Les Baxter and His Orchestra

Les Baxter was an early and important composer of the easy-listening sounds of paradise known as exotica. Born in Mexia, Texas, in 1922, Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory of Music before moving to Los Angeles, where, at age 23, he joined Mel Tormé’s Mel-Tones vocal group. He displayed an early interest in otherworldly ideas with his space-themed 1947 debut, Music Out Of The Moon, before shaping the exotica canon with 1950’s Voice of the Xtabay (which introduced Peruvian siren Yma Sumac) and the following year’s Ritual of the Savage (Le Sacre du Sauvage). Baxter hit an artistic peak with 1960’s Sacred Idol, a daring conceptual imagining of Aztec culture. He eventually scored more than 250 movie, TV, and radio projects, in addition to releasing more than 60 albums of his own. After broaching the early-’60s folk scene with Les Baxter’s Balladeers (who included the young David Crosby), he concentrated on horror scores throughout the ’70s before retiring to Newport Beach, California, where he died in 1996.