Easy Listening and Film Scoring 1948-78

<p>Composers arrangers conductors session musicians and executives worked in easy listening <i>and </i>scoring complicating an academic focus that lionizes film music while ignoring or deriding easy listening. This book documents easy listening’s connections with film music an aspect overlooked in academic and popular literature.<br><br>Fueled by the rise of the LP and home entertainment easy listening became the largest midcentury commercial music market generating more actual income for the record business than 7- inch singles. Easy listening roped in subgenres including classical baroque jazz Latin Polynesian exotica rock Broadway and R&B appropriated and reinterpreted just as they were for cinema. Easy listening provided opportunities in orchestral music for conservatory- trained composers. Major film composers such as Henry Mancini and Michel Legrand had a prodigious output of easy listening albums.<br><br>Critics fault easy listening for structural racisms overlooking its evolution and practitioners. Easy listening helped destabilize a tripartite record business that categorized product as race records old time records or general popular music. Charlie Parker’s <i>with Strings </i>records altered the direction of jazz profoundly influencing other performers encouraging bold crosspollinations and making money.<br><br>The influence of technology and historical contexts of music for work and leisure are explored. Original interviews and primary sources will fascinate scholars historians and students of cinema television film scoring and midcentury popular music. </p>