Music of the Exotic East

Fantasy Records released Music of the Exotic East in 1958 (Fantasy 3272 / 8013). Korla Pandit was the stage name of John Roland Redd, a Black American organist from St. Louis who performed on early television in a turban and rarely spoke on camera, keeping the invented persona for the rest of his life.

Bay Area popularity on KGO helped land the Fantasy contract; he cut a long string of organ-and-piano mood LPs for the label through the early ’60s. The exotic-East framing fits the same mid-century living-room travel market as Denny, but the lead voice is Hammond and piano rather than vibes and bird calls.

Lush organ, little percussion, supper-club tempo: it sounds like a 1950s TV close-up because that is where he worked. Later reissues (including Fantasy’s Odyssey pairing) kept the Fantasy sides in circulation for lounge collectors.