Music to help you stop smoking

An album released in 1964. The Phoenix New Times offers some info about it:

Hot on the heels of surgeon general Luther Terry's 1964 finding on the dangers of smoking came this, the most absurd of the Living Strings' "music to do something by" series. Of course, what instrumental songs like "Clair de lune" and "Yellow Bird" have to do with staving off lung cancer is inconsequential -- it's the liner notes that make the persuasive pitch: "Only will power will make you stop smoking. But this music may help your will power." The fact that this music is supposed to "relax you, make you feel good and keep your hand from groping a pack of cigarettes" may lead some more mischievous or bored listeners to grope for something else. Oops! Sorry. Wrong surgeon general.



Wikipedia has some info about The Living Strings:

The Living Strings were a studio orchestra founded in 1959 by RCA Victor for a series of easy listening recordings issued on the RCA Camden budget label... RCA Victor record producer Ethel Gabriel created the "Living Strings" series of albums, which were easy-listening instrumental string versions of popular tunes, the type of music that came to be known pejoratively as elevator music.
There was no actual orchestra known as the Living Strings. The orchestra for most of the recordings was made up of musicians from various British orchestras assembled for the purpose of making the records.

I couldn't find any tracks from "Music to help you stop smoking" on YouTube, but apparently you can listen to the entire album on Spotify, if you have access to that (which I don't).
     Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 17, 2020
     Category: Music | Smoking and Tobacco | 1960s





Comments
This makes as much sense as the turkey Chantix ads. Namely: none. If someone can correlate cold and slow for me unrelated to molasses, I'd listen.
Posted by John on 03/17/20 at 10:38 AM
The description of how the recordings were assembled reminds me of the way Alan Parsons (Eye In The Sky, Stereotomy) worked. He would hire musicians to perform his compositions for each album. As a result, each album has its own ambiance because the musicians were never the same from album to album.
Posted by KDP on 03/17/20 at 04:59 PM
The Space Age Pop site that the Wikipedia article references has a page of selected tracks, which may give a sense of what this music sounded like. If you’re of a certain age, these songs could bring back childhood memories:)
http://www.spaceagepop.com/tracks.htm
Posted by Brian on 03/18/20 at 09:16 PM
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