Faraway In Time: Percy Faith: "Theme From 'A Summer Place'"

And now, as is almost always the way, a Canadian enters the number two scene with the most guileless, carefree breezy ease - Percy Faith was a bandleader who personified easy listening and this song certainly sums up the easy listening flutes-and-strings aplenty approach, one which works quite well with the rather torrid storyline of the movie A Summer Place; coolly seductive and yet coy, floating above the hubbub of emotionally complex lives, this song - which sounds much like a boat being set into motion from its moorings down a placid stream - is not just sexy because it's the soundtrack to Troy Donoghue and Sandra Dee falling in love (and making love, for that matter). It is sexy because it brings a certain openness to itself; not since Dean Martin has a song been so...there and yet not there. Dare I say the song almost laughs, in its pink chiffon way, at the tribulations (the sensations) in the story? Well, this is still the time of relative innocence in this decade and a time for looking back, in the dead of winter, to the heat of summer and its simple joys. A boy and girl fall in love, they are the future; problems are eased and there is a happy ending, despite all indications. The world responded in kind to this and made it a kind of anthem of hope, if I can put it that way, for a whole new decade; slow dancing and swaying to the music, eyes closed.