Martin Denny

During the middle years of the 1950s, pianist and composer Martin Denny wove lounge jazz, Hawaiian melodies, Latin pulses, imitations of birdsong, and instruments then considered exotic—such as the koto, gamelans, and Burmese temple bells—into a style that came to be called exotica. Though the trend faded quickly, Denny cut multiple bestselling instrumental collections and reached the number-four spot in 1959 with “Quiet Village,” one of the most singular top-ten hits ever recorded. Born outside the islands, he drew on years of travel as a working musician to evoke the calm and enigma of the South Pacific. Puerto Rican bongo player Augie Colón, who supplied the bird calls, and vibraphonist Arthur Lyman, later a solo exotica star, formed essential parts of the ensemble. After decades of obscurity, Denny and the genre he helped define enjoyed renewed attention from the mid-1980s onward, influencing an eclectic range of later artists.

Denny entered the world on April 10, 1911, in New York City. A prodigy, he began piano studies at ten under Lester Spitz and Isadore Gorn. He spent four years touring South America with the Don Dean Orchestra and then served forty-three months in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. After his discharge in December 1945 he settled in Los Angeles and enrolled at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music for piano, composition, and orchestration. Early in 1954 he moved to Hawaii and took a residency at Don the Beachcomber’s in Honolulu. The next year he assembled his own quartet, featuring vibist Arthur Lyman, bassist John Kramer, and percussionist Augie Colón. While performing in 1956 at steel-and-shipping magnate Henry Kaiser’s Shell Bar inside the open-air Hawaiian Village resort on Oahu, the musicians noticed that frogs croaking beside the stage merged naturally with their tropical sound; on impulse Colón added bird calls, which delighted listeners. Denny soon folded South Pacific and Far Eastern instruments into the arrangements, and when he cut his first Liberty album, Exotica, in 1957, the signature style was fully formed.

Exotica arrived at an ideal moment: as the decade closed, tiki culture swept the mainland, Hawaiian shirts became fashionable, and tiki torches appeared at backyard gatherings. The shift from mono to stereo also worked in Denny’s favor, since bird whistles, jungle sounds, and unusual instruments shone through clear channel separation. Although Les Baxter had originally written the instrumental “Quiet Village,” Denny’s version became a major hit, landing the group on American Bandstand and sending the accompanying LP to the top of the Billboard charts. Ironically, even while his music came to symbolize Hawaiian allure, Denny himself left the islands after a contract dispute with Kaiser; the group made its first mainland appearance at the 1957 Pebble Beach Crosby Open golf-tournament party. Kaiser soon brought Lyman back to Hawaii to fill the Shell Bar spot, prompting Denny to replace him with Julius Wechter. Bassist Harvey Ragsdale later took Kramer’s place, and a second percussionist, Harold Chang, joined as well.

Many listeners lost interest once the exotica fad passed, and Denny never repeated the commercial peak of “Quiet Village,” although later singles such as “A Taste of Honey,” “The Enchanted Sea,” and “Ebb Tide” still registered on the pop charts. Dedicated collectors, however, found much more. Denny kept issuing recordings in his distinctive manner through the 1960s, many wrapped in striking covers that featured model Sandy Warner so frequently she earned the nickname “The Exotica Girl.” Warner eventually released her own album, Fair and Warmer, for which Denny supplied the liner notes. While explorations of African and Pacific Rim traditions produced concept albums like Afro-Desia and Sayonara, other projects leaned toward straightforward easy listening that Liberty marketed as his “honey” sound. Yet Denny remained an experimenter at heart. For Primitiva he employed gongs, drums, and unusual brass instruments that his friend, filmmaker John Sturges, had acquired from a Buddhist mountaintop temple in Burma while shooting the Frank Sinatra film None But the Brave; legend holds that monks carried the instruments down the mountain in procession. On his final Liberty release, 1969’s Exotic Moog, he incorporated electronics, a move that surprised his remaining audience.

After his main recording years, Denny maintained an active touring schedule through the 1970s and into the next decade. He announced retirement in 1985 and returned to Hawaii with his wife of many years, June, but restlessness led him to reunite with Lyman, Colón, Chang, and new bassist Archie Grant for sold-out club engagements three years later. A Japanese tour produced the live set Exotica: The Best of Martin Denny. Early in the following decade he received the Hawaiian Association of Music’s Hoku Award for lifetime achievement, an honor that coincided with a revival of exotica and space-age pop; vintage LPs quickly vanished from used-record bins, and Scamp launched an extensive reissue program. Now an icon for younger listeners, Denny resumed performing and continued into the 2000s. His final concert took place in Hawaii on February 13, 2005, at a benefit for tsunami victims. Three weeks afterward, on March 3, 2005, Martin Denny died at the age of 93.