Jacques Denjean - The Tough Touch

I don't know too much about this composer/bandleader, except that apparently there are a couple of cuts here that became theme songs for popular radio programmes on Europe No. 1 and France-Inter Jeunesse ("Dans le vent" and "La route", respectively). The band apparently got noted in 1961 according to a mention on the jacket, stating "A new big jazz orchestra was born in France!" (an A. Destombes of "Telemagazine" said that)....

The cover has a release date of Feb 1964, but the disc, a German Polydor, has a press date of 1963, so, it is safe to say that this is early 60s jazz. No personnel credits, of course, but there is a mention that this was basically a "pick-up" orchestra, composed of studio players and amateurs, from both Paris as well as the countryside. It comes together, though, in a French 60s kind of Austin Powers-y way, and isn't too bad. Quite listenable, actually.

Most of the cuts are originals by M. Denjean, but there are a few covers also in here (guess which one is the Holland & Dozier piece, credited to Holland Dozier)... including one of the BEST covers of "Watermelon Man" (which is credited to Herbie Hancock... am I wrong or wasn't that a Mongo Santamaria tune?) I have heard, ever.

The disc was a BOOGER to get encoded, but, once again, CoolEdit shines! THere may be a few pops left in the tracks, but rest assured, there were a ton more before the noise pass was begun.

The Tough Touch.

Before I go, I have linked to a few more of my fave sites... if I have grabbed a share from it, I have posted a link to the site. Great stuff out there, grab, share, play, enjoy!

Ronnie Aldrich on Decca Phase 4

After all the picture-taking (I wrested the digital camera under penalty of no-TV-for-a-week... not to worry, the kids are off to camp tomorrow morning, so it's no TV for a week ANYWAY), as you'll note there are now scans on most of the posts now (and a bunch of pics over on the Shellac Shanty of the studio). Also, there's a stream of Tiki stuff going on, just look over in the sidebar for Tiki Radio. It'll be up most of the time, except for when I am doing some encoding work or the server needs the bandwidth.

So, tonight's share: Ronnie Aldrich and His Two Pianos. On Phase 4. DECCA Phase 4. I found this in the thrift store, took it home, and it plays brilliantly. Decca Phase 4 releases didn't have (at least this one didn't have) the gatefold deal with all the technical bits inside, just the front and back cover. It DOES have a date of recording on it, though, that being 1962. The label is just like the usual London Phase 4 seen in the US, but it has the big DECCA logo on it, and a little roundel saying "33 1/3 rpm" on the bottom.

Enough of the drivel, on to the record. It's one with tunes based on classical themes, played by Ronnie with a nice combo backing him (uncredited, of course). Very tasty stuff, indeed. A nice after-word (or extension) of the Jackie Gleason post, but without the drink recipes. Heck, you should kow how to make the drinks by now! With some of the A-B stereo panning going on, you may not need them...

Anyways, here it is, Ronnie Aldrich. Enjoy!

Jackie Gleason's Lover's Portfolio

OK kids, here's a treat... I think...

Jackie Gleason was a very talented individual, and he would have been the first one to tell you so, and you would have laughed as you agreed with him. Seriously, I like Jackie. And I like his orchestral stuff.

This, however, is an extremely interesting 2 LP set, that Capitol released in an actual portfolio-type briefcase! And the liner notes, WOW (which I need to get scanned)!

Basically, this is a 4-sided seduction piece, with music for Sipping, Dining, Dancing, and...... stuff. The liner notes even go so far as to suggest what kinds of drinks (WITH RECIPES!) to serve your paramour-ette (object of your affections, dinner date, whatever).

