Post #328089 by sushiman on Fri, Aug 24, 2007 6:30 PM

I've been a huge Sun Ra fan for many years , especially of his 50's / early 60's stuff . From the book SPACE IS THE PLACE : The Life and Times of Sun Ra ...

" The big postwar jazz bands held little interest for Sonny , as most were either recycling past successes or shoving singers to the front , or else attempting to paste the innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie onto older formulas . Sonny was now listening to the Hollywood-inspired music being made by people like David Rose , whose lush massed string writing could be heard as theme songs on several popular radio programs ; or Walter Schumann , who brought classical choral methods to pop songs ; OR to the exotica of people like Martin Denny , who recorded in Honolulu under Henry Kaiser's Aluminum Dome accompanied by animal noises , natural accoustic delay , and reverberation ; and ESPECIALLY to the arrangements of LES BAXTER , the premier figure in what was being called mood music .

Baxter was a big band saxophonist and singer who developed a post-swing style in the late 40's and early 50's of spectacular orchestral writing , full of tympani and hand drums , tumbling violin lines , harps , marimbas , celesta , Latin rhythm vamps , the cries of animals , choral moans , and flamboyany singers , creating imaginary soundscapes which he helped evoke with titles like " Saturday Night On Saturn " , " Atlantis " , " Voodoo Dreams " , and " Pyramid of the Sun " . Sonny first heard Baxter on Perfume Set to Music ( 1946 ) and Music Out of the Moon " ( 1947 ) , two albums built around melodies for theremin performed by Dr. Samuel Hoffman , a Los Angeles podiatrist who had played on the soundtracks Spellbound and The Lost Weekend . Baxter went on to produce records which celebrated the Aztecs ( Sacred Idol in 1959 ) , South Asia ( Ports of Pleasure 1957 ) , Africa and the Middle East ( Tamboo in 1955 ) , and the Caribbean ( Caribbean Moonlight in 1956 ) , all of which used Latin rhythms generically , as did his two big band records , African Jazz ( 1958 ) and Jungle Jazz ( 1959 ) . Though later generations would understand this music in strictly utilitarian terms , and hear in it the sounds of air conditioning and the clink of ice in cocktail shakers , for Sonny it was music rich with imagination and suggestion , and free of material constraints . His genius was to take as raw material what others in the 1950's thought of as " easy listening " and turn it into what in the late 1960's would be heard as " Third World Music ! by some and as " uneasy listening music " by others .