Morton Sanford Garson (20 July 1924 – 4 January 2008) was a Canadian composer, arranger, songwriter, and pioneer of electronic music. He is best known for his albums in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Mother Earth's Plantasia (1976). He also co-wrote several hit songs, including "Our Day Will Come", a hit for Ruby & the Romantics. According to Allmusic, Mort Garson boasts one of the most distinctive and outright bizarre resumés in popular music, spanning from easy listening to occult-influenced space-age electronic pop. He later moved to New York City where he studied music at the Juilliard School of Music. He worked as a pianist and arranger before being called into the Army near the end of World War II.

Early career

After leaving the forces he became an active session musician, with an ability to carry out any or all of the musical chores on any given session: composer, arranger, orchestrator, conductor, and pianist as required. In 1957, he co-wrote Brenda Lee's minor hit "Dynamite" with Tom Glazer, and he also co-wrote Cliff Richard's 1961 UK hit "Theme for a Dream". In 1963, with lyricist Bob Hilliard, he wrote one of the great lounge hits of the 1960s, "Our Day Will Come", a hit for Ruby & The Romantics.

Garson spent the mid-1960s on a rapid succession of accompaniment and arrangement jobs: two Doris Day albums (Doris Day's Sentimental Journey and Latin for Lovers), Mel Tormé's Right Now! album of contemporary covers like "Secret Agent Man," and Glenn Yarborough's highly successful cover of Rod McKuen songs, The Lonely Things. He also arranged for the Lettermen on Capitol Records, provided background to Laurence Harvey reading poetry on Atlantic Records, and provided arrangements for Esther Phillips, Julie London, Nancy Wilson, Chris Montez, Leslie Uggams, Joanie Sommers, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and many others. He was a favorite of producers when the job involved soft pop vocal groups and string ensembles, and was responsible for a wide variety of easy listening records, including Bossa Nova for All Ages by the Continentals, Symphony for the Soul by the Total Eclipse, and Sea Drift by the Dusk 'Til Dawn Orchestra. In 1967, he arranged and produced Bill Withers' early single "Three Nights and a Morning". He arranged The Sandpipers' 1966 hit "Guantanamera", and co-wrote its B-side "What Makes You Dream, Pretty Girl?" with lyricist Jacques Wilson, with whom he worked on later projects.

Later career

In 1967, Garson met Robert Moog at a music engineers' convention, and became one of the first arrangers and composers to work with the early Moog synthesizer; In 1968, he was responsible for the string arrangements on Glen Campbell's international hit "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," Despite its extremely limited distribution, the album became a cult hit in the late 2010s when it was circulated online. Plantasia<nowiki/>'s popularity was boosted by its sampling in Pharcyde's track "Guestlist", from the 2000 album "Plain Rap".

In 2018, independent reissue label Rubellan Remasters licensed and released on CD for the first time Garson's two occult-themed albums, remastered from original studio tapes. In 2019 and 2020, a further set of Garson albums, including Plantasia, which is now seen as his best-known album, and a set of previously unreleased recordings, Music from Patch Cord Productions, were issued both on CD and vinyl by Sacred Bones.

Films, television and theatre work

Garson also worked in television and film, scoring a wide variety of music for many different movies and TV shows, from Beware! The Blob! to Kentucky Fried Movie to National Geographic specials, although it is Elmer Bernstein who is credited with composing the well-known National Geographic orchestral theme that first appeared in on the magazine's TV specials in 1966.

Garson's music was used as incidental music during the television transmissions of the Apollo 11 crewed Moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. He said:

In 2002, Garson composed the score for When Garbo Talks! a musical with book and lyrics by Buddy Kaye that had its world premiere 15 October 2010 at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, International City Theatre.

Garson was closely associated with Heatter-Quigley Productions, creating the theme songs and music cues for the following TV game shows:

  • Amateur's Guide to Love
  • Gambit
  • Runaround
  • Baffle
  • The Magnificent Marble Machine
  • Battlestars

The music for the first five featured Garson playing synthesizers, but the Battlestars package used more conventional marching band orchestration.

Death

Garson died of renal failure in San Francisco in 2008, at the age of 83.

A sample from Garson's "Planetary Motivations (Cancer)" was incorporated into DJ Shadow's 1996 song "Building Steam with a Grain of Salt," from the album Endtroducing...... In the 1994 Peter Lynch short film Arrowhead, Ray Bud (played by Don McKellar) manipulates a dead fish while singing Mort Garson's closing theme of the 1970s Canadian nature program Untamed World. The song "Plantasia" from the album Mother Earth's Plantasia is used in the documentary Lil Bub & Friendz and in the German TV show Böhmi brutzelt with Jan Böhmermann. It was also included in an advertisement for Intuit TurboTax in the United States.

"Deja Vu" was used as the main theme for most of "Balance", the first arc of the Maximum Fun podcast The Adventure Zone, with "The Unexplained," "Astral Projection," "Cabala," "Wind Dance," "Tarot," and "Music to Soothe the Savage Snake Plant" also being used later on the series as an alternate theme and as background music, respectively, along with a cover version of "Plantasia," arranged by Griffin McElroy. The song was also sampled on Kid Cudi’s 2016 song "Baptized in Fire", from his album Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin, which also features Travis Scott. Canadian-American indie pop artist Curtis Waters has cited Mother Earth's Plantasia as an influence on his own work.

