After the Second World War the twentieth century seemed to be the American century. The only nation to come out of the war healthier than when it went in was the USA; the Marshall Plan helped rebuild Europe, while at home the Depression was over, and a great many ex-soldiers were taking advantage of the GI Bill to acquire further education, an opportunity that had mostly been denied their parents. During the war the income of the average white family had doubled, but the income of the average black family had tripled; industry was working flat out to supply consumers (a new buzz-word) with everything they wanted, and the perfect society seemed to be just around the corner. Could we not invent anything we needed?
There were unseen difficulties ahead, but the biggest problem facing the record business as the decade turned appeared to be technological confusion. The invention of microgroove records started the battle of the speeds, which meant dislocation in the industry and headaches for retailers. Mainstream popular music itself in the post-war years became anodyne, as though the hole at the center of it previously occupied by the big bands could be filled only with marshmallow.
The phenomenon that is still called light music in Britain, and soon came to be called mood music in the USA, was an interesting one; it briefly had a new life thanks largely to the long-playing record. A good number of recordings of 'light classical' music and orchestral arrangements of popular material had always been used for what was later called easy listening. Victor's director of light music, Nathaniel Shilkret, had hit records from 1924 to 1932, and during the 1930s and 1940s Al Goodman and André Kostelanetz were tremendously popular on radio and on records that stayed in print for years, accumulating comfortable sales. Violinist and bandleader Leo Reisman not only accompanied Fred Astaire (and composer Harold Arlen singing his own 'Stormy Weather'), but had hits of his between 1925 and 1940. Arthur Fiedler became conductor of the Boston Pops in 1930, and stayed until he died in 1979. In 1943 studio conductor David Rose had a hit with 'Holiday for Strings'; in 1949 ace studio conductor Lennie Hayton was successful with Richard Rodgers's ballet 'Slaughter on Tenth Avenue'.
In the early 1950s the studio bandleaders and A&R men, some of them veterans of the Swing Era, were arrangers, composers and conductors: for example, Gordon Jenkins at Decca, Hugo Winterhalter and German-born Henri Rene at RCA, Percy Faith, Paul Weston and Mitch Miller at Columbia, Les Baxter and Nelson Riddle at Capitol and Richard Hayman and David Carroll at Mercury. Trumpet player turned conductor Monty Kelly had a hit in 1953 with 'Tropicana'. The composers of such instrumental pieces were journeymen who turned their hands to many things; 'Tropicana' and 'Life in New York' were written by Bernie Wayne, who also wrote 'Vanessa' (an instrumental hit for Winterhalter), 'Laughing on the Outside (Crying on the Inside)', which had popular recordings in 1946 and 1953, and 'Blue Velvet', a hit for Tony Bennett in 1951 and a much bigger success for Bobby Vinton a dozen years later. Leroy Anderson was a choir director and organist who also played bass in symphony orchestras, and began arranging for the Boston Pops in 1935; his own record of 'Syncopated Clock' was a hit in 1951, and his 'Blue Tango' was in the charts for thirty-eight weeks that year. Most of these people backed vocalists on countless hit recordings, for example, Kostelanetz on Perry Como's number one 'Prisoner of Love' (1946).
Some of the arranger-conductor hits had vocals, sung by studio soloists or a chorus, but the 'popular instrumental' briefly became a genre of its own. Les Baxter was an all-rounder who later wrote scores for some of Roger Corman's horror films; his 'April in Portugal' was a hit in 1953. Richard Hayman's 'Ruby', on which he played harmonica, reached number three that year; the tune was the theme from the film Ruby Gentry. Mitch Miller turned out jolly novelties like 'Oriental Polka', which usually did not reach the charts. The soundtrack title theme from the Italian film Anna was a hit in 1953, sung by Silvana Mangano, while Weston made an attractive dance band arrangement of it. Percy Faith was among the most successful in this class, recording over eighty profitable albums and two big hit singles: 'Delicado' (1952), a Brazilian pop song, was played by Stan Freeman on an amplified harpsichord; 'Song from "Moulin Rouge" (Where is Your Heart)' (1953), a film theme, was sung by Felicia Sanders in a brilliant arrangement. (Faith's jolly version of Hugo Alfven's 'Swedish Rhapsody', on the other side of 'Moulin Rouge', also charted.)
The hits of the few dance bands that were still around, mostly playing at college proms fell into the popular instrumental category. Pianist and arranger Ralph Flanagan was encouraged by booking agents to form a band on the Glenn Miller model; he was successful in 1952 with 'Hot Toddy' on RCA. Trumpeter Ray Anthony on Capitol had an attractive recording of 'Dancing in the Dark' and trumpeter Ralph Marterie reached high in the chart with Ellington's 'Caravan' on Mercury in 1953. 'Skokiaan' was a South African novelty named after a Zulu drink; the Bulawayo Sweet Rhythm Boys had their own hit (on London), while Anthony, Marterie and Johnny Hodges all made recordings of it. Trombonist Buddy Morrow (whose real name was Moe Zudekoff) had played with such bands as Artie Shaw's and Tommy Dorsey's; in 1952 he had a big-band hit with a cover of Jimmy Forrest's 'Night Train', but it did not appear in the Billboard chart (possibly because by everybody was embarrassed, knowing by then that the riff properly belonged to Ellington). While there was not enough work to keep a large number of dance bands in business, the remarkable thing about all these records was the playing of the rhythm sections, which was infinitely better than that of the average white rhythm section of earlier decades. Marterie's 'Caravan', though it was inferior to Ellington's recordings of his own tune, was a jumping disc: it introduced a new generation to the name of Ellington, and (like Marterie's pop hit 'Pretend' of the same year) it had an electric guitar playing the melody lead, still unusual at the time.
A lot of this music, however, does not hold up very well. The wordless chorus (a common gimmick) on Baxter's 'April in Portugal' has been known to induce nausea. In any case, the 'popular instrumental', and light music in general, was soon subsumed in Muzak, the name of the largest purveyor of wired music which became a generic term for the slush that came at you out of the walls and ceilings of airports, supermarkets and waiting rooms. Most of this superfluous and gratuitous music was third-rate; it helped to kill off, or at least drive underground, the American market for light music, because it devalued music in general (yet if you asked for it to be turned off, you heard, 'Whatsamatter? Don't you like music?'). There was less wallpaper music in Britain, which is partly why light music still has a considerable audience there. English essayist and novelist J. B. Priestley wrote: Therefore this is the large rise and fall of popular music summed up.
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