I dig the organ lol. Ena Baga also did one or two of those silent movie type library records for De Wolfe (at least DWSLP 3332 The Silent Film Era No 3, which contains quite a banger in Cockney Rebel), so I don't think this one was meant to depict anything close to a contemporary sound so much as provide source audio if someone wanted to perhaps create a simulated retro scene.
Aha, I knew that would flush out the organ-heads!! I was perhaps being a little mischievous with my post. I was just surprised that De Wolfe considered there was still demand for this soundtrack in the late seventies. I shall dig out Cockney Rebel as you suggest and see if it will ....Make Me Smile.....!!
Hehe fair enough. I have this thing about soundtracks, that's how I got into library -- my idea is that soundtracks, while still being art in the sense that there is an element of creativity and taste, also serve a definitive utilitarian goal of enhancing or manipulating audience emotions. Take for example the Star Trek episode Amok Time where Spock suddenly must bang and has to fight Captain Kirk to do it -- the plot is doggerel but the actors acted it to the hilt, and the soundtrack is so good it carries the episode by making the ridiculous plot have emotional resonance (the More Soup lietmotif that plays when Spock is lecturing T'Pring is so sad). So, barring some directorial decision and strong narrative reason to do so, having a happy bouncy song during a funeral would be an objectively wrong use of music (narrative reasons to do so might be to create cognitive dissonance to hint to the viewer that the POV character is not objective; to indicate the dead person was so foul that everyone is glad they are dead; etc.).
Library, being in large part a "soundtrack without a cause", is basically emotional music composed but not in response to a specific narrative beat -- a floating soundtrack of pure emotion that could in theory be deployed appropriately or inappropriately depending on end use. Most library is pleasant to listen to but not so groundbreakingly evocative, so it's just like weirder easy listening music..... but sometimes I listen to a library track and it pushes the right buttons in such a way to drive me hog wild, so good that despite the fact it's just a floating emotion it has an effect on me like it was specially composed music perfectly executed in a perfectly written scene. (Plenty of non-library music does this as well, library is just particularly good for it since it doesn't have any associations to particular media for me, and 99% has no lyrics.)
I also just really have a thing for organs... (that's what she said)
TLDR -- Cockney Rebel is a banger in my heart but possibly just for my heart. Maybe I should make one of the user comps here of all the fairly harmless pleasant mid-tempo tracks that got me foaming at the mouth
