Work, Study, or Commit Hari-Kari

This 1954 album may be so smooth you can't take it.  Here is the text of the LP's liner notes.

     Now that modern science has come out in favor of it, everyone agrees on the good sense of listening to music while you are otherwise occupied. 

     Industry pipes it to production floors and laboratories—even where the most precise work demands absolute freedom from distraction.

     Schools pipe it to study rooms and libraries, and college professors recommend it as an efficiency aid to doing homework.

So it’s official! When you work by music or study by it, you work better or study better as the case may be.

     Ever since David played upon his harp and “Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him,” there have been at least two schools of thought on the matter of mixing music and more practical things.

     But it was not until fairly recent years, after the restaurateurs found that soft strains whetted appetites—and hence helped business—that psychologists began to do intensive research on the problem.

     Appropriately enough, the first noble experiment had been made by one of the prime movers in the development of the record industry—Thomas Alva Edison.

     As early as 1915 this great innovator played a selected program of recorded music in factories; it was his notion that production would increase proportionately with morale, and it was a perfectly sound notion. But the phonograph was not then as perfected as it is today, and the project unfortunately was written off as a failure.

     In 1942, when the findings of a more recent and more elaborately controlled test were presented to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the response was immediate and universal.

     Washington was so impressed that, after a further survey to confirm the scientific reports, it made phonographic equipment a high priority item for plants engaged in war work. And today it is a rare factory that does not offer music to its employees.

     In offices, too, there has been a steadily rising acceptance of the “music while you work” idea. Banks, advertising agencies, insurance companies, and publishing houses are among the employers now providing piped-in music for their white collar personnel.

     From the earliest days of World War II, when the British Army discovered his talents and made him its musical director, George Melachrino has had a wealth of practical experience in preparing ideal antidotes for preoccupied, overworked minds.

     If any orchestra in the world knows how to make music to work by or study by it is this one. Under Melachrino’s baton it might by any piece from Beyond the Blue Horizon to Chopin’s Minute Waltz, or even Whistle While You Work. No matter what the mood represented, the music is always appropriate for work and delightful for listening when interpreted by Melachrino. The privacy of the listeners mind is never invaded, so that it may ran freely over the most involved manual or intellectual problems without disturbance despite—or perhaps because of—the song that is on the lips.

The selections are:

01. Beyond the Blue Horizon (2:30)

02. Can't Help Singing (2:39)

03. Waltz in Water-Colours (3:07)

04. Midnight in Mayfair (3:06)

05. Way to the Stars (3:15)

06. Pick Yourself Up (1:58)

07. Scrub, Brother, Scrub (1:50)

08. The Minute Waltz (1:57)

09. Heigh Ho / Whistle While You Work (1:51)

10. It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow (1:43)

It's all so sparkling and fluffy, it doesn't even have the calories of whipped nothing!

Music to Work or Study By

See you on Thursday, if you recover from studying or working in such a haze of haziness ...