The year was 1992. I’d been hosting themed events for more than a decade, but always looked for other, different notions to explore. About this time, my favorite radio program started playing the artistry of Martin Denny, who in the 1950s pioneered a genre of easy listening called lounge music. Here’s an edited write-up from Wikipedia:
During an engagement at the Shell Bar in Oahu, Denny discovered what would become his trademark scheme. The bar featured a romantic setting: a little pool of water sat just outside the bandstand with rocks and palm trees around, all hushed and relaxed. As the group played one night, Denny became aware of bullfrogs croaking. The sounds blended with the music and, when the band stopped, so did the frogs. He thought at first it was a coincidence, but when he tried the tune again later, the same thing happened. This time, as a gag, his bandmates began making all sorts of tropical bird calls. The next day, someone approached Denny and asked if he would do the number with the birds and frogs. He agreed. That evening, he had the band play Les Baxter’s “Quiet Village” with each member supplying a spaced-apart bird call. Denny himself did the frog part on a grooved cylinder, and the whole thing became incorporated into the performance. “Quiet Village” sold more than one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Thus the world witnessed the birth of exotica, which style counterbalanced the otherwise straight-laced clean-cut mood of post WWII America. In them days, places such as Tahiti and Bikini and the South Seas seemed forbidden and tempting to the blandish society.
And my discovery of that singular music and certain piece was enough to compile a way-cool jungle music collection and set a date for its debut. The first Jungle Junket came about on May Day in 1992, a fab rain forest fest. Our little family (two parents, two kids aged 8 and 4) arrayed freshly cut Carrizo cane wands along a small fenced area back of the dwelling. Though not exactly tropical, this greenery helped establish a verdant lushness. Four oil-fueled tiki torches flared around. We dished up sliced pineapple, mango, and bananas and poured fruit-themed beverages such as coconut juice and Hawaiian Punch—spiked and non. Costumes included leafy shirts and trousers, animal print fabrics, camo hats, pith helmets, corsages.
Music emanated from the living room up front. I don’t remember any outdoor speakers there. The soundtrack included any song with jungle in the title and any tune with parrot calls, frog songs, or monkey howling. More than one patron uttered something like me Tarzan, you Jane. Marimbas and bongos bamboo flutes and güiros drove the point home. Nearly one hundred folks took part, an attendance record.
Building on that success, we repeated the theme on four other occasions in different houses:
06-20-93 – Return to the Jungle, Oak Park Drive, Summer Solstice
09-06-08 – Tiki Tea for my 56th birthday, Linda Lane
06-26-10 – Jungle Jive, Louisa’s garden, Brailes, UK
05-13-22 – 30th anniversary of the jungle, Green Man ATX (Linda Lane) featuring Eden Ahbez’s Eden’s Island (2012)
The sixth iteration began at 7:09 on July 11, 2025, in the Green Man Garden Salon.
