Quiet Village 147: Essentials pt 2

From digitiki.com. Hi, handsome. Would you like to listen to some very fine recordings? I got some real wonderful records. If you'll just step inside, I'll play them for you. Oh, they're real wonderful. You'll just love them. Oh, come on. Come on inside and hear them. Welcome to the Quiet Room. Welcome back to part two of what I am now calling Quiet Village Essentials.

These are things that I personally deem to be essentials in an exotica or in a tiki music collection. I've decided... that if i'm i'm kind of doing this by the seat of my pants and if i run across something that it's like hawaiian or something like that i'll throw it in there too because i think it is essential but these are ones if you're trying to start your collection if you're not sure where to go

These are the ones to definitely look at. And these are by no means all of them. You know, you could definitely kind of, these are the jumping off points. Definitely things you should have. And I didn't do Les Baxter.

in the first volume of this, and I'm going to do some Les Baxter. And again, Les Baxter is a hard one because he was an incredibly prolific composer. And not just with Exotica. He did some very ultra-loungy, easy-listening stuff that is wonderful. So it's obviously difficult to say with somebody who has a huge catalog what...

What's the quintessential? Les Baxter, I think the obvious one for Les Baxter would be Ritual of the Savage. Now, that was the first one where he really leaned into the exotic. faraway lands sound again exotica as a genre didn't exist at that point uh and and ritual of the savage was oh gosh was that 1955 when was that 1951. 1951. Six years before Denny got it. But Ritual of the Savage was the record that inspired Denny.

Now, the story goes that Augie Colon brought Denny over to his house and played Les Baxter's Ritual of the Savage, and Denny was absolutely blown away. In fact... If you look at the tracks on Ritual of the Savage, Denny has recorded virtually all of them, either on Exotica or some of his earlier records after Exotica. So it was huge.

huge influence. And of course, Quiet Village was written by Les Baxter. Some people believe that Quiet Village was written by Martin Denny. No. Martin Denny made it a huge hit.

on the Billboard charts, but it was written by Les Baxter. So now we're getting to the elevator pitch. I know I did three Denny's. I did three Limans. I have got to squeeze more music into this episode. So I'm going to do... two from Baxter and I gotta I gotta warn you first Baxter's huge catalog he's got a huge catalog not all of its exotica either a lot of it is very

Ultra lounge, easy listening orchestral stuff. So you kind of got to go look. You got to sample. But the elevator pitch, if someone were to tell me, you got to get, of course. the quintessential one. Ritual of the Savage, which is also titled Le Sacre du Sauvage, which I love that. And Baxter really went for that. I'm taking you to another place. with this specifically. Before this, he had some, he had done some Latin music, he had done a lot of very easy listening stuff.

This is the one, and this influenced Denny. It influenced actually everybody at that point with the concept of going to exotic lands. The second record that I would say, and it's a hard one to pick a second, but I would say the second is Ports of Pleasure. Again, it's not combo exotica. This is...

orchestral exotica. Ports of Pleasure is one of those that, again, takes you way out there. Ports of Pleasure was 57, I believe, and the titles are Tahiti, A Summer Night at Sea, City of Vales, Hong Kong Cable Car, The Monkey Dance of Bali. The titles alone just take you to another place. So I'm going to play one from each. I'm going to play something from Ritual of the Savage, and then I'm going to play something from...

from Ports of Pleasure. So again, Les Baxter, one of those cats. This is just the jumping off point. You can go deep, deep with Les Baxter. But the elevator pitch is... Ritual of the Savage, and Ports of Pleasure, right here on The Quiet Village. I absolutely love that track. It is called Tahiti, A Summer Night at Sea. And that really, that just evokes that complete image. You're on a beautiful cruise ship.

