Overview
"Pet Sounds" is an instrumental by American rock band the Beach Boys from their 1966 album Pet Sounds. Composed by Brian Wilson, it was originally called "Run James Run", as Wilson intended it to be used as the theme of a James Bond film. It was then titled "Pet Sounds", the title of the album on which it appears. It is the second instrumental to feature on Pet Sounds, the other being "Let's Go Away for Awhile".
Influences
The exotica piece has been compared to the work of Les Baxter and Martin Denny for its reverberated bongos and güiro combined with pervasive horns and a Latin rhythm. MOJO declared it an "ambiguous, jet-age update of Martin Denny-style 1950s exotica." In his 2016 memoir, Wilson stated: "I loved Thunderball, which had come out the year before, and I loved listening to composers like Henry Mancini, who did these cool themes for shows like Peter Gunn, and Les Baxter, who did all these big productions that sounded sort of like Phil Spector productions." When asked if he was a fan of Denny and exotica music in a 2017 phone interview, he responded: "No, I never get the chance to listen to them. Never did."
Recording
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).