These albums also featured distinctive packaging-gatefolds with bold abstract designs or glossy photos or, in the case of RCA's Stereo Action series, sturdy cardboard outer sleeves with die-cut openings revealing rainbow-colored abstract photo images on the inner sleeve.
#Space age bachelor pad series#
To this list could be added many more imitations: the Medallion series from Kapp Directional Sound, which repackaged and altered recordings by Francis Bay and members of his band Liberty's Premier series and United Artist's Wall-to-Wall stereo albums, to name a few.
Tiki exotica is now enjoying a resurgence in popularity, and Tiki mugs and torches that once collected dust in thrift stores are now hot items.Ī phrase coined by Byron Werner to describe the music of Esquivel and others that reveled in dramatic contrasts of dynamics, instrumentation and vocal effects, and wild movements of sound from left channel to right and back again and seemed aimed squarely for the generation of white American males that came of age with Playboy magazine and high fidelity stereo equipment. Tiki rode a wave of popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s marked by the entrance of Hawaii as the 50th state in 1959 and the introduction of Tiki hut cocktail bars and restaurants around the continental United States. Tiki was introduced with Martin Denny's Waikiki nightclub combo cum jungle noises cover of Baxter's "Quiet Village," although Denny's vibe player, Arthur Lyman, soon became the style's most representative artist. Les Baxter was the king of jungle exotica, and spawned a host of imitators while opening the doors for a few more genuine articles such as Chaino, Thurston Knudson, and Guy Warren. Jungle was definitely a Hollywood creation, with its roots in Tarzan movies (and further back, to W.H. There were two primary strains of this kind of exotica: Jungle and Tiki. This music blended the elements of Afro-Cuban rhythms, unusual instrumentations, environmental sounds, and lush romantic themes from Hollywood movies, topped off with evocative titles like "Jaguar God," into a cultural hybrid native to no place outside the San Fernando Valley. The strictest definition limits exotica to the imitations of Polynesian, Afro-Caribbean, and Hawaiian music that were produced by Les Baxter and others from the mid-1950s to the very early 1960s.
I should state up front, though, that my definition of "Space Age Pop" can be summed up as: all of this and more.
The following list offers some labels for these categories and matches some names against each.
#Space age bachelor pad full#
As a result, Space Age Pop is full of brilliant, bizarre, and exciting sounds, which are particularly striking to ears accustomed to the stereotypes that populate the more familiar genres.Īmong these outcasts, though, there are some common features that a simple categorization can help identify. It's in some middle ground between all of these, which means it's populated with the outcasts from other well-established genres. It's often too esoteric or extreme to be called pop. It's not serious or straightforward enough to be called jazz. It's rarely simple enough in structure and instrumentation to be called rock (and certainly retains enough of a sense of humor to be disqualified as art rock). This music might be characterized most easily by what it isn't.
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