We start with Side 1, an 18 minute solo piano medley (with occasional Bass and Drum), for the casual conversation as your date comes in and slips off her gloves. Nicely and tastefully done, yes, sir, and it is called "Music for Sipping". This was all one track, and the titles contained are in the MP3 ID3V2 tag. I'll post them here, too... they are:
Some Day I'll Find You
I Can't Get Started
I Remember It Well
I See You Face Before Me
Allez Vous En
Lovely To Look At
The Touch Of Your Hand
What Is There To Say
I'll Follow My Secret Heart
If I Didn't Care
Someday I'll Find You (reprise)

So, now it is on to the dinner. For that we have Jackie's Dixieland Orchestra and "Music for Dining", with a few numbers to help the digestion, and to lighten up the mood, but not TOO light, nudge nudge.... That would be Side 2.

Side 3 is for "Music for Dancing", and we get a 15 minute mish-mash medley I guess that one could dance to... it's again one single track, so here are the titles (also in the ID3v2 tag):
I Could Have Danced All Night
Love Is Here To Stay
C'est Magnifique
Mad About The Boy
It's All Right With Me
Just In Time
How High The Moon
Easy To Love
I Concentrate On You
All Of You
Our Love
On The Street Where You Live
I Love Paris
Come Rain Or Come Shine
It All Depends On You
So In Love
A Foggy Day
By Myself
The Party's Over

See what I mean? But it is nicely performed by the "Society Dance Orchestra", whomever that may be (probably whomever was in studio that day...)

Now, Side 4, the "Music for Loving" (actually, drop the final 'g' on all the Music For...). These are ALL Jackie Gleason compositions, and are performed by Jackie's "Music for Lovers" Orchestra. Now THIS is the Jackie Gleason sound we're all familiar with. Lush lushness of strings, and not a clanker or blatt in the bunch. I guess that 16 or so minutes was the expected time to do.....stuff back then, or at least 16 minutes was supposed to be enough to prepare for..... doing stuff. Seems like an awfully short evening to me. But, hey, what do I know... with all the drink recipes in the liner note booklet, maybe the amorous couple would have passed out after 16 minutes of Music for Lovers...

Anyway, I split this into 2 archives, sides 1 and 2 are here... and sides 3 and 4 are here.

I'll have the liner notes up in a couple of days, believe me, they're worth the wait.

Cheers, and remember, always practice safe...... stuff!

Edmundo Ros, the Latin King?

Calm down, all you Tito Puente fans, it's only the title of the LP... Edmundo will never have the fire that "El Rey del Mambo" had, but he was a pretty popular band leader in the UK in the 50s and 60s, and had some pretty dance-able stuff.

This here share is from an OOP (later vintage of) London Phase-4 LP, found in a thrift store, and in pretty grungy condition. This one looked like it had been backed over by something... but I was able to get a halfway decent rip of it (CoolEdit ROCKS). Maybe it had something to do with the OTHER Edmundo Ros LP inside the jacket (on UK Decca, and in even WORSE shape)?

Anyways, you get to hear some pretty latin-esque (in a proper British sense, I guess) dance numbers, plus, Edmundo 'graces' us with his singing on a few of the cuts. Antonio Benedetto he ain't, but neither is he a male version of Florence Foster Jenkins (a truly painful experience, listening to FFJ... shudder!).

The rip came out fairly clean except for a couple of cuts towards the end of the LP sides... you can hear the crispness turn to mush (which almost NEVER happened on earlier Phase 4 pressings) somewhat, but there's still enough there to enjoy.

As per current, I'll have scans when I can FIND the digital camera... and, if I get energetic (or masochistic) I'll try and rip the other Decca LP that 'came with' this one. No guarantees, except for these two:

(1) Rabidshare will not delete this archive, because it ain't there, and...

(2) None of these tracks have shown up on a Wyncote LP (that I know of)..... if anyone finds a Wyncote LP recorded by "El Kaiwaza"..... RUN!

Here's The Latin King...

Something ain't right here....

Well, now that I have recovered from a computer that had a wheezing power supply (note: don't expect a 385 watt supply to keep a machine with 5 drives, a DVD burnerm and a CDR burner happy...), I can get down to encoding and posting a few more things. Actually I ordered up a 600w one and a 580w one, the 600w unit was dead out of the box (and is getting returned to ComputerGeeks.com), but the 580 watt unit is merrily soldiering on. Yay-ness!

