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Midnight String Quartet "Rhapsodies for Young Lovers" (Varese
Sarabande)
The emergence of rock 'n' roll through the late '50s and early '60s
pushed many mainstream instrumentalists to the side. Still, non-rock,
orchestral and band instrumentals did manage to find some action with
titles by Percy Faith, Ferrante & Teicher, Bert Kaempfert, Horst
Jankowski and others. Space grew thin at the top of the charts as jazz
and soul instrumentals filled up any space left by rock 'n' roll.
Radio and records had become a teenager's province as the generation
gap cleaved popular music in two. In an attempt to court the older
audience with a semblance of contemporary air, numerous easy listening
orchestras waxed string-based arrangements of popular hits, including
the Hollyridge Strings take on the Beatles, The Living Strings album
of Monkees covers, and endless MOR arrangements that sapped the life
from then-contemporary rock and pop tunes.
One of the lesser remembered studio groups in this genre was the
Midnight String Quartet, arranged and conducted by no less than Leon
Russell, produced by Snuff Garrett, and featuring some of Los Angeles'
top studio players. MSQ took a hybrid approach to bridging the
generation gap, mixing contemporary standards such as "Strangers in
the Night," "The Shadow of Your Smile," and "Somewhere My Love," with
bona fide pop hits such as "A Lover's Concerto," "Yesterday," and "My
Heart's a Symphony." The mix of film tunes, pop hits and the
occasional classical theme ("Moonlight Sonata") echoed the song lists
of other easy listening artists, such as vibraphonist Arthur Lyman.
But unlike the exotic nature of Lyman's Hawaiian-bred arrangements,
Russell and Garrett's sound was decidedly more mainstream and easily
hummed.
Pairing down the string section to a quartet, and layering them on
piano, harpsichord, bass and drums, the arrangements gave these
recordings more muscle than larger orchestras, though Russell's florid
piano and the languid tempos never achieve the bite of acts like
Richard Evans' Soulful Strings. This music sufficiently pleased the
record buying public to sustain the album for over a year on the
charts, reaching the top-20 and spawning several follow-ups. A half-
dozen tracks from the immediate successor (Rhapsodies for Young
Lovers, Volume Two) are included here as bonus tracks. This first-ever
CD issue is remastered sharp and clean, with a broad stereo image;
Joseph Lanza's liner notes are typically effusive in the vein of his
book "Elevator Music - A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and
Other Moodsong." [(c)2008 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com] |
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