1) The Forbidden Sounds of Don Tiki

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Put this CD in. Get out the Rum, fruit juices and tiki mugs. Mix up a batch of Mai Tai’s and leave your cares behind. The Forbidden Sounds of Don Tiki is filled with gongs, flutes, marimbas, organs, drums, birdcalls, jungle ambience and island crooners. As if that wasn’t enough, the legendary Martin Denny even sits in on a few tracks.

2) Taboo: The Exotic Sounds of Arthur Lyman

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TABOO showcases Lyman’s distinctive vibe playing while conjuring images of the islands through his use of bird calls and Harold Chang’s percussion on congas, boobams, ass’s jaw and conch shell, among other instruments. Aided by Allen Soares on piano and John Kramer on string bass, Lyman’s sound was immensely popular. On the Billboard charts for 62-weeks, TABOO peaked at number four and sold millions of copies!

3) Exotica: The Exciting Sounds of Martin Denny

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Martin Denny (April 10, 1911–March 2, 2005) was an American piano-player and composer best known as the “father of exotica.” In a long career that saw him performing well into his 80s, he toured the world popularizing his brand of lounge music which included exotic percussion, imaginative rearrangements of popular songs, and original songs that celebrated Tiki culture.

Denny’s band played one night at a local Hawaiian bar which had a very exotic setting: a little pool of water right outside the bandstand, rocks and palm trees growing around, very quiet and relaxed. As the group played at night, Denny became aware of bullfrogs croaking. The croaking blended with the music and when the band stopped, so did the frogs. Denny thought this to be a coincidence, but when he tried the tune again later, the same thing happened. This time, his bandmates began doing all sorts of tropical bird calls as a gag. The band thought it nothing more than a joke. The next day, though, someone approached Denny and asked if he would do the arrangement with the birds and frogs. The more Denny thought about it, the more it made sense. At rehearsal, he had the band do “Quiet Village” with each doing a bird call spaced apart. Denny did the frog part on a grooved cylinder and the whole thing became incorporated into the arrangement of “Quiet Village”.

The Exotica album was recorded in December 1956 and released in 1957. In 1958, Dick Clark hosted Denny on American Bandstand. “Quiet Village” reached #2 on Billboard’s charts in 1959 with the Exotica album reaching #1.