Tonight's posts are a couple of different things. I found another couple of Wyncote LPs, and have included one of the for your amusement. I say "amusement" because it is another bunch of Hawaiian stuff. "Hawaiian Holiday" by "Kaiwaza". Okay, all good and well. BUT, when you unwrap the archive, you'll notice a couple of things...

(1) Some of the tunes are BRILLIANT Tiki material. I mean, these are NICE! Right up there in Tiki-ness with Lyman, Denny, and the rest. Which brings me to...

(2) If you look at the list of titles on this LP as opposed to the other Wyncote LP I posted, you'll notice that some of the track names are the same. No problems. BUT, when you play the tracks, THEY'RE THE SAME DAMN TRACK! "Hawaiian Holiday" and "Hibiscus Blossom" are the same tracks as on the other Wyncote LP! I checked with a very concentrated ear, and it sounds like these are even the same exact takes! Which brings me to...

(3) Wyncote. These guys must be the budget arm of something like Command or another company... they gather together a bunch of rejected takes or audition takes from somewhere, then throw them up in the air. The 10 that land closest together go on to an LP issue. This SEEMS like how they do it. Obviously, Wyncote is budget label, fronting someone's reject takes, but I guess the lesson here is this: in every pile-o-poop there can be brilliance.

So, is it "Kaiwaza"? Is it the "Hawaiian Islanders"? Or is it the "Mystery Haoles of Kahenoe Bay"? Unless someone has Wyncote notes or info, we may never know.

Oh well, enjoy "Kaiwaza"...

On a second note, I got some responses to the package of 7-inchers I posted the other day... I'll have to look at the off-centered-ness of the Si Zentner stuff, and maybe re-rip them.

Here's an archive of more orchestral stuff, some big band, some sweet-swing, but all in all, not too bad. Again, please excuse the quality of the rips, these are a bit older than current, and I was in a hurry to get these together for a "Music of your Afterlife" parody show.

Included in this batch are:

Glen Gray & His Casa Loma Orchestra:
- Night Train
- Swingin' The Blues

Harry James:
- Cherry
- Trumpet Blues

Les Elgart & His Orchestra:
- Beat Junction
- Let Me Call You Sweetheart
- Love For Sale
- Sidewinder
- The Touch Of Your Lips
- When You Were Sweet Sixteen

The 'New" Glenn Miller Orchestra:
- I Could Have Danced All Night
- Peg O My Heart

Ted Heath:
- Bag's Groove
- Cherokee
- Doodlin'
- Exactly Like You
- Night Train
- Wailin' Boat

Warren Covington & The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra:
- An Occasional Man
- Nunca
- Sweet and Gentle
- Tea For Two Cha Cha No. 2

Will Kennedy & His Orchestra:
- Give Me the Night Life
- I'm In A New World
- My Heart's Gone Crazy
- You're Not Fooling Me

As before, most are stereo, off of the 7-inch pressings from various labels. I have more of these laying about if anyone wants them... a lot of them swing pretty nicely, actually.

Download more 7-inch stuff!

So there you have it, I'm kinda caught up now... I found some Colombian stuff at my thrift store, supposedly the Colombian equivalent of either James Last or Peggy Lee... we'll just have to wait and see how good (or bad) it is...

Until next time, keep the Tiki torches lit for me!

A Batch of Mini-Exoti-Tiki

You need to take a long shower after that last post? I don't blame you. So, here's a little freshener, an archive of 7-inch stuff I had laying around. The rips aren't the best, some are stereo, some are mono, but these are not to doggone bad.

In the early 1960s, Goddess knows why, Liberty, London, Decca, Command, and others released a bunch of seven-inch singles, some in stereo, pressed on a variety of material, some at 45 rpm, some at 33 1/3 rpm, some wide groove pitch, some at narrow groove pitch (think RCA Victor 45 rpm EP microgroove-from-hell groove pitch).

