- One of the icons of lounge music, his many albums on Liberty Records, best-sellers in their day and collector's items now, include "Exotica," "Quiet Village," "The Enchanted Sea," "Primativa," "Martin Denny in Person," "Exotic Sounds of the Silver Screen," "Exotic Sounds Visit Broadway," with liner notes by Walter Winchell, "Latin Village," "The Versatile Martin Denny," "A Taste of Honey," "Exotica Today," and "Exotic Moog."
- Director John Sturges was a big fan of Denny's music. While filming some background scenes in Burma for the Frank Sinatra movie Never So Few (1959), Sturges and the crew climbed to the top of a mountain where they found a Buddhist temple. Although neither party spoke the other's language, Sturges managed to buy a slew of percussion instruments which he gave to Denny as a gift. Sturges also wrote the original liner notes to the "Quiet Village" album.
- Still enjoying an active life at 93, Denny continues to perform for his always appreciative audiences in his beloved Hawaii. (April 2004)
- He had national hits with "A Taste of Honey", "The Enchanted Sea", and "Ebb Tide".
- Denny's "Firecracker" is well known in Japan as the number which inspired Haruomi Hosono to establish Yellow Magic Orchestra; a cover of the song appears on the band's eponymous debut album and was released as a single to promote it, charting at No. 60 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 18 on the Billboard R&B Singles charts.
- The album jacket was an influential factor guiding the fantasy of Denny's music. Denny's first dozen albums featured model Sandy Warner on the cover. (Art designers always changed her looks to fit the mood of the package). For instance: for Hypnotique, which is surrealistic, she had dark hair. For Primitiva, she was photographed standing waist-deep in water.
- Following a private memorial service, his ashes were scattered at sea.
- At first, Denny was heavily influenced by the piano/vibes combo sound of George Shearing, particularly Shearing's highly successful MGM album, You're Hearing George Shearing.
- Denny described the music his combo played as "window dressing, a background".
- In a long career that saw him performing well into the 1980s, he toured the world popularizing his brand of lounge music which included exotic percussion, imaginative rearrangements of popular songs, and original songs that celebrated Tiki culture.
- His combo spawned two successful offshoots: Julius Wechter (of Tijuana Brass and Baja Marimba Band fame) and exotica vibist Arthur Lyman.
- In January 1954, Don the Beachcomber brought Denny to Honolulu, for a two-week engagement. He stayed to form his own combo in 1955, performing under contract at the Shell Bar in the Hawaiian Village on Oahu and soon signing to Liberty Records. The original combo consisted of Augie Colon on percussion and birdcalls, Arthur Lyman on vibes, John Kramer on string bass, and Denny on piano.
- Denny had as many as three or four albums on the charts simultaneously during his career.
- He built a collection of strange and exotic instruments with the help of several airline friends. They would bring Denny back these instruments and he would build arrangements around them. His music was a combination of ethnic styles: South Pacific, the Orient and Latin rhythms.
- In 1990 he was Winner of a Na Hoku Hanohano Lifetime Achievement Award under the auspices of the Hawai i Academy of Recording Arts.
- He was an American pianist and composer best known as the "father of exotica.".
- Martin Denny toured South America for four and a half years in the 1930s with the Don Dean Orchestra. This tour began Denny's fascination with Latin rhythms. Denny collected a large number of ethnic instruments from all over the world, which he used to spice up his stage performances.
- He studied classical piano.
- In 1958, Dick Clark hosted Denny on American Bandstand.
- Denny's recordings are prominently featured in the 1999 film Breakfast of Champions, based on the Kurt Vonnegut novel. This is primarily because the car dealership featured in the film is having a Hawaiian-based promotion.
- Former Psychic TV member Fred Gianelli released an album in 1991 entitled Fred; the second track on that album is "Mr. Denny", an instrumental tribute to Martin Denny that features excerpts of an interview with him.
- During an engagement at the Shell Bar, Denny discovered what would become his trademark and the birth of "exotica". The bar had a very exotic setting: a little pool of water right outside the bandstand, rocks and palm trees growing around, very quiet and relaxed. As the group played at night, Denny became aware of bullfrogs croaking. The croaking blended with the music and when the band stopped, so did the frogs. He thought it was a coincidence at first, but when he tried the tune again later, the same thing happened. This time, his bandmates began doing all sorts of tropical bird calls as a gag. The band thought it nothing more than a joke. The next day, someone approached Denny and asked if he would do the arrangement with the birds and frogs. He agreed. At rehearsal, he had the band do "Quiet Village"with each doing a bird call spaced apart. Denny did the frog part on a grooved cylinder and the whole thing became incorporated into the arrangement of "Quiet Village". It sold more than one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.
- After serving in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, Denny returned to Los Angeles, in 1945 where he studied piano and composition under Dr. Wesley La Violette and orchestration under Arthur Lange at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. He later studied at the University of Southern California.
- Denny's final public performance, for a tsunami fundraiser at the Hawaii School for Girls, came less than three weeks before his death.
- Denny continued to perform for decades after the initial exotica fad passed. He announced his retirement in 1985 but then reunited with Lyman, Colon, and Chang for a short club tour. In 1990, he toured Japan and recorded a live CD, Exotica 90.
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