You're sailing Tahiti in the evening. I just love that. That's from Ports of Call, I believe, 1957. I've also seen that it was released in 58. So it's either 57 or 58. Right in the heyday, right as Denny's bringing out Exotica. And, of course, Sophisticated Savage. from The Ritual of the Savage, 1951. So a full six years before Denny would release Exotica with his version of Quiet Village. And again, Denny borrowed a lot of tracks from a lot of composers.

from Baxter, both on Exotica and his later records after that. But Sophisticated Savage, love that. We still use that today for kind of a moniker. Sophisticated Savage. And there was an album from one of Denny's percussionists called Sophisticated Savage from Augie Colon. So we're going to move on now to...

And we're going to move on to some of the other artists that may not have been as prolific or may not have been as well known. And one of them that's really kind of exploded in popularity is Robert Drasnan. Robert Drasden is known for doing this quintessential Tiki record, Exotica. It's true, deep Exotica. Voodoo, 1959. But he didn't do anything else after that until the 2000s. But Robert Drasden was the music director for a television, I cannot remember, I believe it was CBS.

or ABC. He was the music director. He also scored a lot of music for television and film. So he was busy doing all that stuff. But I got this story directly from Robert Dresden about the... the inception of Voodoo. Dave Pell at Topps Records called Robert Drasden into his office, handed him a copy of Martin Denny's Exotica. and said, can you do something like this? Keep in mind,

Exotica was huge. It was exploding. It was a million seller. So Topps was a budget label, and they wanted to cash in on that, as a lot of people did at that point. So Robert Drasning, being the consummate professional, said, yeah, sure, I can do it. And he came out with Voodoo, which was released in 59, two years after Exotica, the original, was released. It was still hot. Denny was hot. Lyman was hot. So we have Voodoo. Now, Topps Record was a budget label, so it didn't really put a lot of...

of promotion behind it. It just was released with probably very little fanfare. I'm sure there was a little promotion, but not much. So the album was quickly forgotten. People did buy it. We can still find it for sale for a lot of money. It was reissued as percussion exotique with a completely different cover. on LP, but this album is fantastic, and check out that cover. It was released on, reissued on Dionysus Records on CD.

in 90-something, right before 2000. And really quick, I don't want to talk too much, but I'm going to give you another little insight. It was also reissued on CD under the title... exotic excursion. Robert Drasnan and Lee Joseph at Dionysus Records contacted the people from Tops who had the... The master tapes and asked for it. They told Robert Drasden flat out to his face that the tapes didn't exist. They were gone. They were destroyed, which was a lie. And so...

Lee Joseph at Dionysus and Robert Drasden took Robert Drasden's Unplayed Master LP and transferred it. And that's the CD that we have today. Exotic Excursion was released almost at the same time, and it is from the Master Tapes. Yes. Fainting couch, please. Clutch the pearls. So somebody had remastered it. Sadly, the budget CD label that released Exotic Excursion cut two tracks, so they only did 10 tracks. But that means Somewhere is a digital...

pristine digital transfer. Don't know where that is to this day, but it did exist at one point. So here is the seminal record, the seminal song from that record, Chant. of the moon from 1959 robert drasnan's voodoo right here on the quiet village Okay, you can hear that right there. That's the sound of Exotica. And I remember finding this record, not knowing who Robert Dresden was, I found a stereo copy for a buck.

at a swap meet i put it on and that was the first track and immediately it was one of those where i'm just like oh my god and then the rest of the record was just as good every single track on that record is amazing now Robert Drasnan went on to release Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 3 in the 2000s. And I would say definitely those are worthy of owning. But again, the elevator speech, Drasnan... Voodoo. Got to get it. You can find it on streaming services. You can find it still on CD. So it is...

fairly readily available. And I just heard from Jeff Chenault, a really good music historian friend of mine, who said that he heard that Chant of the Moon was actually used in an Apple computer commercial just recently.

So I have to dig that up. That's super cool. Anyway, we're moving on now to another cat, a one-record cat, Eden Aubez. Now, if that name doesn't sound familiar, I'm sure one of his most famous compositions does. Nature Boy. And that was recorded by Nat King Cole. And the story is, Eden Abes was a hippie. He was the original hippie. Very bohemian, very dirty hippie, living under the Hollywood sign in Hollywood. That's the story. Very love and peace guy.

