The clatter of jungle birds, the chatter of monkeys, and the bellow of a lion above jazzy, easy listening instrumentation all serve to remind listeners that
Temptation: The Exotic Sounds of Chaino came from the exotica revolution of the late '50s and early '60s, when composers/arrangers
Les Baxter,
Martin Denny,
Robert Drasnin, and others offered a progressive approach to pop that made traveling to faraway places and being exposed to other musical cultures as easy as popping a record on the turntable.
Chaino (real name
Leon Johnson), was a master percussionist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He spent much of the late '30s and '40s performing on the chitlin circuit. While working on soundtracks and as an extra in films in 1950s Los Angeles, he met music producer
Kirby Allan. Impressed by his talent on bongos and other drums, they began collaborating, hiring studio players and making records.
Johnson changed his name, developing a creation myth to market. The emergent "Chaino" was a "percussion genius of Africa," and the only survivor of a lost, massacred tribe, rescued and raised by missionaries.
Chaino issued a panoply of singles and half a dozen albums under his stage name between 1956 and 1961.
Temptation, issued by
Empire in 1960, was billed to
Chaino and "members of the
Francis Bay Orchestra." The album was cut as a hi-fi test recording on stereophonic reel-to-reel tape. Though it was reissued several times in small editions on various independent labels, it never really won a cult following.
This edition on
Sundazed's
Modern Harmonic imprint offers ten tracks as a case study in exotica recordings and rhythms, drawn and adapted from Caribbean, Latin, Afro-Latin, Polynesian, and Asian sources. Check the opening title cut; it weds the sounds of the aforementioned animals to a Brazilian samba rhythm, majestic classical piano, and layers of drums, claves, triangles, etc., all played live from the floor. While "An Occasional Man" also employs similar instrumental trappings, polyrhythms from Cape Verde and Madagascar are blended with Middle Eastern modes and jazz syncopation. "Mambo Inn" and "Mambo Italiano" offer canny yet widely differing approaches to the dance. The former's fast rhythm gets grafted onto early 20th century New Orleans jazz; the latter's double-timed claves frame an Eastern melody alongside West African polyrhythms and swinging hard bop, topped with burlesque and film music! (Its vibraphone solo is almost worth the price of the album.) While "Return to Paradise" borrows chart ideas from
Denny, its lyricism gets combined with swinging Latin grooves a la
Cal Tjader. This version of
Duke Ellington's "Caravan" is intimate, sexy, and warmly humorous, while closer "Cuban Caper" joins mambo, descarga, cha-cha, and even bolero atop West Coast swing. The sound on
Temptation: The Exotic Sounds of Chaino is top-notch and pristine -- likely because it was a hi-fi test recording -- while the playing and production make it one of exotica's most musically sophisticated recordings. ~ Thom Jurek
