| Polynesian Fantasy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Studio album by The Out Islanders (Billy May and Charlie Barnet) | |
| Released | 1961 |
| Genre | Exotica |
| Label | Capitol |
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Billboard |  link |
Polynesian Fantasy is an album by The Out-Islanders released in 1961. The Out Islanders was a one-time combination of many of music industry's leading side men brought together by Billy May, who arranged and conducted the album, and Charlie Barnet, who played saxophone on the album.
Billy May got his start as an arranger and trumpeter for Charlie Barnet's big band in the late 1930s. Later, May won a reputation as one of the music industry's top arrangers, working with Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney and George Shearing on some of the most successful albums of the 1950s. [1] [2] [3]
In 1961, May teamed up with Barnet for an album of Hawaiian music. May recalled that he and Barnet came up with the idea while vacationing together in Hawaii and initially planned to call the band "The Kon-Tikis". [4] When the album was released in 1961, the group was referred to as "The Out-Islanders." For the project, May served as arranger and conductor with Barnet playing saxophone. May and Barnet recruited many of the era's top session players to work with them, including pianist Jimmy Rowles, saxophonist Ted Nash, guitarist Al Hendrickson and drummer Irv Cottler. Marni Nixon and Loulie Jean Norman added wordless vocals on several tracks. [4]
The album's liner notes described the music as "lush, sometimes rhythmically swinging" with "a discretely seasoned exotic flavor", adding up to "a real listening experience in this Polynesian fantasy." [5]
When the album was released in 1961, Billboard gave it a four-star rating. The review noted the album's "lush, Hawaiian stylings with much use of the steel guitar and various percussion instruments of the Islands, set against a substantial woodwind section." [6] The review concluded, "Delightful mood wax with a most displayable cover." [6]
With the revival of interest in ultra lounge and exotica music in the 1990s and 2000s, the music of The Out-Islanders reached a new audience. A digitally remastered version of The Out Islanders' "Moon Mist" was included on Capitol Records' 1996 compilation, "Ultra-Lounge, Vol. 1: Mondo Exotica." [7] "Honorable Hong Kong Rock" was included in Capitol's follow-up disc, "Ultra-Lounge, Vol. 8: Cocktail Capers." [8] And The Out Islanders' rendition of "Ebb Tide" was included on the 2002 compilation, "66 Easy Listening Favorites." [9]
The album contained 12 tracks.
Martin Denny was an American pianist and composer best known as the "father of exotica." In a long career that saw him performing up to 3 weeks prior to his death, he toured the world popularizing his brand of lounge music which included exotic percussion, imaginative rearrangements of popular songs, and original songs that celebrated Tiki culture.
Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny album of the same name that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s with Americans who came of age during World War II. The term was coined by Simon "Si" Waronker, Liberty Records co-founder board chairman. The musical colloquialism exotica means tropical ersatz, the non-native, pseudo experience of insular Oceania, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, the Amazon basin, the Andes, the Caribbean and tribal Africa. Denny described the musical style as "a combination of the South Pacific and the Orient...what a lot of people imagined the islands to be like...it's pure fantasy though." While the South Seas forms the core region, exotica reflects the "musical impressions" of every place from standard travel destinations to the mythical "shangri-las" dreamt of by armchair safari-ers.
Edward William May Jr. was an American composer, arranger and trumpeter. He composed film and television music for The Green Hornet (1966), The Mod Squad (1968), Batman, and Naked City (1960). He collaborated on films such as Pennies from Heaven (1981), and orchestrated Cocoon, and Cocoon: The Return, among others.
Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The range of lounge music encompasses beautiful music-influenced instrumentals, modern electronica, while remaining thematically focused on its retro-space age cultural elements. The earliest type of lounge music appeared during the 1920s and 1930s, and was known as light music.
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Takeshi "Tak" Shindo was an American musician, composer and arranger. He was one of the prominent artists in the exotica music genre during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Shindo also founded a dance band in 1947 and was a frequent lecturer and writer on Japanese music. He first gained prominence for his work on the 1957 motion picture Sayonara, served as the musical director for the television series Gunsmoke, and composed theme music for The Ed Sullivan Show and Wagon Train. He is most remembered for the exotica albums he released from 1958 to 1962, including Mganga! The Primitive Sounds of Tak Shindo (1958), Brass and Bamboo (1959) and Accent on Bamboo (1960). He also released several albums in Japan during the mid-1960s that blended American and Japanese musical traditions. During the 1950s and 1960s, Shindo was a columnist for the Rafu Shimpo covering classical and popular music. In 1980, Shindo made a documentary film, Encounter with the Past, about the Manzanar relocation camp where he was relocated in 1942 as part of the Japanese American internment policy.
Orienta is an album by The Markko Polo Adventurers released in 1959. The album was produced by Simon Rady, arranged and conducted by Gerald Fried and recorded in stereo in Hollywood, California. The album uses a combination of sound effects and Asian-inspired music to tell humorous vignettes. Its suggestive cover art features a photograph by Murray Laden.
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Hoagy Sings Carmichael is an album by composer and vocalist Hoagy Carmichael recorded in 1956 and released on the Pacific Jazz label. The album features Carmichael's last significant recordings.
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