In the 50's, after the GI's came home from the Pacific Rim and we adopted Hawaii as our 50th state, there was an explosion of tiki culture in America. Everything remotely related to the Pacific, and by extension anything oriental and even Indian, was considered fascinating. This was true in music as well, as literally thousands of tiki-themed albums were released."Temptation" is another of those classic easy listening songs that appears on a bazillion LPs and it's especially popular amongst the tiki crowd, along with "Bali Ha'i", "Moon of Manakoora", "Quiet Village" and others.
Stanley Black (real name: Solomon Schwartz) was a British composer and arranger who released a number of easy listening orchestral albums, most of which are top notch. It's hard to go wrong with a Stanley Black album.Exotic Percussion is a great album, and, as it's name implies, it's chock full of old favorites spiced up with eastern-sounding horns, jungle drums and lots and lots of great percussion. Plus most of the tracks have a female chorus oohing and ahhing along, which just makes the songs doubly awesome. "Temptation" is no exception, kicking off the record with the percussion and horns pounding away, the vocals weaving delicately in and out, and all of the instruments showing off their stereo prowess. They proceed to march through a series of Bolero-like crescendos, ending in a final flourish of horn, drum and voice.
Stanley knows how to wring the excitement out of a tune and he definitely pulls out the stops here."Temptation" can be found on Stanley's Exotic Percussion album, which you can grab from Amazon off a 2-LP-1-CD deal, or actually get the vinyl. I'd go for the vinyl.
* Art by Shag. He's awesome.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment