Les Baxter

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Les Baxter (March 14, 1922–January 15, 1996) was an American musician and composer.

Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer. At the age of 23 he joined Mel Tormé's Mel-Tones, singing on Artie Shaw records such as "What Is This Thing Called Love".

Baxter then turned to arranging and conducting for Capitol Records in 1950 and was responsible for the early Nat King Cole hits, "Mona Lisa" and "Too Young". In 1953 he scored his first movie, the sailing travelogue Tanga Tika. With his own orchestra, he released a number of hits including "Ruby" (1953), "Unchained Melody" (1955) and "The Poor People Of Paris" (1956). He also achieved success with concept albums of his own orchestral suites: Le Sacre Du Sauvage, Festival Of The Gnomes, Ports Of Pleasure, and Brazil Now, the first three for Capitol and the fourth on Gene Norman's Crescendo label. He worked with first class session musicians, the likes of Plas Johnson and Clare Fischer.

Baxter also wrote the "Whistle" theme from the TV show Lassie. Baxter had obvious skill in writing Latin music for strings, but he did not restrict his activities to recording. As he once told Soundtrack! magazine, "I never turn anything down".

In the 1960s, he formed the Balladeers, a besuited and conservative folk group that at one time featured a slim and youthful David Crosby. He operated in radio as musical director of Halls Of Ivy and the Bob Hope and Abbott and Costello shows; he also worked on movie soundtracks and later composed and conducted scores for Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films and other horror stories and teenage musicals, including The Pit and the Pendulum, Comedy Of Terrors, Muscle Beach Party, The Dunwich Horror and Frogs.

When soundtrack work reduced in the 1980s, he scored music for theme parks and SeaWorlds. In the 1990s, Baxter was widely celebrated, alongside Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman Group, as one of the progenitors of what had become known as the "exotica" movement. In his 1996 appreciation for Wired magazine, writer David Toop remembered Baxter thus:

Baxter offered package tours in sound, selling tickets to sedentary tourists who wanted to stroll around some taboo emotions before lunch, view a pagan ceremony, go wild in the sun or conjure a demon, all without leaving home hi-fi comforts in the white suburbs.

Les Baxter has a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6314 Hollywood Blvd.

[edit] Discography

1947 Music Out of the Moon

1951 Arthur Murray Favorites: Tangos

1951 Ritual of the Savage (Le sacre du sauvage)

1954 The Passions: Featuring Bas Sheva

1954 Thinking of You

1955 Kaleidoscope

1956 Caribbean Moonlight

1956 Tamboo!

1957 'Round the World with Les Baxter

1957 Midnight on the Cliffs

1957 Ports of Pleasure

1957 Selections from Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific

1957 Skins! Bongo Party with Les Baxter

1958 Confetti

1958 Love is a Fabulous Thing

1958 Selections from Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific

1958 Space Escapade

1959 African Jazz

1959 Barbarian (Goliath and the Barbarians) [OST]

1959 Les Baxter's Jungle Jazz

1959 Wild Guitars

1960 Les Baxter's Teen Drums

1960 The Sacred Idol [OST]

1960 Young Pops

1961 Alakazam the Great [OST]

1961 Broadway '61

1961 Jewels of the Sea

1961 Master of the World [OST]

1961 Wild Hi-Fi Drums / Wild Stereo Drums

1962 Sensational!

1962 The Primitive and the Passionate

1962 Voices in Rhythm

1963 Les Baxter's Balladeers

1963 The Academy Award Winners

1963 The Soul of the Drums

1966 Brazil Now

1967 African Blue

1968 Hell's Belles [OST]

1968 Moog Rock

1969 All the Loving Couples [OST]

1969 Bora Bora [OST]

1969 Bugaloo in Brazil

1969 Love Is Blue

1970 Million Seller Hits

1970 Que Mango!

1971 Music of the Devil God Cult: Strange Sounds from Dunwich - The Dunwich Horror [OST]

1973 Black Sabbath (1963) [OST]

1975 Movie Themes

1978 Born Again

1995 The Lost Episode of Les Baxter (1961) [Original Television Soundtrack]

1996 By Popular Request

2000 Dr. Goldfoot & the Girl Bombs (1966) [OST]