Quiet Village ...

At the last count I had eighty two versions of Quiet Village here at the Secret Island. Quiet Village is one of the most important pieces of instrumental exotica, that was originally written and performed by Les Baxter in 1952. In the liner notes to his album, Ritual of the Savage, Baxter described the themes he was conveying in the work:

The jungle grows more dense as the river boat slowly makes its way into the deep interior. A snake slithers into the water, flushing a brilliantly plumaged bird who soars into the clearing above a quiet village. Here is a musical portrait of a tropical village deserted in the mid-day heat.

Seven years later, in 1959, Martin Denny added exotic sounds to the song, and his instrumental version made it to number four on the pop singles chart. In this video clip Denny performs Quiet Village on the popular show Hawaii Calls...

In 1977, The Ritchie Family recorded a disco version of the song and added vocals. The single was included on their African Queens album. Along with the album's title track as well as "Summer Dance", "Quiet Village" hit number one for three weeks in 1977.  The original single hit was a mono recording edited to 2:42, and this length version was used on the Liberty album as well. There was a different recording, done in stereo, used on stereo Liberty LP's and many subsequent reissues. The full length version only made is first appearance sometime in the 1980's.

Arthur Lyman - Yellow Bird. 1961

For your listening pleasure the Secret Island brings you the 1961 Arthur Lyman release Yellow Bird. Starting out as a member of Martin Denny's band Lyman wen't on to make his own name in the exotica genre. His signature tune was his cover of "Yellow Bird", which spent 10 weeks on Billboard's Top Ten chart in 1961, reaching #4. At the height of his fame a 1962 Time magazine article from described a typical performance:

"A conch shell wailed, the conga drums thump-thumped, the bamboo sticks clattered. The four men on stage were constantly on the move — clacking wooden blocks, scratching a corrugated gourd, flailing away at Chinese gongs, weaving rhythms that were insistent, sinuous and hypnotic. Occasionally, when the spirit moved them, they barked like seals or whooped like cranes. The happy audience at Chicago's Edgewater Beach Hotel rattled the rafters whooping back.

The album titled and featuring Yellow Bird was his ninth release. Most of Lyman's albums were recorded in the aluminum Kaiser geodesic dome auditorium on the grounds of the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel on Waikiki in Honolulu. This space provided unparalleled acoustics and a natural 3-second reverberation. His recordings also benefited from being recorded on a one-of-kind Ampex 3-track 1/2" tape recorder designed and built by engineer Richard Vaughn. All of Lyman's albums were recorded live, without overdubbing. He recorded after midnight, to avoid the sounds of traffic and tourists, and occasionally on some releases you can hear the aluminum dome creaking as it settles in the cool night air. The quality of these recordings became even more evident with the advent of popular CD reissues, when the digital mastering engineer found he didn't have to do anything to them but transfer the original 3-track stereo masters to digital. The recordings remain state-of-the-art nearly 50 years later.

Enjoy - Arthur Lyman's Yellow Bird.