Chacksfield - Love Letters in the Sand

Here's another one of those Decca Stereo LPs that goomus-the-purist passed over...

Frack Chacksfield's orchestra was one of many 'mood' orcehstras that Decca had in their stable in the late 1950s. This effort from 1958 has Frank returning to more COntinental fare than on his previous effort ("In the Mystic East"). I MUST give you this excerpt from the liner notes on the rear of the jacket, as they are brilliant...

Until recent years, of course, you could not have heard light music played with the immaculate artistry that is displayed on this record. In earlier days it was very much the province of tea-room trios and overworked pit orchestras. Like Frank Chacksfield, they played a very wide range of music, but unlike him, they played it all uniformly badly; they unhesitatingly mangled the Sugar plum fairy and Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road into strikingly similar shapes.

Thank you Mr. Peter Clayton. I couldn't have said it better myself.

It is interesting that the British call this "light music" when the more appropriate listening environment is with a Particular Someone that one would make woo with, in a dimly lit (if lit at all) room!

The market for 'light music' was great during the Eisenhower Era, as I guess it would have been a great way to not worry about the Great Red Menace... unfortunately, when I was beginning to listen to music and radio, this type of thing was relegated to elevators, dental office parlors, and "Beautiful Music" FM radio stations, of which there was all of ONE in the town I grew up in. And this is what they played. Over and over and over.

But, now that I am all 'mature' (suppoedly), I find this music very comforting, the lush strings, the occasional trumpet solo taking the melodic lead, the image of a young damsel in evening gown sitting across from me in a dimly lit room as she slowly takes off her gloves and sips gently upon her martini with the sparkle of expectation of things to come...

Ahh, simpler days... where's my smoking jacket, Jeeves?

Love Letters in the Sand