Song of the Jungle

Vocal exotica never quite carved out the discrete cultural niche that its more popular instrumental sister did in the ‘50s and ‘60s. A popular singer might toss the occasional “Bali Hai,” “Moon of Manakoora” or “Caravan” into the mix, but rarely did exotica a singer make.

Not so for instrumental orchestra and band leaders like Les Baxter, Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman: their jungle fantasia sold by the million, and they did so with dozens of album-length variations on the same eternal themes. Theirs were mood pieces, with quintessential numbers like “Quiet Village,” “Taboo” and “Hypnotique” unfailingly conjuring atmosphere, intrigue and faraway latitudes. Put on Martin Denny’s Afro-Desia LP and you might be setting forth on safari one track (“Simba”), fighting off sleeping sickness the next (“Tsetse Fly”), and all of it, even the parasites, was there for your escapist pleasure.

America’s post-War popular singers conjured moods and places, too. But they relayed and interpreted themes and emotions as well, relating stories and relating, in the process, to their audience. A Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee or Sarah Vaughan sought to engage rather than merely hypnotize. This demanded a broader songbook than just grass shack paeans and meditations on tropical love.

If at all, it was torch singers like Julie London, Julie Wilson and Jeri Southern who best realized a combination of undiluted ambience and real lyrical content. For every slowly drawn syllable that Julie London breathed out, a listener breathed in equal measures of perfume and Sobranie cigarette smoke atmosphere. London and company’s songbooks, too, were based around love, mysterious and lost. Rarely did they sing about the tropics, though.

Still, plenty of vocalists did have their exotic moments, even if it was just a worn chestnut like “Jungle Drums.” Popular singers like Vic Damone (Strange Enchantment), Bing Crosby (Return to Paradise Islands) and Frank Sinatra (Come Fly With Me) made travelogue-style albums with some nominally exotic themes. With assistance from Martin Denny, obscure singers like Sondi Sodsai and Ethel Azama made full-length exotica records. Their vocal records might transport you to a South Seas paradise, just not in quite the same way that a jazzy instrumental tone poem and your living room Barcalounger could. Their records transport you to a nightclub that looked a lot like that South Seas paradise.

That said, I can’t promise that this week’s selections will transport you really even that far. They’re showing Paradise, Hawaiian Style later tonight on TV. That might be a better place to start.

1. Don Sargent and the Buddies, Voodoo Kiss (Catalina)
A teen-oriented rock ‘n’ roll singer from California, we know Don Sargent from a handful of obscure 45s from the late ‘50s, but, other than that, there’s very little to go on. It’s easy to imagine Sargent as a sort of a Ricky Nelson-type, though, a good-looking guy with a perfectly white smile, a pleasant voice, and a dad who worked in the film industry, the guy who always played the older brother’s best friend on television. The senior class treasurer, maybe.

Somewhere in that chasm between white bred American wholesomeness on one hand and sadomasochistic energy on the other throbs the irrepressible, kinky heart of “Voodoo Kiss.” That’s the beauty of this selection: it’s pure American product.

“Voodoo Kiss” was recorded in 1959 for the tiny Catalina label based in Los Angeles.

2. Darla Hood and the Fabulous Modesto Orchestra, My “Quiet Village” (Ray Note)
Darla Hood was a cast member on The Little Rascals, director Hal Roach’s wildly successful series of comedy shorts that surveyed the exploits of a pack of plucky pipsqueaks. The show began in the early ‘20s as Our Gang and soldiered on into the mid-‘40s under various auspices, with ever renewed supplies of rascals. The original series was syndicated for television finally in the ‘50s under its better-known moniker The Little Rascals.

From mid-‘30s onwards, Darla Hood was one of the show’s featured characters, playing herself, basically, from age four to age ten. After Our Gang, she continued to make singing and acting appearances, sustaining a show business career with better luck, if nothing else, than most of her former colleagues.

Hood’s 1959 vocal version of Les Baxter’s exotica standard “Quiet Village” was recorded at the seasoned Hollywood age of twenty-eight. It’s pretty much what you’d expect any Little Rascal to sound like after a few decades at the margins of the spotlight: bigger, brassier, the original Mel Leven lyric drained of its subtle obsessiveness and replaced with searing vibrato.

3. Paul Leader and H.B. Barnum’s Circats, Devils Pad (Tropical Isle)
Every nightclub singer in the business must find his voice. Ideally, with refinement, finesse, and experience, a voice develops into a tool of personal expression and style. A tenor like Frank Sinatra, for instance, was capable of sophisticated emotional nuance and immediacy. Nat King Cole’s velvety baritone and unruffled interpretations mellowed the harried listener. Dean Martin’s croon was all boozy, detached charm and effortless cool.

Hope springs eternal, and so does misery. Around every overwrought emotion, grunt, and foaming-at-the-mouth bit of lunacy on “Devils Pad,” there seems to lurk a late child support payment. Women are perpetually the death of a guy like Paul Leader, and so, alas, are booze, horse racing, and cheap cologne.

This seems to have been Leader’s only record, with a Latin combo assembled for the occasion by the rising West Coast studio man H.B. Barnum. Both were obviously at critical stages in their lives when “Devils Pad” was recorded, circa 1963. Barnum would go on to an extraordinarily successful career in Los Angeles as a freelance jazz, pop, and soul producer and arranger, and, later, as a television composer. Our friend Leader would go on to his third divorce, mostly.

There’s much to love about “Devils Pad,” and it’s all there, in his voice.