Discography

Studio albums

{| class="wikitable"

!Title

!Released

!Label

!Peak chart position

|-

|Dance Along With Jacky Noguez And His Orchestra

|1960

|Jamie

|

|-

|The Continentals Present Bossa Nova for All Ages

| rowspan="3" |1963

| rowspan="2" |Canadian American

|

|-

|Jennie Smith – Nightly Yours On The Steve Allen Show

|

|-

|A Portrait Of Arthur Prysock

|Old Town Records

|

|-

|Dusk 'Til Dawn Orchestra – Sea Drift

|1967

|Elektra

|

|-

|The Love Strings of Mort Garson – Love Sounds

| rowspan="2" |1968

|Liberty

|

|-

|The Wozard of Iz

| rowspan="2" |A&M Records

|

|-

|Mort Garson – Electronic Hair Pieces

|1969

|

|-

|Mort Garson – Didn't You Hear?

|1970

|Custom Fidelity

|

|-

|Black Mass Lucifer

|1971

|UNI Records

|

|-

|Ataraxia – The Unexplained (Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult)

|1975

|RCA

|

|-

|Mother Earth's Plantasia

|1976

|Homewood Records

|6 (US Independent Albums)

|-

|Merrill Heatter's Battle Stars And Other Game Show Music

|1981

|G-Note Records

|

|}

Posthumous releases

{| class="wikitable"

!Title

!Released

!Label

!Recorded

|-

|A Mixed Tape of Music By Mort Garson

|2019

| rowspan="3" |Sacred Bones Records

|1957–1978

|-

|Music From Patch Cord Productions

|2020

|1968-1977

|-

|Journey to the Moon and Beyond

|2023

|1969-1974

|}

Mini-albums

{| class="wikitable"

!Title

!Year

!Label

|-

|The Total Eclipse – Symphony for Soul

|1967

|Imperial

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Aries

| rowspan="12" |1969

| rowspan="12" |A&M Records

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Taurus

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Gemini

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Cancer

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Leo

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Virgo

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Libra

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Scorpio

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Sagittarius

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Capricorn

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Aquarius

|-

|Signs of the Zodiac – Pisces

|-

|Z – Music for Sensuous Lovers

|1971

|Sensuous Records

|}

Singles and EPs

{| class="wikitable"

!Title

!Released

!Label

!Album

|-

|Mort Garson's Orchestra and Chorus (With David Hill) – "Wild Child" / "Big Guitar"

|1958

|rowspan = "3"|RCA

|

|-

|Mort Garson and His Orchestra (With Barbara Evans) – "A Little Girl Cried" / "Oo La La La La"

|rowspan = "4"|1959

|

|-

|Mort Garson and His Orchestra (With Barbara Evans) – "Pray for Me Mother" / "Oo La La La La"

|

|-

|Mort Garson and His Orchestra – "Drum Tango" / "Gas Light Village"

|Todd

|

|-

|Mort Garson – "Puppet on a String" / "Scotch Freight"

|Carol

|

|-

|Mort Garson – "Madagascar" / "Shoo Bird"

|1960

|MGM Records

|

|-

|Mort Garson Orchestra – "Cry for Happy" / "Yes, We Have No Bananas"

|rowspan = "3"|1961

|Oriole

|

|-

|The Conductor With Mort Garson Orchestra – "Pony Train" / "Bla, Bla, Bla Cha Cha Cha"

|Jamie

|

|-

|Mort Garson (With Guy Mitchell) – "Soft Rain" / "Big Big Change"

|Columbia

|

|-

|Mort Garson and His Orchestra – "Honeysuckle Rose" / "Early Sunday"

|1962

|Joy Records

|

|-

|Mort Garson and His Orchestra – "Bowl-a-Rama Stomp" / "The Stripper's Sister"

|1963

|G-Note Records

|

|-

|Mort Garson – "Allison" / "La Nobile Arte"

|1965

|Columbia

|

|-

|The Love Strings of Mort Garson – "A Quiet Sunday" / "The Apartment"

| rowspan="3" |1968

|Liberty

|The Love Strings of Mort Garson – Love Sounds

|-

|Mort Garson – The Connection

|Patch Cord Productions

|

|-

|Mort Garson – "(Prologue From) The Wozard of Iz" (same song featured on both sides)

| rowspan="2" |A&M Records

|The Wozard of Iz – An Electronic Odyssey

|-

|Mort Garson – Pure Electronics (The Amazing Sound of the Moog Synthesizer)

|1969

|Mort Garson – Electronic Hair Pieces

|-

|Z – "Theme from Music for Sensuous Lovers (Part I)" / "Theme from Music For Sensuous Lovers (Part II)"

|1971

|Sensuous Records

|Z – Music for Sensuous Lovers

|-

|Mort Garson & Paul Frees – Edgar Allen Poe's Tell-Tale Heart

|????

|Custom Fidelity

|

|-

|The Lords of Percussion – "The Kung-Fu" / "Geisha Girl"

|1974

|Old Town Records

|

|-

|Ataraxia – "The Unexplained (Instrumental)" / "Deja Vu (Instrumental)"

|1975

|RCA

|Ataraxia – The Unexplained (Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult)

|-

|Captain D.J. – "Disco UFO (Part I)" / "Disco UFO (Part II)"

|1978

|G-Note Records

|

|}

References

  • Mort Garson feature, 2016
  • Mort Garson Reissues, 2020