White cotton robes, you kind of look like Jesus Christ. Red hair kind of a thing, you know, like the classic Euro paintings of Jesus Christ. But... He was very bohemian. He wrote Nature Boy. And the story is that he shoved the sheet music under the stall in the bathroom where Nat King Cole was. And Nat King Cole picked it up, read it, looked at it, and recorded it. That's the story. Don't know if it's really true or not, but he became very famous for it, and he did this record, which was...

Eden's Island, and he released this record. Let me look really quick. He released this record, I believe it was 50... Oh, it was 1960. He released it in 1960. This is another one. Every track is good, and this is a quintessential Exotica record. It's hard to pick my favorite. But I'll tell you one that is kind of a crowd favorite from this is called The Old Boat. So here we go. From 1960, Eden Abes, his album Eden's Island.

easily find you can easily find it on cd i believe it's been reissued a couple times on lp it's available on digital streaming so it's readily available here is a wonderful track called the old boat All right, I just did two right there. Kicking off that set was The Old Boat by Eden Abes from 1960 record Eden's Island. Then we heard... The Lure of the Unknown Love by Ema Sumac. And that was actually taken from a compilation. So again, the elevator speech, I'd say, yes, get some Ema Sumac.

Ixtubay is a great one. That was originally released in 1950, and I believe it was literally a record album of 78s, put multiple 78s. I don't know if it was ever put out on 12-inch. I know it was reissued multiple times on 10-inch record. But you can get it anywhere on streaming. You can get CDs. But I would say... Again, the elevator pitch. Get the ultimate Ema Sumac.

collection it was released in 99 it is available on Spotify and all these other places but if you wanted to own it I'd say look for that collection on CD there's a ton that were released in Europe Double and triple CD collections. The other runner-up, I would say, as an album would be Mambo. I love that album. That's all Latin music, but it will definitely work. Now, for me personally, and I'm going to tick some people off, Ima Sumac is an acquired taste. I'm not a big fan.

of operatic singers. I like it. I know that it's difficult. Her voice was absolutely amazing. definitely recognize that. But I can't take a lot of it. Ixtabay is fantastic. Mambo is great. Mambo record. I'd say if you wanted to go deeper into Ima Sumac, but a little more pop. kind of sounding popular music, I'd say Mambo. But definitely Ixtabay is that tune.

from Ema Sumac, and you could do very well to get the ultimate Ema Sumac collection, which would be a good one, but definitely that one song. All right, we're going to move on to some more here. This is another one that is... It used to be very hard to find. It's one of those people love for the cover, but it has been released and remastered digitally on streaming services. I don't know if it's ever...

come out on CD with the remastered version, but you can find it. The Surf Men and the album is from 1960. It's called Exotic Island. The cover is beautiful. It's this pre-Photoshopped era. thing of a beautiful topless woman coming out of a giant orchid. Beautiful, beautiful cover. And here is the track Forbidden Island from the Surfmen. Okay, there was a little two-part set. That...

Right there was another, I would say, definitely an exotic essential. Milt Raskin, and the album is called Capu from 1960. The original cover is absolutely beautiful. It was reissued. multiple times, usually under the title Exotic Percussion, with this drawing of hands moving. multiple exotic, I believe it was released multiple times under different titles, but Capu is the original. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

That, again, I believe is available digitally in multiple places. I think it has been released on CD. And the LP is fairly readily available. You can find that. Before that, we heard The Surfman with Forbidden... from their 1960 LP Exotic Island. Two essentials in Exotica. And now we're going to move up to...

I'm going to move into more of the Hawaiian, the Polynesian, Tahitian kind of thing right here. And these next two, I would say, are two. records, and one of them is definitely an artist that you should get. The first one is Charles Mauu. And he's been, the last name is M-A-U-U. And usually in Polynesia, when you have two vowels, they are pronounced separately, like Hawaii. Mau'u. His name's Charles. Sometimes he's listed as Charlie Mau'u. But the album is Polynesia.