What I culled here are the more tiki-esque of the lot, I'll save the Big Band stuff for a later release (maybe after another Wyncote piece of garbage).

Dick Hyman's Trio gives us four cuts:
- Dancing Tambourine
- If I Had You
- Sleep
- We're In The Money

Then there is a Ferrante & Teicher (sorry, no prepared pianos):
- Devotion
- Sands of Time

Followed up with four cuts by Los Amiradores on the Command label:
- Birth of the Blues
- Golden Earrings
- Makin' Whoopee
- My Funny Valentine

Next some Si Zentner:
- Belle of the Ball
- Boogie Woogie Maxixe *
- Lover
- Paradise
- Shadrack *
- The Sweetest Sounds
- Waltz in Jazz Time
- Willow Weep For Me
(the ones with an asterisk are from a mono 45, the rest are from a 6-song 7-inch EP)

And finally for your listening pleasure(??) is a single from Timi Yuro (the one that recorded "Hurt"):
- Are You Sure
- She's Got You

Hope this is a decent enough Alka-Seltzer for the gastric badness of the previous post.... but rest assured, I CAN up the ante for Exoti-crap if need be (evil wide grin)......

Download all seven inches!

A Challenge (or: "Exoti-blah, anyone?")

OK, here's the deal. I know some of you bloggers out there with huge collections of Tiki, Exotica, Jazz, what-have-you... I know you're looking at this blog, because every once in a while I get some comments! I like comments! So, to spice up the summer (or winter, in the Southern Hemisphere), I offer this little challenge...

We all know that there is some abso-FARKING-lutely BRILLIANT Tiki-zotica out there on the blogs & shareblogs. GREAT stuff. Pride of the collection and all that. Things that make the blog-poster smile all the way to the hard drive when they get one of these jewels at the thrift store. Agreed? Ok.

Here's the challenge. What is the WORST piece of exoti-drek you have in your library. Klangers. Klunkers. Things that make you wince in abject terror. Really really REALLY bad stuff. Something that goes beyond boring or mediocre. A piece of crap. Something that deserves to be made into an ashtray (almost).

Got one? Post it up on your blog! Let me know where it is and we can all judge it.

I did a "Klanker of the Week" over on the Shellac Shanty blog and it got quite a few comments, because there wre some real screechers made on the 78rpm shellac. And I doggone good and well KNOW that there are some screechers in the thrift store piles.

Here's my ante for this little shindig: "Hawaiian Paradise" by the "Hawaiian Islanders". 10 cuts of barf-on-vinyl. This thing is on the wonderful Wyncote label and has the AUDACITY to have the big "35mm stereo" banner on the jacket. This must have been sold in grocery and drug stores in such tropical places as Kansas, Arkansas, North Dakota, and southern Illinois. The musicians aren't credited (and it is a good thing), and there are no composer credits on the label, either. There is a steel guitar player, but I betcha he was yanked off the unemployment line in Nashville, because he sure sounds country... no other redeeming things about any of the other musicians, either.



What moves this LP from "boring" to "drek" is the sparse liner notes on the back jacket:

"Hawaiian music has long been at the top of the music list "most popular" with Americans.

In this album, the distinctive Hawaiian flavor instills fresh memories of that Hawaiian dancer... that unforgettable trip to the islands; or, maybe that paradise recluse for undisturbed dreamers.

Most of your favorites are in this album. However, the other selections are sure to become your favorites also. For, each song in this album is Hawaiian music as you like it... Authentic island style using the traditional combination of the ukelele, the steel guitar, and native percussion.

For each of you, this album will bring to life the distant and romantic beauty of the Hawaiian Islands... the dreamer's paradise!"

Excuse me while I go chunder....

Download (if you dare)!

