[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' date=\'Mar 29 2004, 09:05 AM\']Sometimes it pays off being a vinyl record collector! I was at a record show recently, and while looking through some old 45s ran across one which struck me: "The Dating Game", written by Chuck Barris and David Mook. It was a "promo" or "audition" copy on the World Pacific label (never heard of that label), and was by the Mariachi Brass (I had always thought that Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass did the "Dating Game" theme).[/quote]
World Pacific was a division of Liberty Records that mostly recorded jazz and what we could call today "world music" artists or reasonable facsimiles thereof. I seem to recall that Martin Denny, the king of faux Polynesian music ("Quiet Village"), recorded for World Pacific. The masters of World Pacific are today owned by EMI, who acquired Liberty around 1980 (after it had merged with United Artists' record division), when Kenny Rogers was their hottest artist.
The featured musician on the Mariachi Brass tracks was the legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, who was sort of a classic example of a musician fighting his demons for his music.
This web site will fill you in on the rest.