The King of Space-Age Pop!

HOW MUSIC DOES THAT returns with a Mexican bandleader whose coloristic imagination defined the sound of the space age.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is how music does that.I'm Dale McGowan. When my kids were
little, we had a bedtime ritualafter they brushed their teeth and what chopped
wood? I don't I don't rememberwhat little kids do. They got into
their pajamas and I turned on musicin the living room, nice and loud,
and they would dance around wildly wearthemselves out. That was the idea.

(00:23):
We called it Jimmy Jams, Atlantis, Morrissett, Cake Police, Nirvana.
But there was one track I liketo start with that is a cover

(01:11):
or a remake or an arrangement ofKacheta, a song written in the nineteen
thirties by the Puerto Rican composer RaphaelHernandez Marin. Here's what Kachita usually sounds
like. Oh yeah, my god, deeper yo. Yeah, that's not

(01:42):
gonna wear the kids out. Sohow did we get from me to this?
The answer is the great Mexican bandleaderand arranger Juan Garcia escavel and ladies

(02:06):
and gentlemen, they start us hotelranks you the excitement of the piano,
no voices, yet a nicely famoussights and sounds of esque valve. The

(02:30):
song was written by Marin, Butthat arrangement is pure escavelle. An arranger
takes an existing song and reworks itfor a different purpose. Maybe it was
written for an operatic tenor with orchestraon you, and you turned it into

(03:02):
a rumba. Oh, that's anarrangement. Or maybe you turned back into
Jethro Tall. That's an arrangement.I used to be an arranger for about

(03:37):
ten years. I arranged existing songs, mostly rock songs, into halftime shows
for the University of California Marching Bandin Berkeley. So I'd take songs written
for guitar and keyboard and drums andvoice and arranged them for trumpets, trombones,
tuba's saxes, piccolo's, field drums, and all the other instruments you're

(03:59):
yelling at me right now, melophonium, clarinet for some reason. Now,
most arrangers toil in obscurity, Butthe University of California band announces the name
of the arranger of the halftime showover a loudspeaker in the stadium on game
day, in front of your sixtythousand closest friends. The California Martching Band
is under the direction of Robert ohGriggs with field tartings by Edith Toller and

(04:25):
special musical arrangements by Dale Begalla.Yeah, it used to be somebody anyway.
I was a good arranger in college, and a few years after not
a great one. A good arrangerfaithfully takes all the elements of the original
and translates them into the medium ofthe new ensemble. Pretty Much, every

(04:46):
note of the baseline, every noteof the melody, all the chords and
rhythms find their way into the scoreof the new arrangement, so when it
comes out you will hopefully recognize it. Oh yeah, LaBamba or whatever.
That's a arranger. A great arrangerdoes not do that. A great arranger
reimagines the original in the new context. The original gives you the bones,

(05:12):
but what's most incredible in the outcomeis the flesh you put on those bones.
In my life into my life,in my life, into my life,

(05:36):
and my life gouge into my lifeof my life. Esquivell was also
a composer, but he was firstand foremost a legendary arranger of existing music.

(05:59):
His wife said it was fascinating forhim to see how he could make
an old song dance to a newtune. And by the way, side
note, if you've been with mefor a while, you might remember an
occasional series I did on orchestration.Orchestrations are just arrangements for orchestra, but
they had to have their own highvolutint name. Now I've talked about the

(06:19):
elements of music, melody, harmony, rhythm, meter, tempo, consonants,
and dissonance, dynamic contrast. Acomposer or arranger might lean on one
element or another for their signature style. Maybe you're a melodist, or you're
known for rich, complex harmonies orcrazy meters or rhythms. Esquivelle used all

(06:42):
of those elements. But the thingthat made Esquivell Esquivell was tambre. Tambre
just refers to tone color, theword for the difference between the sound of
the piano and electric guitar and bagpipesand voice lo Is timber. Those are

(07:17):
different timbres, that's how you tellthem apart. Esquivell had the most incredible
tambrel imagination and courage of any arrangerI've known. Here's Boulevard of Broken Dreams
in the nineteen thirty four original byConstance Bennett, Hi, want you do?
You swat off? So the boulevard, where's she gone? Get?

