One of the cleverest composers on and greatest popularizers of the Moog synthesizer, Gershon Kingsley passed away on December 10 at age 97. Born in Germany in 1922, Kingsley moved to the U.S. in 1946, hoping to attend Juilliard. Failing to get into that prestigious music school, he moved to Los Angeles to attend LA Conservatory of Music (now called Cal Arts) and scored gigs playing organ for several synagogues there. Kingsley later moved to New York City and found work as music director for Broadway and off-Broadway plays. From 1955-1965, Kingsley served as musical director for the Robert Joffrey Ballet, Joséphine Baker, and the much-lauded television special The World of Kurt Weill starring Lotte Lenya. In the mid '60s, Kingsley also began a stint as arranger for Vanguard Records; during that time, he met French synthesist Jean-Jacques Perrey, and they then embarked on a fruitful professional relationship.
Kingsley is best known for his 1969 composition "Pop Corn," which became a global hit for Hot Butter in 1972 (under the title "Popcorn"), and for his ingenious collaborations with Perrey. Both Kingsley and Perrey vastly expanded the vocabulary of novelty music, using the relatively new Moog technology to concoct an array of piquant bleeps, zany bloops, and beguiling melodies arranged in tight compositions. Depending on your disposition, these works will either instantly charm you or annoy you with their sometimes overly cutesy gestures. While Kingsley's songs tread a fine line between sublime quirkiness and kitsch tweeness, more often than not they win you over with their mad glee and dynamic curlicues of unlikely tones.
As you can imagine, with such an abundance of distinctive sounds, Kingsley's music has been sampled by many hip-hop and electronic artists, including De La Soul, J Dilla, Das EFX, Quasimoto, Madlib, Jay-Z, Luke Vibert, and RJD2. The latter producer flipped Kingsley's "Hey, Hey" for "The Horror," and you wonder why more studio wizards (hello, El-P) haven't lifted the funky break and galaxy-dominating synth motif to enhance their tracks. Maybe it's too exciting...
If you're looking to get into Kingsley's catalog, start with Music to Moog By (1969) and First Moog Quartet (1970), as well as his collabs with Perrey, The In Sound from Way Out! (1966) and Kaleidoscopic Vibrations (1967). For such kooky music, it has surprising durability—a remnant of the brief Moog craze that hasn't faded into irrelevance. RIP, Gershon Kingsley.