A Little Bit of Reeds from Rugolo

Tonight's interlude ain't Tiki, but it is pretty good jazz from L.A. Jazzman (and Mercury Recording Director when this LP was cut) Pete Rugolo. I found this sitting on top of a box of reel tapes buried (literally!) beneath about 500 pounds (literally!) of audio cables. So, since I didn't have anything really in line to encode (except for a Patti Page LP that had great backing instrumentals but her voice sounding like she was in a muffled closet... oh yea, THAT was on the Mercury label as well...), I did this one.

It's some very orchestral jazz, no brass, only reeds and saxes and flutes (and rhythm section), with the occasional solo by Andre Previn on piano and Barney Kessel on guitar. Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Dave Pell, and Chuck Gentry have solos peppered (bad pun) throughout the tracks as well. It swings in places, it lounges in places, it even stretches the musical wings a bit (case in point: "Polytonal Blues").

Pressing quality is good, I only had to remove a few wompies in the celeste opening of the first track and do the usual noise reduction pass on the rest. Godess be praised for CoolEdit :) The result is another 320/44 Fraunhoffer rip in rar format for your enjoyment.

The kids are still on the Great Opus of the Kitty from Hell vs. the Beanie-Baby Armada, so no scans until I forcibly remove the digital camera from their grasps. Or give them another bag of Mexican candy (which may have started this cinematographical binge in the first place!)....

Reedy Rugolo!

Lawrence Welk Exotica???

O-o-o-o-o-ka-a-a-a-y.... well I wasn't too convinced, but this was in a batch I ended up getting at one of the thrift stores in bulk, and I was really really really hesitant to play the damn thing.

But I did.

Wow.

Aside from the incessant scratcher, this AIN'T HALF BAD. George takes some of the Tiki Standards and merrily screws with them ("Now Is The Hour" in 3/4 time?? "Hawaiian War Chant" as a cha-cha??). One of the featured players is Buddy Cole on the Novachord ("...sometimes as a string section, other times as part of the percussion effect..."), and the lead female vocal is none other than (are you sitting down?) Norma Zimmer. Yes, THAT Norma Zimmer your grandpappy had the hots for every time Larry fired up the bubble machine. Another notable player is Alvino Rey on one of the steel guitars (no spoken stuff this outing though), and Milt Holland "in the percussion section".

The pressing is on Dot from some time in the early 60s, and it is quite clean. I didn't have to doink with the noise reduction too awful much, and, as usual, this is encoded in Fraunhoffer 320/44 true stereo MP3.

So, there you have it. I am gonna do the rar archive thing again, so download this little surprise here!

Again, my apologies for no scans, the kids still have the damn digital camera (something about Barbie, Godzilla, and the Kitten from Hell).

Mainland Billy May

Orkey-dorkey, I fell out of the Hawaiian groove there... now that my night job that runs 9+ hours plus a 60 mile each way commute is DONE, I will have a little more time to devote to My Three Blogs (insert TV theme music here).

First up, I am in a quandry... all the OTHER blogs I see that are sharing full LPs are doing one big rar archive for the LP. Should I do this also, even though I'm not using Rapidshare? I'll see, as I have rar'ed up this LP into one big archive.

Today's treat? A Billy May LP from the Time Records library. It's self-titled, so I used the "Process 70" as the album name. Nice swing stuff on here, plus the music is very well recorded! The LP was another thrift store find, and was in pretty ratty shape, so excuse the pops that remain.

Project 70 was apparently a "I got more fidelity than you" deal to go up against the Command 35mm process. It looks like they used 70mm wide TAPE, as one of the big things in the liner technical blah-blah was that the recording material kept constant tension against the heads, as opposed to being pulled across with film sprockets. Once I get the scanner up and running I'll scan the liner notes, it's a good laff.

The tunes are well performed too, and Billy manages to run some humour into the tracks (check out the incidental vocals in "Road to Hong Kong").

So, what are you waiting for? Download the archive!

Picture will be posted when I get the damn digital camera back from the kids.