And it is a mono record. It was released in, boy, it was released in 1954, I believe, maybe even earlier than that. But it's a beautiful cover. It's got this bare-breasted woman in these giant elephant ear leaves. You can't really hardly see anything, but you really get the sense that she's not wearing a darn thing. And it says Polynesia with exclamation point. And it was typically a 10-inch record. It was released on 12-inch LP. It's mono. It is wonderful.

tahitian music um i don't know what to say i just love this record front to back and i will say one thing that's nostalgic for me for those of you that know about Oceanic Arts, the now defunct Oceanic Arts. I remember going there on Saturdays and you'd walk in. They would have this playing over their sound system. And you're just walking in amongst the smell of thatch and cut bamboo and reeds, looking at all these tikis and Polynesian stuff, listening to this. And it really...

brings that vibe. So I gotta say Polynesia by Charles or Charlie Mau'u. This is a wonderful album. Here is the track that I chose from that record, which is, it's called Minoi Minoi, which is a Polynesian. tune that a lot of people have recorded so here we go Charles Mau'u Polynesia Minoy Minoye Minoye ¡Suscríbete al canal!

Minoi, minoi, telle Minoi, my little belly Minoi, minoi, my little belly Minoi, minoi, my little belly Ah, siwa, siwa, miya, oi, on A lolo, peke, peke, hau, oi, loi So we do some white ways of all Thank you. Minoy, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye, minoye. Right, we had a set of three right there, and kicking that off was a Tahitian track, Minoi Minoi, by Charles Mau'u, from the 19, I believe it's 1956 album.

Polynesia. It was a 10-inch LP. It was reissued on LP. It's an old one. It's mono. It has been reissued digitally. You can find it on streaming. I believe there are some CDs. I know in Europe it was released. On one label, which did a really weird thing where they panned all of the music. It's mono. They panned it all over to one side of the speaker and just a tiny bit of reverb in the other side. very odd to listen to. But it has been released digitally and it's very clean.

In the middle of that set was one of my absolute favorites, Hawaii Calls, sometimes listed under the artist of Webley Edwards, who is the producer for Hawaii Calls. And that is the 1959 record, Hawaiian Strings, Low Moon at Waikiki. Beautiful, lazy, beautiful. It's really hard to go wrong with some of the early Hawaii Calls records.

And again, Hawaii Calls, in case you haven't followed the show and you definitely go back and listen, I did a Hawaii Calls episode. It was one of the longest running radio programs ever. And it was recorded and broadcast live from the beach at Waikiki, usually at one of the hotels, for decades. Webley Edwards was the producer and the emcee, and it featured...

All of the big names of Hawaiian music from actually from the 40s and the early 40s all the way into the 60s, 70s really was something spectacular. Alfred Apaka was one of the biggies. Haunani Kahaliwai. I believe Martin Denny was on there, too. There was even a short-lived television special, Hawaii Calls. You can find some YouTube videos of that. But definitely the Hawaii Calls.

And again, that's one that was hard to figure out which one to get. There's a very, very rare one called Exotic Instrumentals of the Islands. Very rare, never been reissued digitally. Very hard to find. But I would say if you wanted that Hawaiian sound, get Hawaiian strings. Beautiful, slow, Hawaiian, dreamy stuff. Get that one. And that last one was Jerry Bird from his album Bird of Paradise from 1961. And that was the title track, Bird of Paradise. The album...

is spelled after his name, B-Y-R-D of Paradise, but the song title is Bird, B-I-R-D of Paradise. Definitely get that Hawaiian sound. Jerry Bird did... a lot of Hawaiian records, and they're all great. This one is the one that I have, and I listen to a lot, Bird of Paradise. Okay, we're actually, we're getting... low on time and it's difficult where else to go from there, I would say...

You know, I didn't really get into a lot of ultra lounge or easy listening. I can actually do that right now. I would say, before I do the easy listening, let me do a Latin-y kind of Hawaiian one from a Hawaiian artist. And his name is Alex Kayak. The album's called For Surfers Only. And it was released, I want to say 1960. I don't have it in front of me, 1960.

