Blue Sands
Bwana ã
More Exotic Sounds Of Arthur Lyman
HIFI Record R808
1958
From the back cover:
Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, with its face of civilization, attracts thousands of tourists, many of whom crowd the Shell Bar at Henry J. Kaiser's Hawaiian Village Hotel to see and hear Arthur Lyman's group. They listen spell bound to the exotic sounds and music that have made Arthur Lyman's first album Taboo a best seller everywhere.
The Lyman group "fits" together, each member instinctively knowing what the other will do – the success key to a successful group. As before, Arthur Lyman plays 4-mallet vibes with feeling and finesse, doubling on marimba, guitar, and often percussions. Allen Soares builds piano and celeste rhythm and harmonies. John Kramer keeps the string bass beat, sometimes taking off on flute. Harold Chang provides unending excitement and suspense with accurate, imaginative percussive excursions – in other words, he plays drums but good! Some of the less usual percussion heard are wind chimes, cow bells, castanets, tambourine, guido and all manner of bongo, conga, samba, snare and other drums. Assisting the group for this recording are Japanese vocalist Ethel Azama, pianist Paul Conrad and Chinese Chew Hoon Chang, who plays the rare butterfly, or moon harp, which must be re-tuned for each change of key. Chew Hoon Chang also plays a Chinese bamboo flute. Bird sounds heard are both real and imitative.
Also from the back cover: Once again, through the courtesy of Mr. Henry J. Kaiser, we have recorded in the Kaiser Aluminum Dome outside the Hawaiian Village Hotel. The dome is as nearly perfect acoustically as any place we have found in which to record. It's an auditorium in the shape of a half sphere, seating about 1,200 people, has no "peaks." Reverberation decay time is ideal – about 3 seconds. A pleasing sound phenomenon is that the sound reflective properties of the aluminum sections from which the dome is fabricated accent the 3kc to 5kc range, giving a particularly clean and accurate sound. The group was miked with three Austrian made AKG microphones and recorded with a custom built 3 channel stereophonic Ampex magnetic half-inch tape recorder. The three tracks were later mixed in cutting the master disc from which this record was made.
Bwana ã
Moon Over A Ruined Castle
Waikiki Serenade
La Paloma
Otome San
Canton Rose
Blue Sands
Malaguena
Vera Cruz
Pua Carnation
Colonel Bogey's March
