Category: Music

A Capitol Idea

More about Stu Phillips. In the Sixties he was behind the Hollyridge Strings series of albums.

I approached Karl Engemann at Capitol [Records] with a far-out idea of recording an album of Beatles songs in an orchestral setting geared toward easy listening. A sort of “Beatles for the older set.”

Phillips wasn’t the only one with that idea in 1964. Beatles producer George Martin produced instrumental versions of Beatles songs, starting with the A Hard Day’s Night soundtrack.

George Martin then released his Off the Beatle Track album. I checked Martin’s memoir, All You Need is Ears, and there’s no mention of the Hollyridge Strings records.

Music from the first Hollyridge album by Phillips is featured on the Capitol album The Beatles Story.

The Other Planets Suite

First there was Gustav Holtz composing music about the solar system, then there was Harry Revel. Released in early ’56, Music From Out of Space was the first album by record producer and TV/film composer Stu Phillips.

In his memoir, Stu Who? Forty Years of Navigating the Minefields of the Music Business, Phillips explains the recording session was financed by his father, who “was never to see that money back.”

Taking the Fat Out of Music

If you look carefully at record labels, many have the letters BMI.

BMI is Broadcast Music, Inc., a music licensing company. Founded in 1939, BMI was acquired this year by New Mountain Capital, a private equity firm.

https://www.bmi.com/news/entry/new-mountain-capital-announces-the-closing-of-its-majority-growth-investment-in-bmi

Taylor Swift receiving award for maintaining a healthy BMI

BMI is also widely known as body mass index. An article in MIT Technology Review suggests that BMI should be replaced with another measurement — SAD, sagittal abdominal diameter.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/11/1105421/these-are-the-best-ways-to-measure-your-body-fat/

Perhaps under its new ownership, BMI will develop a method for measuring the fat content in music.