Beautiful album cover of a woman kneeling on the beach with a surfboard propped up in the sand behind her. It's not that well known, but the people who collect Exotica... And Hawaiian music love this. Everybody who's heard this record loves it. It's really very Latin. Alex Kayak was a member of a singing group in Hawaii. I've actually come across multiple spellings of his last name. One was Alex Keck, not Keack, K-E-A-C-K. One was... One was...

Well, it may actually be pronounced Keck. I've heard, I've seen K-E-C-K pronounced spellings, but either way, this is his only... solo record, and it's very Latin, but all the names are Hawaiian and Polynesian. So here is the track Polynesian Hayride from Alex Kayak's album Four Surfers Only. Okay, there it was. Alex Kayak, Polynesian Hayride from Four Surfers Only. That is available digitally. There's a lot more to get to.

probably could do almost a whole third one but i won't do a third one i'm gonna stop right here this is the jumping off point there's many more artists many more songs many more records or CDs, whatever you want to call it, to collect. Difficult to do songs. And as I was doing these, I realized a lot of these artists had recorded some of the same songs. So you start to get this sense of certain...

In jazz, what they call standards that people do, such as the song Bally High, and of course Mapuana, a lot of people have done that one. Taboo, of course, a lot of those. And of course, Quiet Village. You start to see a trend with songs, so I guess it probably wouldn't have been great to just do the essential songs, but...

These are some of the artists that I would highly recommend if I was, again, in the elevator pitch with not much time. Get these. There's a lot more, but again, as you start collecting, you start getting into more of a deep dive.

There are some that are extremely rare that everybody wants. I don't know if they're essentials, but everybody wants them because they're very rare and costly to acquire. But I'm going to leave you with...

One more, and this is one of the artists that I would say is pre-Tiki up there with Les Baxter, and that is Corla Pandit. He's really famous because he was an organist. He had a TV show in literally the... first days of television and it was just a live thing of him playing on the organ staring never looking at his hands staring into the um into the camera, and it was a midday show, so a lot of housewives would tune on and just turn in.

tune in and swoon over this real exotic guy with a turban. He was Indian, and I'll put an asterisk right there. He was Indian. So he's very exotic and he played very exotic organ. And it just looked like, you know, these women thinking, oh, my God, he's playing to me and he's so beautiful and blah, blah, blah. And I did an episode on him as well. Definitely go back and check it out. He was hiding a deep, dark secret that would have, I hate to say it, probably gotten him killed.

if it had come out at the time. But he is definitely, I would say, proto-exotica. He's one of the foundational guys. Everyone loved his music because it was exotic and it had the different... titles he did a lot of records and you can find his records most of them are autographed he was very available for autographs but I pulled one and it was his

It was a theme to his show. It was called Magnetic Theme. And it's very early 50s. And this is from a collection, I would say, that's really good of Corlopandit called Corlopandit. buried treasures and this was his theme to his TV show so again my Mai Tai is completely empty there's nothing in the glass there's nothing in the glass

And that means we've come to the end of another episode. I hope you liked these last two, these essentials. Again, essentials according to me. There's a lot more, too. There's a lot more artists, too, I would say, to collect. But these are the essentials. I hope you liked it. Again, if you want to get a list of all the tracks on this and past episodes, you can do so by going to digitiki.com. You can also tune in to...

Quiet Village Radio, which is Tiki Music streaming 24-7. Tiki Music, not just Exotica. And you can also please visit the gift shop. There's lots of cool things in there, and all the profit from that goes to keeping this show and Quiet Village on the air. So until next time, everyone, take care of yourself. Live Aloha. Leave the world a little bit better when you go to bed as it was when you found it this morning. And again, feel free to write in. I love to hear from listeners. I'm so...

excited to get an email or a, um, a text on, um, on Facebook or Instagram or, you know, just a flat out email. So please do so until next time here is. Corla Pandit, the guy before Baxter, before everybody doing his TV theme song, Magnetic Theme. Until next time, everyone, aloha.