Number 12

Space Age Pop, Lounge, Exotica, Cocktail, Bachelor Pad, all are just some of the terms used to describe a popular form of music that was a staple of the 1950s and 60s. This was music, usually instrumental but not always, that reveled in crazy orchestrations & arrangements, stereo jockeying, jazzy riffs, sexy vibes and just about everything but the kitchen sink (and maybe even that) to entertain an adult audience in the new world of Long Playing Records and Hi-Fi Stereo Sound.

As the above titles suggest, there is a wide range of styles of music that are being lumped together here for the sake of convenience. Whatever you want to call it, it died out pretty much with the growing popularity of rock in the 60s and early 70s until it somehow surprisingly managed to experience a revival in the 90s. There it was rediscovered by a new, hip young crowd. This music was so uncool that it was cool, especially  when accompanied by martinis and highballs. For me it was a chance to reconnect with music I remember as a young kid growing up with Martin Denny's Exotica album playing constantly at our house.

So what has this got do with film music you ask? Well a good number of silver age composers wrote music in this vein either for films or for records strictly with this music in mind. Many were composer/arrangers who worked in many areas of music but also wrote film music, while some were primarily film composers who dabbled in other areas from time to time. Following is a sampling of composers who made a mark in the Space Age Pop Music world.

Henry Mancini came not only to define much of the lounge/cocktail sound of the era, but also applied it to many of his film scores which truly informed an entire decade of pop scoring. Never was music so swinging and easy going at the same time. His music became the soundtrack for a generation and his themes to Peter Gunn and the Pink Panther were pop music icons of the era. He started film scoring as a staff composer for Universal and later went freelance forging a partnership with producer Blake Edwards that was one of the longest composer/filmmaker collaborations to this day. Mancini wrote expertly in all genres while at the same time producing albums of popular music for well over thirty years.

Les Baxter is considered the father of Exotica, music that tried to capture the exotic nature of the Pacific Islands and other far away colorful locales with exotic tunes, stunningly rich orchestrations and world rhythms. He continued throughout the 50s to create one amazing record after another of this type. If you listen to one of these albums you not only marvel at his creativity and craftsmanship, but also the spectacular recording quality of each. The sound rivals today's recordings easily and even surpasses some in my opinion. As a film composer he was relegated mainly to low budget films primarily through his association with American International Pictures. Roger Corman's Poe films are a highlight.

Nelson Riddle produced lots of swinging instrumental tunes when he wasn't masterfully arranging music for Frank Sinatra and other vocalists of the period. His theme to Route 66 became a pop standard during this time. He also belongs in the same category as Les Baxter since he was a composer and arranger that came to films later. He scored a number of films, notably for Sinatra, as well as for numerous TV shows. Billy May can be added here as both he and Riddle followed almost identical paths and both composed for the ever popular Batman TV series.
 
Lalo Schifrin produced a number of albums in various styles such as jazz, bossa nova and exotica during the period. He went on to write a great deal of music for television in the 60s as well as for films, which he does still to this day. He wrote what has become a pop standard covered countless times in the space age pop world and one of the best known TV theme's of all time, Mission Impossible. Enough said!
 
Russell Garcia penned the space exotica classic album Fantastica. Fantastica featured orchestral music as well as electronically produced sounds to create an otherworldly soundscape to entertain the nascent space-age jet-set crowd. Like Nelson Riddle, he also arranged music for pop singers and composed and arranged a lot of jazz and instrumentals during his career. He worked as a staff composer for Universal and later composed what is arguably his finest film score, The Time Machine, before retiring from film scoring to sail away to New Zealand in his sailboat with his wife.

John Barry single handedly defined the 60s spy sound in his ground breaking James Bond scores. Not only did he provide underscores for the films, but also penned a number of songs and swinging source cues which have gone on to become space age pop mainstays. Prior to his film scoring years, Barry contributed a lot of pop instrumental music to the scene with his John Barry Orchestra and the John Barry Seven.

Jerry Goldsmith ventured into the lounge world with his scores to Our Man Flint and In like Flint. These scores were filled with swinging cocktail tunes and hip sexy spy riffs, parodying the James Bond films that were a cultural phenomenon at the time. His Our Man Flint theme and the song Your Zowie Face, frequently pop up in their original versions and covers during the era.

Robert Drasnin helmed the exotica classic Voodoo in 1959 which was one of many releases produced to cash in on the Martin Denny craze of the time. This small ensemble included a one John T. Williams on piano. Drasnin wrote mainly for television for such shows as Lost in Space, The Man from Uncle and The Wild Wild West. He also served as musical director for CBS Television for a number of years. Interestingly enough, Drasnin followed up his classic exotica album with Voodoo II in 2007, nearly 50 years later!

Dominic Frontiere created yet another exotica classic entitled Pagan Festival. Frontiere was a jazz accordionist, composer and arranger who composed, for me at least, some of the finest music written for a television series for the first season of the Outer Limits. He scored a number of films during his career along with other TV work including The Invaders, another fine entry into television scoring.

There are so many other film composers who contributed to the lounge-space-age-pop-exotica genre that this blog could go on and on. I just hit a few of some of the more obvious ones either because of their stature as film composers, the classic nature of the genre albums they produced or just because they happen to be the ones I'm more familiar with and thought of at the time. I could add many more, but then the blog would get way, way too long!

When it comes right down to it, this music is just plain fun to listen to. Some of it can be a bit goofy (some by design), but always enjoyable. There is so much out there to explore, especially with a lot of it being re-released on CD. If you are interested in learning more, a good place to start is the long running Space Age Pop Music web site. You'll pretty much find it all there.

If you want to hear a good cross section of this music, I can't recommend more highly The Retro Cocktail Hour from Kansas Public Radio. This is a weekly 2 hour radio show devoted entirely to this crazy mix of music and has RealAudio and Windows Media archives going back several months. Here you'll find not only lounge, cocktail, exotica, latin, crime jazz and library music, but a lot of original and covers of TV and film themes and cues from the likes of Mancini, Bernstein, Goldsmith, Hagen, Riddle, Schifrin, Hopkins, Johnson, Morricone, Williams, et al. Host Darrell Brogdon is affable, entertaining, knowledgeable and, during the now 15 year run of the show, hasn't lost a bit of enthusiasm for the music he clearly loves. As the tag line for the show goes: The Retro Cocktail Hour, your place to find the music that's always "shaken, not stirred".