Easy listening is a popular music genre and radio format, most popular during the 1950s to 1970s. It is related to middle-of-the-road music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs, non-rock vocals and instrumental covers of selected popular rock songs, it concentrates on music that pre-dates the rock n' roll era, characteristically on music from the 1940s and 1950s. It was differentiated from the instrumental beautiful music format by its variety of styles, including a percentage of vocals and tempos to fit various parts of the broadcast day. Easy listening music is confused with elevator music, or lounge music, but while it was popular in some of the same venues it was meant to be listened to for enjoyment rather than as background sound; the style has been synonymous with the tag "with strings". String instruments had been used in sweet bands in the 1930s and was the dominant sound track to movies of Hollywood's Golden Age. In the 1940s and 1950s strings had been used in jazz and popular music contexts.

As examples in the jazz genre, there are the post-World War II recordings of Charlie Parker and the 1955 recordings of Clifford Brown and Helen Merrill. Early examples of practitioner in the popular context were Dinah Washington in 1951, Jackie Gleason in 1952. In the 1950s the use of strings became a main feature of the developing easy listening genre. Gleason, a master at this genre, whose first ten albums went Gold, expressed the goal of producing "musical wallpaper that should never be intrusive, but conducive". In 1956 John Serry Sr. sought to utilize the accordion within the context of a jazz sextet in order to create a soothing mood ideally suited for "low pressure" listening on his album Squeeze Play. Jerry Murad contributed to the music, including a variety of types of harmonica; the magazines Billboard and Record World featured easy listening singles in independently audited record charts. 40 positions in length, they charted airplay on stations such as WNEW, New York City, WWEZ, KMPC, Los Angeles.

Record World ended these charts in the early 1970s. Billboard's Easy Listening chart morphed into the Adult Contemporary chart in 1979, continues to this day. During the format's heyday in the 1960s, it was not at all uncommon for easy listening instrumental singles to reach the top of the charts on the Billboard Hot 100. Beautiful music, which grew up alongside easy listening music, had rigid standards for instrumentation, e.g. few or no saxophones, restrictions on how many vocal pieces could be played in an hour. The easy listening radio format has been but not superseded by the soft adult contemporary format. According to the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, "The public prominence and profitability of easy listening led to its close association with the so-called'Establishment' that would be demonized by the rock counterculture." In Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies, rock critic Robert Christgau said "semiclassical music is a systematic dilution of highbrow preferences".

Easy listening/lounge singers have a lengthy history stretching back to the decades of the early twentieth century. Easy listening music featured popular vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Dionne Warwick, Bill Kenny, Astrud Gilberto, Matt Monro, The Carpenters and many others; the somewhat derisive term lounge lizard was coined and less well known lounge singers have been ridiculed as dinosaurs of past eras and parodied for their smarmy delivery of standards. In the early 1990s the lounge revival was in full swing and included such groups as Combustible Edison, Love Jones, The Cocktails, Pink Martini and Nightcaps. Alternative band Stereolab demonstrated the influence of lounge with releases like Space Age Bachelor Pad Music and the Ultra-Lounge series of lounge music albums; the lounge style was a direct contradiction to the grunge music. Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder. Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

ISBN 978-0-2620-3623-8. Keightley, Keir. "Easy-Listening". In Shepherd, John. Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume 8: Genres: North America. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-4411-4874-2. Lanza, Joseph. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. Sound Unbound:Sampling Digital Music and Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-26646-6. Musiker, Naomi. Conductors and Composers of Popular Orchestral Music: A Biographical and Discographical Sourcebook. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-91770-8

Diamond Dove is a crime novel by Australian author Adrian Hyland. It is the first in the author's series of novels featuring the recurring character Emily Tempest, it won the Best First Novel category of the 2007 Ned Kelly Awards. Emily Tempest, the daughter of a white miner and his black wife, returns to her childhood home, Moonlight Downs in the Northern Territory, after completing her schooling at an Adelaide boarding school, her homecoming is impacted by the murder of the local elder. The police are baffled but Tempest makes use of her unique background to track down the killer. Dedication: For Kristin Mindy Laube in the Sydney Morning Herald noted that the novel is "popular literature of the stylish and substantial variety". 2006 commended The Fellowship of Australian Writers Victoria Inc. National Literary Awards — FAW Christina Stead Award 2007 winner Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing — Best First Novel

Sir Henri-Elzéar Taschereau, was a Canadian jurist and the fourth Chief Justice of Canada. Taschereau was born in his family's seigneurial manor house at Sainte-Marie-de-la-Beauce, Lower Canada to Pierre-Elzéar Taschereau and Catherine Hénédine Dionne. Tashereau attended the Université Laval and was called to the Bar of Quebec in 1857; that same year he married Marie-Antoinette de Lotbiniere Harwood, daughter of Robert Unwin Harwood, they were the parents of seven children. He fathered three more children, he practiced law in Quebec City and entered politics in 1861 when he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of what was the Province of Canada where he opposed Canadian Confederation. He was appointed a judge of the Quebec Superior Court in 1871 and to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1878 following the retirement of Jean-Thomas Taschereau, taught law part-time at the University of Ottawa. In 1902 he became Chief Justice serving for four years until his retirement in 1906, he was made a knight bachelor on 14 August 1902, after the honour had been announced in the 1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902.

He became a member of the British Privy Council in 1904, which entitled him to sit on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Taschereau was the great, great grandson of Thomas-Jacques Taschereau, the patriarch of the family in Canada, he was first-cousin once-removed to the brothers Elzéar Alexandre Cardinal Taschereau and Supreme Court Justice Jean-Thomas Taschereau. Jean-Thomas's son Louis-Alexandre would serve as Premier of Quebec, his grandson Robert Taschereau would serve as Chief Justice of Canada. Henri Elzéar Taschereau married at Vaudreuil, Quebec May 27, 1857, to Marie Antoinette Harwood, daughter of the Hon. R. U. Harwood, Seigneur of Vaudreuil, his wife, Marie Louise Josephte Chartier de Lotbiniere; the couple had seven children. She died at Ottawa, June 2, 1896, her remains were interred in the parish church of Vaudreuil. Henri Elzéar Taschereau married at Ottawa, March 22, 1897 his second wife Marie Louise Panet, daughter of Charles Panet, Clerk of Private Bills, House of Commons and his wife, Euphemie Chateauvert.

Marie Louise was born in Ottawa, February 29, 1868, received her education at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Ottawa. The couple lived at Ottawa; the couple had two sons. Charles Elzear de Montarville Taschereau was born in Ottawa on October 5, 1898. Henri Edouard Panet Taschereau was born at Ottawa, August 9, 1902. Howes, David. "From Polyjurality to Monojurality: The Transformation of Quebec Law, 1875–1929". McGill Law Journal. McGill Law School. 32: 523–558. Retrieved 2012-12-13. Supreme Court of Canada Biography Howes, David. "Taschereau, Sir Henri-Elzéar". In Cook, Ramsay. Dictionary of Canadian Biography. XIV. University of Toronto Press. "Biography of Henri-Elzéar Taschereau". Dictionnaire des parlementaires du Québec de 1792 à nos jours. National Assembly of Quebec