In The Golden Age Of Easy Listening, Derek Taylor comprehensively details the easy listening story, from an unlikely beginning with an American army general through to its subsummation into 21st-century mainstream popular music.

 

Described and put into historical context are the giants and innovators of easy-listening music, from Paul Weston, Mantovani, Percy Faith, Ray Conniff, Serge Gainsbourg, Bert Kaempfert, Acker Bilk, Herb Albert and Sergio Mendes to James Last and a host of others.

 

These easy listening giants brought a revitalising mix of styles and forms to a music that is being enjoyed as much by the contemporary streaming generation as it was by the fans of its golden era.

 

---------

 

Derek Taylor is a writer and radio presenter and has written magazine scripts for BBC World Service, presented an arts show for BBC Radio Suffolk and an Americana roots country show for Radio Caroline. He writes album sleeve notes for, among others, record label BACM, and is considered an authority on roots country music. He is the author of Country Music Artists: A Directory Of Their Backing Groups From The 1920s To The Present Day and is currently compiling a similar directory of easy listening artists and their bands/orchestras. He lives in Kent, UK.