SpaceAgePop.com is a fan site dedicated to this genre of music
Title
The Space Age Pop Music Page
Description
Background
Exotica and Space Age Bachelor Pad Music began to hit its stride in the mid-50s, about the same time that rock-n-roll was in deep into cover frenzy. Just as many mainstream pop artists rushed to cover Fats Domino's own cover of Smiley Lewis' "I Hear You Knockin'," hi-fi and stereo arrangers fell over themselves to cover "Caravan" and "April in Portugal." Depending on the listener's perspective, these artists either reveled in taking these songs to new levels of instrumentation and sonic possibilities -- or beat them into submission.
Many of these songs were pop or big-band hits from the 1940s and early 1950s. Before Enoch Light and Xavier Cugat -- and well before Dick Dale -- experimented with "Misirlou," the light pianist Jan August had a hit with it. What distinguishes these songs from other standards, though, is the astonishing frequency with which they were covered, particularly by the stalwarts of exotica. Esquivel arranged and recorded versions of virtually all of these songs--as did Enoch Light, Ferrante and Teicher, Lenny Dee, and the Ventures.
Just from my own collection of nearly 1,000 exotica and space-age pop LPs, I can find 40 versions of "The Breeze and I," and over 20 versions of "Autumn Leaves." Les Baxter's "Quiet Village" begot Martin Denny's "Quiet Village," which begot The Clebanoff Strings' version, Ferrante and Teicher's, Pete Rugolo's (done as a mambo), and many more.
