Oh, I'll tell you what I'd been playing. It was "Charmaine," by The Harmonicats:
That's something I used to like to play (with hippie irony) in 1969 at a diner in New Jersey that had individual jukeboxes built in at every booth table. I'd forgotten about those things but the old memories came back to me suddenly when I saw a picture (on Facebook) of somebody eating at a table at Outback that had a digital device built into the table. It wasn't for music, but for ordering food. So I went looking for "Charmaine." (Hey, isn't that the music that's playing during "medicine time" in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? (a 1975 movie and not the source of my belief that it was funny to play that song in the diner).)
But back to The George Shearing Quintet. You may remember that I listened to an entire The George Shearing Quintet album and blogged about it back in 2013:
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this music, even as I remember feeling perfectly annoyed at my father for listening to something that seemed so inanely smooth and pleasant....It's so funny that I've stumbled into the topic of Muzak, because twice in the past week, I've expressed the opinion (to Meade) that I think Muzak will be the piped in music in the future. It makes you feel calm and happy (as long as you let it!) and public places are going to want to exclude music with lyrics, because — more and more — people will come to feel that song lyrics are sexual harassment. Too many stray "I want your body" lyrics.
I expected this album to be Muzak — schmaltzy, embarrassing junk. But it was detailed and crisp, and I asked the spirit of my father to forgive me for my deafness to the things that he loved.
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Sir George was, and is, the greatest expositor of "soft" jazz ever.
A long time ago, tyhe boss installed muzak in the office while I was in the hospital with pneumonia. I stood it for about two hours, but then got a stepladder and a pair of pliers and cut the wires to the speaker closest to my space. The boss came by while I was doing it, but went away muttering something about never being able tp please some people...
Ok, I won't ask. But I hope it was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=160&v=pSQoKHfAjo4
SNL does something funny, been a long time since we've seen that!
That "Charmaine" song actually warped time. It's less than three minutes long and felt like six.
Back in the day, the Mantovani version was heard damn near everywhere. My Dad pronounced it Chow Mein.
Speaking of New Jersey diners, I tried to talk my nephew into having his wedding reception at the Tick Tock Diner on Rte. 3. He and his bride chose otherwise.
"But it was detailed and crisp, and I asked the spirit of my father to forgive me for my deafness to the things that he loved." The beginning of an esthetic Reckoning?
Shearing was blind. Never forget the days of going to Birdland to hear Basie. If you want to hear the ultimate in riffs listen to Basie's "easyin it 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fppp8YJ80I&list=PLIiV6-7MwXIWtYnCySCuRpdg95kKQewNO&index=3
Note the "Miller Music" on the Charmaine Mercury label.
The “Sing Along With Mitch” album series, which began in 1958, was an immense success, finding an eager audience among older listeners looking for an alternative to rock ’n’ roll. Mitch Miller and the Gang serenaded them with chestnuts like “Home on the Range,”“That Old Gang of Mine,” “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”
When the concept was adapted for television in 1961, with the lyrics appearing at the bottom of the screen, Mr. Miller, with his beaming smile and neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, became a national celebrity.
By then he had established himself as a hit maker for Columbia Records and a career shaper for singers like Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Mathis, Doris Day, Patti Page and Frankie Laine. First at Mercury Records and then at Columbia, he helped define American popular music in the postwar, pre-rock era, carefully matching singers with songs and choosing often unorthodox but almost always catchy instrumental accompaniment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/arts/music/03miller.html
"Charmaine" is used in that scene from Cuckoo' Nest. It was also used in one of the episodes in the middle of the recent Twin Peaks limited series, I think.
"Harmonicrats" sounds like a good name for a political party in the future. The opposition party would be the "Dissenticans."
As I developed my musical tastes growing up, I tended toward the odd, the eccentric, the outre, and the extreme. I became a fan of the nascent NYC underground rock scene, i.e., the Max's Kansas City/CBGB nexus from which came The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Richard Hell, Suicide, etc. It became known as "punk rock," mainly because of the funny, cartoon-ridden magazine that documented the scene, PUNK Magazine, which published it's first issue in January 1976. (Don't let anyone tell you "punk" came from England. It didn't.)
Eventually, I tired of rock music and spent nearly 15 years listening almost entirely to free jazz--amelodic, roaring, freely improvised sonic chaos. It wasn't about melody, it was about sound texture. And force.
Eventually I tired of that, as, after a while, amelodic sonic chaos all starts to sound the same, (though it really isn't).
I relate all the above because, while I can still enjoy listening to most of the music I have always liked, I have come to really like the soft, easy-listening music my parents used to listen to when I was young, aka "elevator music." (I also really like listening to 70s pop music, most of which I loathed at the time.)
It's a funny world!
The Silver Diner chain has juke boxes at individual tables. Doubt they have “Charmaine,” though.
It's basically just Goodnight Irene.
Here, I found the part with Charmaine in the recent Twin Peaks series. Sort of an allusion to the scene from "A Clockwork Orange" and "Singing in the Rain".
...I think Muzak will be the piped in music in the future. It makes you feel calm and happy (as long as you let it!) and public places are going to want to exclude music with lyrics, because — more and more — people will come to feel that song lyrics are sexual harassment.
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the trend. Music in public places is not only louder and more obtrusive, but more and more it's loudly obtrusive vocal music, which is even more distracting and annoying.
