Voodoo

2017 release from the late great exotica/lounge icon. Robert Drasnin spent the vast majority of his career in music composing for films and television shows. He composed or supervised scores for well over 100 films and TV shows. In 1955 Drasnin scored the film One Way Ticket To Hell, and his other film scores included Ride in the Whirlwind (1966), Picture Mommy Dead (1966), The Kremlin Letter (1970), Dr. Cook's Garden (1971), A Taste of Evil (1971), The Candy Snatchers (1973) and Crisis in Mid-Air (1979). Drasnin also scored incidental music for such notable TV shows as The Twilight Zone, Mission: Impossible, Wild, Wild West, Hawaii Five-0, Time Tunnel, Lost In Space, Mannix, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea. In 1959 Robert Drasnin received his M.A. in Music from U.C.L.

A in Los Angeles. That same year, while working at the budget record label Tops Records, Drasnin was approached by David Pell, the head of the label, to create an exotica album. Pell wanted a record that would cash in on the popularity of the Exotica genre made popular by Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman. Drasnin created 12 original compositions and would spend the later part of 1959 recording the record. Among the musical personnel was a young pianist by the name of John Williams who would later go on to score such notable films as Star Wars and Jaws. The LP was released on Tops/Mayfair records in both mono and stereo versions, without fanfare, that is until Skip Heller discovered the LP in the mid-'90s and sent a cassette dub of it to Dionysus Records owner Lee Joseph. Drasnin was located and Voodoo was reissued in 1996, this time earning Drasnin a following of fans from the tiki/exotica revival.