Much to their surprise, they found the music to be rather "hip." One thing led to another and soon a couple of Esquivel CDs were released and, lo and behold, they sold a whole bunch of copies. In fact, they sold enough to make some record executives take notice and before too long, most of the major companies had put out a couple of projects of some kind.

Of course, it wasn't "cool" to portray the music as either "easy" or "beautiful," so the marketing geniuses came up with monikers such as "ultra lounge," "bachelor pad," "space age pop" and the like. Not only was the music selling, but soon a few nightclubs had sprung up with live deejays playing the music of Ronnie Aldrich, Les Reed, Nelson Riddle and others to enthralled patrons.

The only downside was that the record company gurus who controlled the releases were convinced that only the weird stuff would sell, so many of the releases were, shall we say, more esoteric than musical. But it did force a resurgence of interest in easy listening instrumental music and hyped up the collector market of used vinyl. It also spawned a re-interest in the talented artists who had performed the classics of yesteryear.

Much has been documented on the Internet about the wonderfully talented, now "lounge" people, and we've included two of the more notable sites below. Each has links to many others, and, well, you can stay entertained all day just reading!

Visit Spaceagepop