In recent years I've stopped patronizing restaurants and retail establishments that I liked, for just this reason. My last local hangout cafe switched from low-volume classical/jazz background to loud shitty vocal pop a year or so ago, so...I quit going there. (And it's not as if their clientele skewed young, in which case I could understand why they weren't interested in catering to my preferences.)
I like to eat out, and there are good local restaurants I'd patronize regularly, but, same problem. It makes for a very unpleasant dining experience, no matter how good the food is. I guess conversing with one's dinner companions, or being left in peace with one's thoughts if dining alone, just isn't a thing these days. One of these "nice" places, which maintains a SWPLy, somewhat hipsterish ambience, but whose clientele appears to skew middle-aged to old, has a (loud, vocal) boomer nostalgia feed - which makes me laugh, but also drives me out the door.
In years past I'd politely suggest to the management that the choice of noise might be off-putting to people who have money to spend, and want to spend it, at the establishment in question, but I gave up. Don't want people to stay at home or buy online? It may be a lost cause for other reasons, but your sound system telling potential customers "fuck you and your preference for a pleasant, adult dining/shopping experience" when they walk in the door can't be helping.
I found it interesting your story about playing this ironically. Have you considered the possibility that your doing so is why it shows up like this in movies made afterwards? I ask because while I was looking for that particular scene in Twin Peaks, I found that it is used in several other instances in film and television, including The Green Mile. How often did you do this in 1969? How many people saw you doing this? Could any of them be connected to Cuckoo's Nest? It is just an odd song to choose.
Percy Faith, 101 Strings and Montovani albums would be a good replacement for the loud music that plays in our Gold's Gymn. It sounds more like surgery being done on a singer without anesthesia. Everybody wants to hear someone's suffering. But in the early 1950s days the soldiers who had heard enough suffering men on WWII battlefields wanted smooth and beautiful sounds as they got over the War.
That's something I used to like to play (with hippie irony) in 1969 at a diner in New Jersey that had individual jukeboxes built in at every booth table. I'd forgotten about those things but the old memories came back to me suddenly when I saw a picture (on Facebook) of somebody eating at a table at Outback that had a digital device built into the table.
K-4: Don't Stop Believing
This is the future.
Someday you people will regret not forking over your money to me, via an Althouse intermediary of course to keep it all on the up and up.
You don't know what I am and don't appreciate me.
Sad.
(Hint: Play the song again.)
I listen occasionally to XM 73 to the 40s. Like our hostess, I disdained this music in the past, my father’s music. But I appreciate it now, and am surprised how much I remember; I didn’t pay much attention to music until the ‘50s, when I was a teenager. My dad loved classical music, as well, and most of my favorites I heard when he controlled the record player.
My mom bought a "Beatlemania" 78 by the Harmonicats at a garage sale. I loved it!
Yeah I miss Muzak. Especially when it played old standards, since they are melodically and harmonically so much better than modern pop. So really you don't need fancy arrangements or effects.
And why or why do restaurants and supermarkets pipe in screaming female vocals? It was okay when Aretha did that shtick but it's waaay old now, and very irritating. Jesus, Dean Martin or even Eddie Vedder would be more mellow.
Muzak was engineered to manipulate mood and behavior. It was actually quite sophisticated.
I remember when my father wired up intercoms in every room of the house and piped music [mostly classical and a few broadway musicals] even to the bathrooms.
Funny that. One of my hobbies is rearranging and remaking in the recording studio of old classic tunes of my parent's generation that I have come love as much as any Beatle or Byrds song. By way of example - Fank Loesser's "Say It (Over and Over Again)" performed by Tommy Dorsey and sung by Frank Sinatra or Jimmy Van Heusen's "Shake Down the Stars" performed by Benny Goodman and sung by Helen Forrest. This old hippie has grown to love the music of my parents and reimagining those songs as a producer in the atudio is almost more fun than a body can stand.
Carol asks: And why or why do restaurants and supermarkets pipe in screaming female vocals?
I've asked them that and they tell me that upper management makes the decision rather than the locals. I asked an employee at Walmart recently if there was "some way we could put that poor woman out of her misery". Some people insist they can tune it out. I can't.
Not only can I not tune it out but I can't wait to get out of the store.
I like to shop at Metcalfe's supermarket because they play classical music. Too bad I don't live very close to one.
This is why I have my earbuds in and playing music from my own collection pretty much every waking moment.
My favorite pizza joint started playing a heavy rotation of Kenny G songs. It was like being in a crummy porn movie, but without the sex.
I tend to think there is a distinction between "easy listening" and "Muzak", with the latter being more purposely bland and detached and the former being more often designed to be actively listened to. Despite being a late Gen-Xer, I found quality easy listening to be more relaxing for actively listening than just about any other music, and it remains my choice for sitting down with a cocktail and thinking about my day.
One rap lyric I recall hearing on the radio
“Shut the fuck up bitch shut the fuck up
Shut the fuck up bitch shut the fuck up”
Over and over and over.
Or how about “Don’t need no short-dick man!”
Or how about “The sound of me cumming” with moans
Or how about “My neck, my back, lick my pussy and my crack”
Or how about “99 problems but a bitch ain’t one”
So when people prattle about Trump's crudity, I wonder what culture they live in.
FWIW, the best version of "Lullabye" is by Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaqp-Ghlfg
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