The delightful "light music" recordings of Britain's Guild label document the recordings, mostly on 78 rpm discs and taking up either one side or both, of a music usually called easy listening in the U.S. Most of the contents of the discs in the Guild series have been thematic, but the present release is one of a pair that survey the tradition chronologically, from the 1920s and 1930s (on Vol. 1) to the 1940s and 1950s here. That was the heyday of this music, which persisted a decade into the rock & roll era but then faded almost completely from view. The ensembles heard here are thus the same ones present on most of the other discs in the series, and they're an international bunch. American groups represented include the
Boston Pops and an orchestra led by
Meredith Willson, better known for composing The Music Man.
Percy Faith, the most popular figure of the genre's later phase, was Canadian; he is represented by a fine early example of his lush, hypersentimental style, If There Is Someone Lovelier Than You (1944). From France came the inimitably named
Roger Roger and his
Champs Elysées Orchestra, and this disc includes an Italian ensemble, the
Alfredo Antonini Orchestra. But the genre of light music was British above all, and the market in England supported a variety of arrangers with their own individual styles; the expert string writing in The Front Page Theme by
George Melachrino and
Melachrino Strings, who were equally popular on both sides of the Atlantic, should inspire listeners to seek out other discs in the series. As it stands, this is a good sampler for Guild's project, of interest to lounge music fans, people who grew up with the music, and simply people who know an unjustly neglected tradition when they see one.