Quirky doesn't begin to describe the arrangements of Mexican orchestra leader Juan Garcia Esquivel (1918-2002). His use of exotic percussion and wordless vocals in the late 1950s and into the following decade made him the king of what later came to be known as bachelor pad or lounge music.
There was renewed interest in Esquivel when the lounge music revival began in the early 1990s, but he was never more than a cult figure whose off-the-wall musical ideas never really caught fire with a mass audience.
Still, his recordings are never less than interesting. Check out his imaginative stereo experiment on Begin the Beguine, from his ground-breaking 1958 LP Other Worlds, Other Sounds.
Begin the Beguine
Other Worlds, Other Sounds had a brief CD release in 1997 on the Bar None label. It was paired with the more straight-forward Four Corners of the World. This 2-on-1 CD is long out of print and super expensive on the collectors market, as are copies of the original RCA Victor LP.
However, a company called Master Classics has now reissued this 1997 release as a manufactured on demand CD-R or as a download. The source of this release is unclear, but I suspect it may be copied from the Bar None CD and is only being made available because it's out of copyright under European law. In any case, it's available from Amazon. Probably best to check the quality of this reissue before purchase if you can.
From YouTube, here's a second sample of Other Worlds, Other Sounds, Poinciana.
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