The Joy of Easy Listening, BBC Documentary Online

A quicks heads up: If you like Herb Alpert and Engel­bert Humperdinck, then this BBC doc is def­i­nite­ly for you. Here’s what you get in 90 min­utes:

In-depth doc­u­men­tary inves­ti­ga­tion into the sto­ry of a pop­u­lar music that is often said to be made to be heard, but not lis­tened to. The film looks at easy lis­ten­ing’s archi­tects and prac­ti­tion­ers, its dan­gers and delights, and the mark it has left on mod­ern life.
From its emer­gence in the 50s to its hey­day in the 60s, through its sur­vival in the 70s and 80s and its revival in the 90s and beyond, the film traces the hid­den his­to­ry of a music that has reflect­ed soci­ety every bit as much as pop and rock — just in a more relaxed way.
Invent­ed at the dawn of rock ’n’ roll, easy lis­ten­ing has shad­owed pop music and the emerg­ing teenage mar­ket since the mid-50s. It is a genre that equal­ly sound­tracks our mod­ern age, but per­haps for a rather more ‘mature’ gen­er­a­tion and there­fore with its own dis­tinct pur­pose and aes­thet­ic. Con­trib­u­tors include Richard Car­pen­ter, Herb Alpert, Richard Clay­der­man, Engel­bert Humperdinck, Jim­my Webb, Mike Flow­ers, James Last and oth­ers.

You can watch Part 1 above, and the remain­ing ones here: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

via Boing­Bo­ing