(07:49):
Gondegokis without leglet, so they mugan. So you've got solo voice over strings
the whole time, very nice,and a choir comes in with at one
point. Now I'm going to talkthrough the first ninety seconds of Esquivel's fantastic

(08:11):
arrangement of Boulevard. Everything you needto know about Escavell is there. First
of all, he turns it intoa Cuban cha cha, which has a
characteristic rhythm in the weiro, whichis that fish shaped wooden instrument with washboard
grooves in the side of it.You've probably seen it and you run a
stick over the grooves like this,that's a cha cha. But instead of

(08:35):
a wiro, escuvel has a singerright up to the mic, just saying
that's Escavello. Here comes his wallof brass and singers on zuzu zu zo

(09:07):
zoo with basing congress in the band. Listen to that piano. That's an
Esquevelle trademark. His right hand isway upon the last few keys at the
top of the keyboard, and theleft hand is playing the same thing,

(09:31):
but four octaves lower. This justhuge gap zoo. Listen of those stabs
at the keys. That's him now, just a wonderful passage coming up.

(09:54):
Listen to how he distributes the tambersaround wall of brass and then staccato saxes.
I'm in a Hawaiian steel guitar,all of brass and then muted brass
stacato saxes. Oh, I lovethat he creates these dissonant stacks of pitches.

(10:22):
He's got four saxes and instead ofall of them playing dot dot dot
dot dot, one saxe holds thefirst note do, another one plays dota
and holds right, the third oneplaysta and holds, and the fourth one
plays the whole thing yo dot.So you get this fun pile up.

(10:56):
Here's another one. This is Cherokeeby Ray Noble. Esquevelle chooses a whole

(11:18):
different palette of colors for this one. Just lovely chimes, flutes, percussion

(11:41):
with reverb, guitar. This intensemuted brass and based blue blue voices blockenspiel,

(12:39):
then contrast piccolo and xylophone into awall of brass power, power voices,

(13:13):
but the most esquivel spot ever hasto be in. You belong to
my heart. Let's hear bing Crosbyfirst, you belong to my love love,
I'm forever and I love that.It's love, not long ago and

(13:39):
now Esquivell. Yeah, that isan arranger with Chambril imagination. Escaville started

(14:24):
as a pianist in Mexico City,and he studied at Juilliard for a year
somewhere in there, and then hemade his name as director of a radio
orchestra at XW Radio in Mexico Cityin the early fifties Eyes Mexico. His

(15:09):
coloristic flair with an orchestra made hima household name in Mexico, and then
in nineteen fifty seven he snatched awayto Los Angeles by RCA Victor. Now
at this point, we're in theheyday of lounge music. Singers like Dean
Martin and Frank Sinatra. A luckycan one got me right. It's that

(15:41):
easy listening, cool, skinny tie, cigarette Martini, a little sparkling misogyny.
We're right on the cusp of Madmanhere. So that's the singers.
But there was also an instrumental subgenreof lounge music called exotica. Exotica took

(16:08):
your basic lounge music, dropped thesinger, and then added little superficial snippets
of far away lands, like nonwestern scales and marimba and vibraphone and the
sounds of two cans and monkeys.Exotica also intersected with something called tiki culture,
a craze in the nineteen fifties foranything that invoked the mystery of Polynesian

(16:33):
cultures and people, or a cartoonversion of them. Anyway, Tiki culture
was really a byproduct of the Pacifictheater of World War two. Gis came
home with souvenirs and stories of islandculture. James Mischner wins Pulitzer for the
book Tales of the South Pacific innineteen forty seven, and that leads to

(16:53):
the musical South Pacific in nineteen fortynine, a film in nineteen fifty eight,
the year for Hawaii becomes a USstate and we get our own Polynesian
place. The may Tie is inventedright around this time. Trader Vix tiki
themed restaurants and Trader Joe's a fewyears later. I mean it was everywhere.
Look at the lettering of the TraderJoe's sign when you drive by next

(17:17):
time, and you'll see that kindof tiki room lettering go and Disney's Tiki
Room, another product of the crazethat's still with us. So as white
teenagers were getting swept up in thetransition from R and B to rock in
the fifties, their parents were droppingvinyl with the make believe sounds of the
South Seas Balimic. Only weeks beforeEsquivel arrives in the US, bandleader Martin

(17:55):
Denny releases an album called Exotica thatdefines the Eskavelle soaks up the influence of
exoticab and you can hear some coloristicideas that Escavelle ends up integrating into his
palette later on. But really thatkind of low energy vibe was never going
to contain him. He had tofind a sound that he could make his

(18:18):
own. And as it happens,nineteen fifty seven has one more craze up
as sleeve, and it's a bigone. SYDNEYAZ Television presents a special report
on the Splutnik one, the Sovietspace satellite Douglas outwards recording. Until two

(18:40):
days ago, that sound had neverbeen heard on this Earth. Suddenly it
has become as much a part oftwentieth century life. On October fourth,
nineteen fifty seven, the Soviet Sputniksatellite terrifies and fascinates America. And then
when the US puts its own satelliteup four months later, it's officially okay
to be terrified and excited about space, and the space craze just takes off.

