayed when George Segal, who was originally signed as the lead, failed to show up on the first day, causing Edwards to have to recast the lead and do some rewrites on the script as a result. (Good thing, too, because I can't imagine that movie with Segal instead of Moore.)
Shulke and Bonneville both commissioned recordings in England with some of the BBC "Staff Orchestras". They gave the songs titles, had to approve arrangements and paid the musicians, the studio time and the mastering.
The group that included EZ Communications, KalaMusic and Jerry Lee did the same, often using the same orchestras. TM did some on their own. KalaMusic was the leader in creating the independent group, and they let in some big owners such as Art Kellar and Jerry Lee, but did not bring in other domestic syndicators.
I participated in some of the later recordings, but was not as interested because they were covering a lot of U.S. pop songs that did not become hits in Latin America.
Several syndicators bought rights to the CTL, Canadian Talent Library, which had a lot of good conemporary instrumental material in the 70's and into the 80's.
I did a lot of custom recordings in Spain for my service. But I found a cheap work-around, which was to buy the "orchestra" tracks used by club pianists and other soloists or small groups. Those came ready-made and all I had to do for radio was add the lead instrument(s) such as piano, brass, guitar, sax or whatever. That gave me instrumentals of all the big Spanish language pop hits of the era, often for less than $100 per cut when done in Spain.
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Remember, "Easy Listening" was more of an on-air positioner: "All day, all night, all nice. E-Z 101" In fact, Art Keller made his company name out of his "E Z" station positioners / slogans. "Beautiful Music" was more of the trade name, just as "Adult Contemporary" is a trade title but seldom used on the air.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And yet, when I was at the station running TM's version of the format in 1977-78, we had a jingle after the TOH legal ID that began with a full acapella "Beautiful Music" before the orchestration and "KACY ... FM 105" back to music.
Exactly. Moore's character was dating Andrews' character, but obsessed with the seeming perfection of Derek's, who he first sees on the way to her wedding. He then essentially stalks her, trailing her and her husband on their honeymoon.
He seduces her, but learns it's not the conquest he thinks it is because she's in an open marriage with a man she only married because of pressure from her father. To her, he's a meaningless fling.
No. "Bolero's" a key plot point, though---Derek's character believes the only perfect accompaniment to sex is "Bolero." When Moore goes back to Andrews, he puts that on the stereo as the film ends.
That was why I made the joke. There's no connection to the title at all. My reference to the running time of the song was in response to Dick thinking it might be too short at 15 to 17 minutes.
For some of us, only Dimitrie Cuclin's Symphony No. 12 will do, though you have to pause at the four hour mark to tell your doctor.
(Standup comedian who's name I've since forgotten: "My doctor? Hell, I'm tellin' EVERYBODY!")
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