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Thursday, January 3, 2013

In An Egyptian Garden - Tarik Bulut

Lolo
In An Egyptian Garden
Directed By Tarik Bulut
Aamco ALPS 70
1958

From Billboard, December 8, 1958: This one is right out of the world of the harems and belly dancers, Featured instruments are violin, zither, lute and two drums, plus vocalist L. Guner. Would figure to have a limited market, but in its field, it can compete well, due to a good performance and recording job. The harem gal on the cover can no doubt add sales appeal.

Cifte Telli
Erneni Oyunu
Halay
Arabic Fantasy
Konyali
Wedding Song
Lolo
Finjan
Kara Biberim
Olive Oil

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Dance In Dorsey Style - Rene Maurice

Song Of India
Dance In Dorsey Style
Rene Maurice And His Dance Orchestra
Acorn/Golden Tone 617

One budget album saved from being thrown away by the Joan Miro graphic on the cover.

Obscure, one microphone recording.

Stonepillow - Eleazar's Circus

Coat Of Many Colors
Stonepillow
Elezar's Circus
Composed and Written By Lor Crane and Jay Zimmet
Phase 4 Stereo
London SP 44123
1968

First, this is not a picture disc, but a printed cover that sort of makes you think the groovy flower circle is die-cut.

Second... how do I write anything here without taking some blotter acid?

While I was listening to this Phase 4, I kept wondering what possessed London to produce an album like this?  Was the idea born out of a collective emerging musical rock opera trend or by a single album? When I listened to the sample track above, I was reminded of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which seems to have burst onto the scene at the same time, almost exactly the same time.

Most references to the release date of this album, online, are 1969, but the date printed on the jacket is 1968. "Joseph" was first presented as a 15 minute pop cantata in London in 1968 and then recorded as a concept album in 1969.

But then the plot thickens... I noted one post who mentioned this song as a cover of Dolly Parton's theme. What? I look this up... Dolly's album, by the same name, was released in 1971. The lyrics are completely different. But it's on the internet... it has to be true!

Or did the producers take their cue directly from the Hebrew Bible?

Maybe I am writing this on acid. Anyway, the tie-in to this blog (other than... hey... I found this record)... is that it is a Phase 4 release.

Transcontinental Depress
There's Good News Tonight
Green George
Strange Times
Coat Of Many Colors
The Eternity Track
Swing The Rose
Dr. Love
Eleazar's Circus

Thunderball - Dan & Dale

Theme From Thunderball
Theme From Thunderball And Other Themes
Sleepwalk Guitars Of Dan & Dale
Diplomat DS 2626

Here's another quirky Dan and Dale album. Dan and Dale albums seem to always feature some sort of thematic cover graphic and then the mystery boys loosely follow through with the concept on the tracks. This makes for an interesting listen, because you never know what their approach will be. This album promises, from the cover, juicy secret agent action, but delivers something less. Not to fear, with a little open minded listening, you will still hear a bunch of great 60s light pop tracks.

Sounds Of Percussion - West York Area High School

Canonic Sonata in A Major
Mancini Overture
Sound Of Percussion
West York Area High School Percussion Ensemble
Alan Wyand - Director
Dick Schory - Guest Conductor
Joe Morello - Guest Soloist
Frank Taylor Sound Service - Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Cover design and printing furnished by the Graphics Arts Department of the West York Area High School - Jere R. Rentzel, Instructor
1965

I enjoy percussion albums, but what drew my attention to this one was the involvement of Dick Schory and Joe Morello, two known and respected space age musicians.

From the back cover: The group has also sponsored three annual "Days Of Percussion" featuring clinics, displays, and concerts with such nationally known guest artists as Dick Schory, Frank Arsenault, Duane Thamm, and Joe Morello.

This was a serious high school effort. Enjoy a few samples from this historical curiosity.

Sensational Stereo Spectacular Demonstration Album

Adios
Sensational Stereo Spectacular Demonstration Album
Recorded On Pure Golden Vinyl
Tops/Mayfair 9000 S

Proper Balancing Of Stereo Speakers
Wunderbar - 101 String Orchestra
Voice Of The City
Behind The Scenes At A Recording Session
Little Brown Jug - Jerry Gray And His Orchestra
Let's Hop A Train... Care To Go By Steam Engine Or Would You Prefer An Up To Date Diesel
Oh What A Beautiful Morning - Lew Raymond and His Orchestra
Police Band
Back Home Again In Indiana - Paul Martin and His Old-Timers
Walking To The Parade
Stars And Strips Forever - The International Marching Band
Daisy Belle, The Man On The Flying Trapeze - The Fireside Gang
Adios - Tito Rivera and His Cuban Orchestra
Around The World - Lew Raymond and His Orchestra
Helena Polka - George Poole and His Orchestra
You Tell Me Your Dream And I'll Tell You Mine, In The Evening By The Moonlight, Sweet Rosie O'Grady - Beatrice Kay & Gerald Dolin with The Eligibles
Falling In Love With Love - 110 Strings Orchestra

Lush Themes From Motion Pictures - LeRoy Holmes

The World Is Mine
Lush Themes From Motion Pictures
LeRoy Holmes And His Orchestra
MGM Records E3172
1955

From Billboard, August 13, 1955: Here's a great mood music programming package for deejays. The LP spotlights 12 theme songs from 12 important movies ranging from the familiar "The High And The Mighty" and Tara's Theme" (from "Gone With The Wind") to the lesser known "Samara" from "The Prodigal" and "The President's Lady." All of the melodic settings by Holmes and, over-all, the LP shapes up as eminently listenable. The package is a "must" for movie fans, and its wide selection of films offers dealers extensive tie-up promotion and display possibilities.