(19:06):
Furniture, clothing, art, cardesign, futurism in general, and
space in particular are suddenly all therage. You get illustrations of the cities
of the future, always, withflying cars always, and those like Saturn
rings around our arms and legs forsome reason, Tomorrowland opens in Disneyland.

(19:26):
A few years later, we'll evenget a TV show that knocks all these
influences together, with an exotic characterand an astronaut and a Latin sounding theme
song. Now on the terrified side, we get movies like Forbidden Planet and
Plan nine from Outer Space and Teenagersfrom Outer Space. And I married a

(19:48):
monster from outer space for this sweetheartshe married, the man she had loved
was merely the hollow shell for theinvaders from outer space. The theme of
the Brussels World's Fair in nineteen fiftyeight is Man on the threshold of a
new era. LA will show thetransformation from today into the world of the

(20:11):
future. Now at the same timeas the World's Fair and the whole space
craze in the late fifties, andinnovation in sound is reaching American living rooms.
A new technology pioneered by RCA Victor, The Age of Space is here
and now RCA Victor brings you soundin space stereophonic zou count down ten seconds

(20:40):
to firing nine eight, seven,six, five, four, three two
one. Now, if you're listeningin headphones or a speakers a few feet
apart, you're getting the difference betweenthe left and right channels right. This
was new and futuristic in nineteen fiftyeight, very much in the zeitgeist,

(21:10):
but it also presented a problem.Let's see, what's the best way to
explain OCA stereophonic sound. Stereophonic soundrequires a stereo sound system. Must be
a simple Most Americans had just boughttheir first mono sound systems like five or

(21:30):
six years earlier. They're not goingto rush out and buy a whole new
technology with one new feature that they'veonly heard described on commercials on their monophonic
TV. So OURCA Victor creates thesedemonstration LPs and stereophonic sound with trains and
planes hurtling from right to left,left to right, a bowling alley,

(21:53):
a playground, times Square on NewYear's Eve, all in vivid stereo,
and some arrangements from the new sensationEscavelle. Then they distribute these LPs to
department stores so they could set upstereo demonstration displays for shoppers to gather and

(22:14):
be wild right where the new technologywas for sale. The home stereo system
very quickly became one of those signsof upward mobility, like a TV and
a vacuum cleaner in a fridge.Of course, once you have the system,
you only want to hear music instereo, So Ourca immediately asks Escavelle
to write music that always takes fulladvantage of the medium, and they didn't

(22:37):
have to ask twice. The combinationof the space age and stereophonic sound gave
Esquevelle his secret sauce a new genrecalled space age pop. So what is

(23:48):
space age pop? I'll tell youwhat it is. It's a triumph of
marketing by RCA Victor. It's basicallyEskavelle in stereo. Because the space craze
and Esquivelle and stereo all arrived atabout the same time, RCA was able
to market stereo as the sound ofthe future, the sound of the space
age, and because Escavelle was thefirst one there, he became the king

(24:14):
of a space Age pop. NowI've been away for two years, busy
time, all good, But whenI was thinking about what to do for

(24:36):
my first episode back, Escavelle quicklyrose to the top. For a reason,
We're in a weird timeline. Asyou may know, things get dark
and upsetting once in a while,and sometimes you need to pay attention to
work hard to get the lights backon. But there are also going to
be times in oh, I don'tknow, the next four hundred days or

(24:56):
so, when you're gonna just needin a escape to an unserious place where
guitars slide and accordions melt and littlechoirs sing zuzu and paw pa pow.
That's when you need Escavelle. SoI've created a public playlist on Spotify of
the actual CD that I played formy kids. Search on Spotify for music

(25:18):
from a sparkling planet. I'll seeyou there, Yo. It's good to

(26:02):
be back making How music does that? I missed it. If you like
the show and want to support it, keep your wallets where they are.
All I want is love. Ifyou can rate and comment wherever you get
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episode and want to share the episodelinking your socials. Wow, thanks for
listening. I'll see you next time, whenever that may be or how music

(26:26):
does that now?