Golden Age of Light Music: More Strings in Stereo!

Audio Remasterer: Alan Bunting.Liner Note Author: David Ades.The Guild label has issued a large series of CDs covering the history of the music known as easy listening in North America and light music in the British Isles. The series is loosely but not exclusively chronological. This release is unusual in that the selections come almost exclusively from the year 1958. Thus the music is relatively late in the history of the genre, and the album, presumably (it is unclear how long the series will eventually last), is one of Guild's later releases. The interaction between the easy listening genre and stereo sound was a natural one, and some of the composers and bandleaders represented here, notably Morton Gould, clearly wrote with the new effects of stereo separation in mind. The music also bears traces of what would within a few years be called space-age bachelor pad music, with even the veteran Canadian leader Robert Farnon undertaking a fairly experimental sound in Stay with the Happy