"That Happy Feeling" is an instrumental

pop music Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. The terms ''popular music'' and ''pop music'' are often used interchangeably, although the former describe ...

composed by Ghanaian musician

Guy Warren Guy Warren of Ghana, also known as Kofi Ghanaba (4 May 1923 – 22 December 2008), was a Ghanaian musician, best known as the inventor of Afro-jazz — "the reuniting of African-American jazz with its African roots" — and as a member of The T ...

in 1956 under the original title "An African's Prayer (Eyi Wala Dong)", and recorded as a single by

Bert Kaempfert Bert Kaempfert (born Berthold Heinrich Kämpfert; 16 October 1923 – 21 June 1980) was a German orchestra leader, multi-instrumentalist, music producer, arranger, and composer. He made easy listening and jazz-oriented records and wrote the musi ...

Background

The track was recorded on March 16, 1962, and featured as the second cut on his album ''

A Swingin' Safari "A Swingin' Safari" is a 1962 instrumental composed by Bert Kaempfert, using his alias, Bernd Bertie. It was recorded by Kaempfert on Polydor Records and released in the United States on Decca Records. The song features a distinctive main theme p ...

''. That song and the title track were among the first pop instrumentals to incorporate elements of

South African music South Africa is well known for its distinct musical styles which have played a huge role towards the country's society. The music of South Africa is very diverse with a wide variety of genres such as Marabi, Kwaito, house music, Isicathamiya, G ...

. It is also the title track of what is virtually the same album as the German ''A Swingin' Safari'', issued under a different name in America.

Chart performance

Although Kaempfert's recording of the tune only peaked at number 67 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart, when issued as a single in 1962, its upbeat style,

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

melody line and

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...

arpeggio A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. A broken chord may repeat some of the notes from the chord and span one or more octaves. An arpeggio () is a type of broken chord, in which the notes that compose a chord are played ...

s combined with a full string section, a brass section, hand claps, guitars, and chorus helped it to become a staple of

beautiful music Beautiful music (sometimes abbreviated as BM, B/EZ or BM/EZ for "beautiful music/easy listening") is a mostly instrumental music format that was prominent in North American radio from the late 1950s through the 1980s. Easy listening, elevator musi ...

radio.

Popular culture

The tune also proved to be a natural choice for locally produced children's television programming, especially in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

: *In

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Sandy Becker George Sanford Becker (February 19, 1922 – April 9, 1996), who was known professionally as Sandy Becker, was an American television announcer, actor, and comedian who hosted several popular children's programs in New York City. The best known ...

used it as the theme for his local morning program on WNEW *In

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

, the song was used between children's programs during the early days of KBSC

Corona Corona (from the Latin for 'crown') most commonly refers to: * Stellar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star * Corona (beer), a Mexican beer * Corona, informal term for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 di ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. It was played over the title card of the station's logo and not always to its conclusion, presumably because a

master control Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from a production control room (PCR) in television studios where the activities such as switc ...

technician was busy cueing the tape of whatever show was scheduled to air. The instrumental was used for station sign on and sign off at TV stations once owned by the former

Kaiser Broadcasting The Kaiser Broadcasting Corp. was an American broadcast media company that owned and operated television and radio stations in the United States from 1957 to 1977. History Creating a broadcast chain Kaiser's involvement in broadcasting began ...

System, including

WKBS-TV (Philadelphia) WKBS-TV, Ultra high frequency, UHF analog television, analog channel 48, was an Independent station (North America), independent television station licensed to Burlington, New Jersey, Burlington, New Jersey, United States, which served the Phila ...

Channel 48 in

Burlington, New Jersey Burlington is a city in Burlington County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is a suburb of Philadelphia. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 9,743. Burlington was first incorporated on October 24, 1693, and was r ...

, and

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

and

WKBF-TV WKBF-TV was a television station that broadcast on channel 61 in Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio, United States, from January 1968 to April 1975. Owned and operated by Kaiser Broadcasting as one of an eventual group of six stations, it was the first ...

Channel 61 in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, Ohio. Both stations are now defunct. *The song was also used on another Los Angeles television station,

KABC-TV KABC-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains stud ...

Channel 7, when the station would sign on in the early morning to begin its broadcast day well before round-the-clock broadcasting became the norm much later. *It is used in Adam Elliot's 2009 film, ''

Mary and Max ''Mary and Max'' is a 2009 Australian independent stop-motion adult-animated comedy-drama film written and directed by Adam Elliot and was his first animated feature film. The film was produced by Melanie Coombs and Melodrama Pictures with mus ...

''. *It is also used by the UK's Cambridge Talking News as its signature tune on its weekly recordings for the blind and partially sighted. *A version sung by Herb Oscar Anderson was used on WABC Radio 770

References

External links

Ordering information and brief history at Amazon.com
{{Authority control 1962 singles 1960s instrumentals 1956 songs