The Now Spinning/Recent Purchases Thread

With more channels to reproduce, Dolby Atmos may use a lower sampling rate so they can fit the data on the disc, hence the lower sampling rate. I'm not up on Atmos, so I don't know if there are additional technical limitations. The technical explanation of it all would take a while to figure out and report back here, since there are now so many variations on Dolby and their competitor DTS that involve multichannel audio and different flavors of lossy vs. lossless music reproduction.

Just for clarity, though, when something says "96/24" or similar, they're referring to the sampling rate (96kHz--the data is sampled 96,000 times per second) and bit depth (24 bits per sample, AKA the number of "stairstep" levels in volume/amplitude that can be detected). Bitrate is a calculation: sampling rate x bit depth x number of channels. I remember there was a bitrate limitation on DVD players to where a 24-bit/96kHz/6 channel could be reproduced lossless, but not 24-bit/192kHz/6-channel. (And on top of it, DVD-Audio used MLP--Meridian Lossless Packing, basically a type of data compression--so that the DVD's hardware could keep those surround programs within the bitrate the player hardware could handle.)

Short version--it gets really complicated, really fast. 😁
 
This, out of curiosity (video starts at 3:03)...



...led me to this:



Which made me ask the question, is Herb Alpert a...

 
When I found that first video by the Mavs on YouTube, I was wondering where I'd heard "Swinging Safari" before. It was somewhat familiar. So it's possible I heard Kaempfert's version somewhere, maybe on one of those lounge compilations, or maybe another band covered it. It may not be a coincidence that the Mavs followed it with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" since that's also on the Kaempfert album as "Wimoweh."

It hasn't ceased to amaze me how far back Raul Malo digs for tunes or inspiration. His parents, especially his mother, listened to a lot of music in the house, and it likely included this Kaempfert record. (I heard when he was a toddler, he used to walk up to the hi-fi and ask his mum, "Do-be-do-be-do?" to hear Sinatra. 😁) En Español follows that same path--it pulls tunes from Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, France and Italy, among others, and from all decades.
 
Same here and That "Swinging safari" was also used as a theme song for the NBC Version of Match game 1962 to 1969 they used Billy Vaughn's version which sounded almost equal except slightly slower

Close Bob, but I need to correct the record (pun intended!).

THE MATCH GAME that ran in the 60s on NBC daytime used the Bert Kaempfert version of "A Swingin' Safari" as its theme song.
Murky sound, but you can hear it here:


I remember this all so very clearly as I used to be a watcher of that daytime show whenever I could. It initially aired around the 4:00 time slot. If I'm not mistaken it was slotted at :25 minutes with a five minute news break from NBC at 4:25. I absolutely loved the theme but had no idea what it was.

One day, a celebrity guest mentioned liking the theme too, and Gene Rayburn mentioned that it was "A Swingin' Safari", but the version they used was by a "German band" (his exact words). So I tasked my parents with a mission: Find the record of "A Swingin' Safari" for me in their shopping escapades to whatever stores they went into.

I had hoped for a :45 and never considered an album. But in their many treks to stores, they came up empty. I think a year or more passed by when one day they came home with a Billy Vaughn album.
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It was ever so close to what I was hearing on the MATCH GAME and I was pretty much satisfied with the record.

It wouldn't be until the 90s when I found a CD called THE VERY BEST OF BERT KAEMPFERT that featured "A Swingin' Safari". It was from Taragon Records and sounded exceptional.
 
Back in the mid-60s, a set of UHF TV channels began to appear in Philly. One of them was "Kaiser Broadcasting, WKBS-TV, 48". Early on, there was a bunch of unsold time, so the station had a long station ID to fill in. They'd flash up their logo while playing "That Happy Feeling" from the Kaempfert album:
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And there was a car dealer that advertised on the station, and they used "Afrikaan Beat" behind the announcer.



Meanwhile Herb Alpert had adapted "The Happy Trumpeter" as "The Magic Trumpet", and much later did "Skokiaan". All of these came from that A SWINGIN' SAFARI album, so by the time I finally found it, it was VERY familiar.
 
"Skokiaan" dates back to 1950, and was covered at least a dozen times in 1954 with the versions by the Four Lads and Louis Armstrong being among the most popular. Even Spike Jones had a version, "Japanese Skokiaan," sung by Freddy Morgan. It last charted in 1960 by Bill Haley & The Comets.
 
I love those great instrumentals from the 50’s and early 60’s. Another favorite is A Walk In The Black Forest by Horst Jankowski. You’ll know it when you hear it. We had a station that plays nostalgia radio for about 10 years here. It’s still broadcasting, but got knocked off the air by another station that came on line about 4 years ago. The nostalgia station, KINGS radio, out of a small farm town of Lindsay, yes the olive capital, about 60 miles away, has a very weak signal. Great station. They play Carpenters once in awhile too. Anyway if you love hit instrumental songs from that era, many used on tv or movies, I can highly recommend the 2 disc set called Instrumental Gems of the Fifties. It’s a Collector Choice Music set, made by EMI Music. I got mine at Amazon about 7 years ago. Each disc has 20 songs on it.
The version of Skokiaan there is by Ralph Marterie.
 
The version of Skokiaan there is by Ralph Marterie.
That was the highest-charting version in 1954.

I once made a single-disc CD of favorite instrumentals--I should find out what I did with it and post the tracklist here.
 
Great set. I have most of those on my iTunes. Martin Denny is so unusual. I would’ve like to have met him. His music is so out there for his time. I wonder what people thought about him or his music back then.
 
