Les Baxter
Les Baxter (
March 14,
1922â€"
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. 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 (for whom he had written "Quiet Village") 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.
