In a Mystic Mood: Golden Cello and Hot Bagels

An image of an album cover posted on the London Cello Society’s facebook page recently caught my attention. Who was Hyman Gold, the caption’s author asked? I decided to find out. This is what I’ve got so far:

Gold was active as a film and recording industry studio musician in southern California during the 1960s, as evidenced by the personnel lists for Nat King Cole’s 1961 sessions at the Capitol Recording Studio in Hollywood. Participating in a back-up orchestra for several of the late 1961 sessions with Cole, Gold played alongside Eleanor Aller Slatkin (conductor Leonard Statkin’s mother). Aller was the soloist in Erich Korngold’s soundtrack for the 1946 film Deception, a must-see for all fans of the cello. (In Deception the composer Alexander Hollenius says to cellist Karel Novak, for whom he has composed a new concerto, “She [Bette Davis’s character Christine Radcliffe]  tells me you’re some sort of a genius, if such a term can be applied to a mere performer.” Ouch. And that’s by far not the best part.)

In 1965, Gold played several important musical roles with the Mystic Moods Orchestra in One Stormy Night, among the earliest “mood” recordings.  An Amazon editorial review reports that it was the first recording to incorporate recorded nature sounds (rain, thunderstorm). According to a history of the Mystic Moods Orchestra, “the album consist[s] of Mantovani-esque orchestral instrumentals and [audiophile Brad] Miller's recordings of rain, thunder, and trains.” A review of the 2004 CD reissue states that the “congenial music combined with the rain and thunder proved to be a revelation to the general public, leading to several more successful mood recordings." The album credits mention Gold four times, as conductor, arranger, cellist, and soloist.   

Some of the One Stormy Night tracks have the same titles as selections on the Hot Bagel! album. One of these is “Autumn Leaves," where the sounds of steady rainfall and the occasional distant thunderclap accompany a duet between the cello and violins, at least in the One Stormy Night version (listen here). To hear all 12 tracks of Hot Bagel! Featuring Hyman Gold 'N' Cello, register online at the Dartmouth Jewish Music Archive. Perhaps not surprisingly, the artwork for this album has been honored on the Amazingly Awful Album Art list.

According to several web sources, the Mystic Moods orchestra, which probably used the same nucleus of musicians that Gold employed for the self-produced Hot Bagel! album, was active through the 1970’s. How long did Gold’s involvement in this pioneering project last after the release of the One Stormy Night album? This question remains unanswered as of this writing, but a sentence in the biography of Seattle-based bass guitarist Michael Todd Kovell suggests that by 1978, Gold had settled a little further east. It was in this year that Kovell began cello studies with the “renowned Las Vegas show biz cellist.”

Bagels were clearly a hot item on the inspired-by lists of musicians a half-century ago, as this album from 1960 attests (listen to a track here):

In the same year the Thompson Bagel Machine was patented, making mass production easy and leading to the so-called "Bagel Boom." The bagels and bongos combination, as Tom Teicholz explains

in an article on the work of Josh Kun at the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, symbolizes the meeting of Jewish and Latin music:

How did Latin and Jewish music cross-pollinate? There are several theories. One has to do with Sephardic heritage, Latin by definition. Another has to do with what musician Steve Bernstein has called "the Gulf Coast theory," concerning the Jewish retirement disapora and the similarities of the rhythmic signatures between the horah and Latin music.

An alternative interpretation, in the context of contemporary Korean popular culture, is suggested by the text found here.