Close Bob, but I need to correct the record (pun intended!).

THE MATCH GAME that ran in the 60s on NBC daytime used the Bert Kaempfert version of "A Swingin' Safari" as its theme song.
Murky sound, but you can hear it here:


I remember this all so very clearly as I used to be a watcher of that daytime show whenever I could. It initially aired around the 4:00 time slot. If I'm not mistaken it was slotted at :25 minutes with a five minute news break from NBC at 4:25. I absolutely loved the theme but had no idea what it was.

One day, a celebrity guest mentioned liking the theme too, and Gene Rayburn mentioned that it was "A Swingin' Safari", but the version they used was by a "German band" (his exact words). So I tasked my parents with a mission: Find the record of "A Swingin' Safari" for me in their shopping escapades to whatever stores they went into.

I had hoped for a :45 and never considered an album. But in their many treks to stores, they came up empty. I think a year or more passed by when one day they came home with a Billy Vaughn album.
1603454737431.png

It was ever so close to what I was hearing on the MATCH GAME and I was pretty much satisfied with the record.

It wouldn't be until the 90s when I found a CD called THE VERY BEST OF BERT KAEMPFERT that featured "A Swingin' Safari". It was from Taragon Records and sounded exceptional.

Thank you for the correction Harry a few sources incorrectly identified the Billy Vaughn version as being the theme so I was grossly deceived all this time my bad but I too enjoy Bert kaempfert's music too its sad he passed on too soon and as for Taragon Records they reissued almost all of the Kaempfert discography in the 90s as I remember
 
Great set. I have most of those on my iTunes. Martin Denny is so unusual. I would’ve like to have met him. His music is so out there for his time. I wonder what people thought about him or his music back then.
Martin Denny was popular enough to sell a decent number of albums back in the day, although it was music your father would buy. Exotica was one of those musical phases back then--others like Arthur Lyman also followed a similar path. Even Esquivel recorded an album, See It In Sound, that explored exotica, but was too oddball for RCA to released until 39 years after it was recorded (1960). And naturally, all of this was central to the revival of lounge/cocktail music and lifestyle in the 90s.

I can't see listening to any of this without a cocktail in a mid-century glass... 😁
 
I have about 10 of them. The Ultra-Lounge series. Even the Christmas one. So many odd tracks of the day, but fun! I even played them in the music store. Great conversation starters. Usually with a what the h*ll is that, inquiry.
 
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I have about 10 of them. The Ultra-Lounge series. Even the Christmas one. So many odd tracks of the day, but fun! I even played them in the music store. Great conversation starters. Usually with a what the h*ll is that, inquiry.
I have a few of those. Some of those were odd and worthy of a good chuckle. 😁

This one was from Volume 4, Bachelor Pad Royale. I have this on one of Mancini's albums, Combo!, which features a jazz harpsichord throughout. But I think this one from the Ultra Lounge series might be the better known version:

 
Yma Sumac never failed to turns heads with her several octave voice and unusual bird call type singing. It’s just out there. About the only fun music in the 90’s revival.
 
Combustible Edison was another new band that came out of the 90s lounge revival--I believe Bro. Cleve was instrumental in helping popularize Esquivel's music and motivating BMG to release compilations and album reissues during the height of it all. This was one of the earliest sites regarding the music (1995): Space Age Bachelor Pad Music . (I still follow Joe Holmes today--he's a photographer in NYC.)
 
I bought two of those Mondo Lounge CDs back in the 90s. They were early sources for some digital BMB, Mendes, Sandpipers, Bacharach, Montez, Jobim, back in a time when few of these artists had any domestic CD releases.

BACHELOR PAD PLEASURES
LOUNGE MUSIC GOES LATIN
 
The sad thing about Universal's attempt at "lounge" was that most of the music they chose wasn't even a part of the lounge/cocktail revival. I think I had one of those and rarely touched it. Capitol and RCA (and to a lesser extent Liberty) had a lot of those easy listening and exotica recordings on tap since they had the depth of catalog throughout the 50s and 60s.

I have this Capitol oldie spinning right now:

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Kinda hokey but has a few good tracks on it.
 
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Something for late night listening. Yeah, 1:55am here. A nice feature of the Roon player is that I'm able to hide two wretched track with Kenny G....his intonation is so terrible on the first of two tracks that it's an assault on the ears. Saved by Roon again!
 
I Remember both those albums By Nelson Riddle and Dudley Moore and I still have them in my collection I understand not everyone enjoys these but when I began doing my radio shows in 96 we were getting a lot of those lounge music compilations along with some early Martin Denny reissues right in the middle of the lounge revivals yes I was promoting it and even after the revivals ended many reissues just kept on coming culminating in the 2011 release of the Surrey house Radio recordings collection
 
I added to the Instrumentals above by expanding it as a two hour playlist:

Hit Instrumentals by Rudy: Playlist

It's still a work in progress, so I likely will add to it as I remember recognizable tunes (by the original artists) to add. I may create a similar list on YouTube Music that would be free for anyone to listen to, albeit not in lossless quality like we enjoy on Qobuz.

I stuck the Deodato at the end, since I can't find the single version at Qobuz. Figured few can sit through the entire thing (as I can't--I usually skip it about 3-4 minutes in). I did use the butchered "Feels So Good" as again, it rambles on too long at nine minutes for most listeners (although I prefer the long version).

The Tito Puente track is uncharacteristic, but it was a single released by RCA back in the day ("Be Mine Tonight").
 
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