Midnight String Quartet Midnight String Quartet The Midnight String Quartet were an easy listening chamber music quartet, consisting of two violins, a viola, and a cello, made up of students (at the time) or graduates from the University of Southern California. They played covers and standards over several albums from 1966 to the early seventies, supplemented by a professional rhythm section, often including bass, drums and guitar and sometimes piano and harpsichord. The Midnight String Quartet made a series of instrumental recordings produced by "Tommy 'Snuff' Garrett", on Viva Records (U.S.), a subsidiary of Snuff Garrett Records. Their First album, "Rhapsodies for Young
Hampton String Quartet Hampton String Quartet The Hampton String Quartet, considered by many to be one of the founders of the "alternative music" genré of chamber music, is a string quartet specializing in rock music and other popular styles, playing serious chamber music arrangements of songs using classical composer influences and frequently quoting or paraphrasing snippets from their works. For example, their arrangement of "Earth Angel" is a paraphrase of Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D, and Reed's "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" quotes Franz Schubert's "Erlkönig." According to the liner notes of their 1986 debut album, "What if Mozart wrote 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,'"