A Taste Of Honey is a great success for pianist and Exotica luminary Martin Denny (1911–2005), and for decidedly strange reasons that are not as open to scrutiny as his career might let you think. Released in 1962 on Denny’s house label Liberty Records, the album spawns the usual 12 tracks, all of them renditions of well-known classics. So what? His Exotica albums enshrine similar gems of the book of golden Jazz standards which are then spiced with jungular percussion and paradisiac hooks. That’s the trick, the outcome, the aim of his LP’s. Maybe it helps to look at the alternative title A Taste Of Honey is also known for, one which appears on a smaller run of copies: Martin Denny Goes Modern. This is a dubious title, for who else goes modern in the given context if not the combo of Martin Denny?

Here’s one possible truth: the Exotica context, no matter its enchanting panchromatic gamut, is decidedly lessened here. True, the same gentlemen are on board as ever, Julius Wechter on the vibes, Harold Chang & Augie Colón as dedicated percussionists and Harvey Ragsdale on the double bass, with pianist Martin Denny at the helm, but the tone sequences are much more occidental. Even the omnipresence of bongos and boo-bams cannot lessen the thought that A Taste Of Honey is a classic Jazz album… one, however, which sports exotic patterns more often than not. That’s the reason why bassist Ragsdale is so much more in the limelight as ever before. Here, then, is a closer look at a high-selling LP, one of Denny’s best known tributaries.

From the first proselytizing piano notes over the adjacent amethystine violin in the background to the percussion-accentuated boo-bam mélange: Bobby Scott’s and Ric Marlow’s eponymous A Taste Of Honey is presented in a loungey version, with Julius Wechter’s vibes and Augie Colón’s drums being the only sentiments to an Exotica erethism. Said wishful state becomes all the more apparent in I’m In A Dancing Mood whose saltatory double bass billows by Harvey Ragsdale form the superfluid that drives Denny’s plinking piano and Wechter’s fluid-processed vibe interplay. Even a dreamy anacrusis is included in this uplifting Latinized version originally composed by Al Goodhart, Al Hoffmanand Maurice Sigler.