" He who sings scares away his woes. " ―----- Miguel de Cervantes Percy Faith Percy Faith was a Canadian bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of pop and jazz standards. He is often credited with popularizing the "easy listening" or "mood music" format. Faith became a staple of American popular music in the 1950s and continued well into the 1960s. Though his professional orchestra-leading career began at the height of the swing era, Faith refined and rethought orchestration techniques, including use of large string sections, to soften and fill out the brass-dominated popular music of the 1940s. His most famous and remembered recordings are "Delicado" (1952), "The Song from Moulin Rouge" (1953) and "Theme from A Summer Place" (1960), which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1961. Faith remains the only artist to have the best selling single of the year during both the pop singer era ("Song from Moulin Rouge") and the rock era ("Theme from a Summer Place"); and he is one of only three artists, along with Elvis Presley and The Beatles, to have the best selling single of the year twice. Though best known for his recording career, Faith also occasionally scored motion pictures, and received an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of the song score for the Doris Day musical feature, Love Me or Leave Me. Several of his other original scores for dramatic features such as Tammy Tell Me True and The Oscar contained popular theme songs. Faith also composed the popular theme for the long running NBC series The Virginian. With the advent of harder rock sounds in the 1970s, Faith's elegant arrangements fell out of favor with the listening and record-buying public, although he continued to release albums as diverse and contemporary as Jesus Christ Superstar and Black Magic Woman. He released one album of country music and two albums of disco-oriented arrangements toward the end of his forty-year career, his very last recording being a disco-style reworking of "Theme from a Summer Place", titled "Summer Place '76", which was a minor and, sadly, posthumous hit. Baia "Na Baixa do Sapateiro" (or "Baia") (English: In the Shoemaker's Hollow) is a famous Brazilian song, written by Ary Barroso. Its title comes from a street in Salvador, Bahia, where many cobblers once worked. It was originally released in 1938 as the B side to Salada Mista, which ironically did not achieve the same level of success. This first recording was sung by Carmen Miranda with Orchestra Odeon. She never released the song on disc in the United States. The song was originally going to be featured in the Carmen Miranda film Banana da Terra (1939), but was replaced with "O Que É Que a Baiana Tem?", because of the high license fee demanded by Ary Barroso to use his song. However the song has been recorded many other times by a large number of artists. The song gained international fame when it was featured in the Disney film The Three Caballeros (1944). MHO Well, it's "the Maestro" at work here with this magnificent arrangement of Ary Barroso's "Baia" (sometimes also quoted as "Bahia"). Some wonderful transitions between phrases can be heard and it's amazing how Percy Faith knows exactly which instruments will do best in a certain passage. A hypnotic rhythm drives the song forward and Maestro Faith clearly has the orchestra 'in his grasp' - emphasizing some parts volume-wise where needed and having the musicians play other parts more softly, thus inserting a perfect sound balance in the recording. These early sixties productions belong to the best easy and mood music that was ever recorded. Percy Faith was a genius whose music will enlighten people's lives for centuries to come. ENJOY !