My favorite kind of easy listening music--full-bodied but easy, nevertheless. And, yes, you can quote me. But no one was listening to this music in a bachelor den, and no one (as far as I know) was hawking the "easy" aspects of the sound--the subdued rhythm section(s), the elevator-style chorus of strings, the half-step flutes, the 1/5/6/9 tonic chords, the moments of what I call insect treble, etc.
Insect treble? Yes. And that phrase gives seven Google matches, two of them obscene.
Anyway, in 1945, when this collection was recorded, mood music was more a normal part of the pop-musical environment, and no one thought to make a special case for its existence. Listeners, thanks to the diversity of sounds and styles that poured out of the radio, were a different breed back then--music was music. You turned on the radio (or put on a stack of 78s) and listened. It was that pure and simple. The extreme commercializing of the listening experience, wherein LP covers not only announced what genre you were listening to but how you were expected to listen to it (and with which buxom model on the cover) was just around the corner, but in 1945 things were still in a put-music-on-and-listen-to-it state of innocence.
Nowadays, we (the audience) have been brainwashed away from regarding a song as a song or an album as an album. (Though a kiss is still just a kiss.) Music is so obsessively packaged, we forget what it is. No wonder that many people, upon hearing vintage mood music, ask what it is, who listened to it, why it would even have been recorded, etc. When they find out that this stuff was everywhere, they're stuck trying to imagine a world vastly different from ours--a world in which music could simply be.
South of the Border is what the title suggests. And when we see the name Morton Gould, we know we're going to hear a high level of light music. This is as close to hype as the liner notes come: "In his own inimitable fashion, (Gould) has taken some of the favorite tunes of Mexico, in addition to a few from South America, and has given them a rich new color in special adaptations for his large orchestra." What? That's all?
Favorite tunes of Mexico and South America, given a "rich new color." How can that possibly be enough? How on earth did this stuff sell any copies at all, let alone huge piles of them?
Ah, but this was 1945. Listeners, being far less sophisticated than we are, didn't need to have their music explained to them. Pity them.
Click here to hear:
ZIP FILE NO LONGER AVAILABLEPLAYLIST
BRAZIL (Barroso)
MEXICAN MEDLEY--LA GOLONDRINA; CIELITO LINDO
LA CUMPARSITA (The Mased One) (Rodriguez)
JARABE TAPATIO (Mexican Hat Dance)
ADIOS MUCHACHOS (Sanders)
EL RELICARIO (Padilla)
EL RANCHO GRANDE (Ramos)
TROPICAL (Gould)
South of the Border--Morton Gould (Columbia ML-2015; material recorded in 1945)Lee
