From this article in SFGate:

After building a musical reputation playing with a big name like West, Thompson got his big break in 1958 with a record deal from RCA. Signed alongside Esquivel, Billy May, Nelson Riddle and a crop of other musicians destined to be Hollywood stars, Thompson was asked to be the answer to Ray Conniff, on rival label Columbia. There was just one problem.

"Bob hated Ray Conniff," says Spenser Thompson. "My father thought Ray Conniff was a total square. You see, Bob was hip. Bob had soul."

Thrilled just to be playing music, Bob Thompson kept quiet and started making his records. It was the beginning of what was a somewhat badly marketed and mismanaged career. While Esquivel and Mancini easily carved niches in movies and on bachelor-pad record players, Thompson's music went largely misunderstood and underappreciated by RCA.

"Bob will tell you that they just didn't sell," says Spenser, who for years also took the LPs for granted, like an overlooked decoration in the family home. "But a lot of it had to do with Bob not having a management, no agent and no marketing, to direct his career."

Clearly ahead of his time, Bob Thompson brought new sophistication to studio technology, and the right people took note, says Van Dyke Parks, who produced Brian Wilson's classic album "Smile."

"Bob's records always had that snap, crackle and pop," says Parks, who befriended Thompson in 1969. "He was one of the first to create sounds in true stereo, like having a train sound as if it were traveling from your left to your right. This was new to the ear. And it was exciting."

For his final LP, "The Sound of Speed," and in a sort of orchestral punkish act of rebellion, Thompson made an album entirely based on the noises of modern transportation. But it would be many years before the album, filled with jazz harmonies and swing arrangements, would be fully appreciated and understood.

Thompson's most successful music was heard by millions of people every day, even though most of them never knew who he was. From 1961 to 1978, Thompson recorded the scores to more than 3,000 television commercials, from "Get That Great GM Feeling" and "Go-Go Goodyear" to "King Cobra -- Silver!"

(via this post in BoingBoing)

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