I love the cover art and the "mood music" is arranged with just enough uniqueness to help it just stand out in the mid-50s crowd of easy listening.

The High And The Mighty
Jamie
Land Of The Pharaohs
The World Is Mine
Rear Window Theme
Forbidden Love
Tara's Theme
The Bridges At Toko-Ri
Samarra
Unchained Melody
The President's Lady
Spellbound

Monday, December 31, 2012

The Percussion Of Strasbourg - Ohana/Kabelac

Choreographiques - Second Etude
The Percussion Of Strasbourg
Maurice Ohana - 4 Etudes Choreographiques
Miloslav Kabelca - 8 Inventions Opus 45
Limelight/Mercury LS 86051
1968

This is possibly the U.S. release of a work originally presented in Europe as a part of the Prospective 21 Siecle, Philips series featuring a flashy foil cover.

The album seem obscure in this release.

Some percussion avant grade albums I've listened seem to beg for additional instruments to help fill out the sound. Not here. You get a dramatic, full-bodied sound presented in such a manner that you forget that what you are listening to is just percussion and not a full orchestra.

The Touch Of Betty Johnson

The Touch
The Touch Of Betty Johnson
Bally BAL 12011
1956

From Billboard - December 22, 1956: The creamy-voiced canary has a hot single, "I Dreamed," on the jockey charts right now, so her first Bally LP should get heavy play from the spinner-set.

From the back cover: Betty started singing with her family in Possum Walk Road, North Carolina, at the age of five. The Johnson Family sang at funerals, weddings, jamborees and fish frys. In the twenty years since her debut at five, Betty has made her way along the hard trail of one-nighters, club dates and night clubs, up to and including the Copacabana in New York, to network radio and television, and a string of successful records. Betty recently made her singing-acting debut on television in a featured part on the NBC-TV daytime serial, "Modern Romances."

Why Not Cha Cha Cha - Manny Lopez

Serenade In Blue
Why Not Cha Cha Cha
Manny Lopez And His Orchestra
Imperial LP 9006
1959

Here is an obscure, but solid late 50s big band Cha Cha album.

From the back cover: One of his greatest fans, Tony Martin, has often lamented that he has not had an opportunity to do a Latin American album with Lopez. "This man Lopez," says Martin, "is to the Cha Cha Cha what Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays are to baseball.

Manny is happily married (a sad note, perhaps, for many of his female admires) has four children, all of whom play musical instruments. He is often referred to as "The Don Juan of the Baton," as much for his sparkling wardrobe as his vitality and good looks. Someone once asked Lopez if it was true that he owned forty-five suits? "That's true," he flipped, "but don't forget the twelve suits that are still at the cleaners."


Fatabulous
Begin The Beguine
Music Makers
Las Tres Locas
The Mole
Oye Mira
Mexican Hat Dance Cha Cha Cha
Mi Nina Querida
Orchids In The Moonlight
In Old Monterey
Serenade In Blue
Cielito Lindo

Soul(o) Cello - Fred Katz

The Toy That Never Was

Soul(o) Cello
Fred Katz And His Music
Cello And Orchestra - Modern Jazz Arrangements
Cover Photo by Roy Pinney
Decca DL 9202
1958

Personnel on tracks 2, 3, 8, 9, 10 ,12: Fred Katz, cello; Paul Horn, flute and clarinet; Ann Mason Stockton, harp; John Pisano, guitar; Harold Gaylor, bass; (John) Calvin Jackson, piano. Percussion is played by a prominent jazz drummer and group leader.

Tracks 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11: Fred Katz, cello; Paul Horn, Buddy Collette, altos; Harry Klee, Bill Green, flutes; John Paisano, guitar; Harold Gaylor, bass; (John) Calvin Jackson, piano. Percussion is played by the same prominent jazz drummer and group leader.

From the back cover: The clearest indication of the mood – in the fullest connotation of that word – that Fred Katz intends to communicate in this album can be found in one of this favorite quotations. The author is classical composer Ernst Tech, who writes: "Beware of Pedantry! Neither art nor nature knows an unqualified 'It must' or "It must not."... First comes creation, then comes theory, trying to describe and to explain."

Fred Katz, then, refuses to limit himself to any musical or any other imperatives that he des not feel to be true for himself. "In my personal life." says Katz, "I am open to any and all philosophies, from Judaism to Buddhism. I am a non-conformist in the best possible meaning of that term. I have been moved to great heights of emotion by a Beethoven... by a folk singer.. by a great jazz musician... by the nonsense of a child... by the wisdom of a Schweitzer. All is life. And what life – and sometimes the negation of life – means, I like to express in my music as a composer, as a player, and even as an arranger."

This inner-directed, unusually multi-oriented musician was born in Brooklyn, February 25, 1919. He studied cello and piano at the Third Street Music Settlement under a scholarship, and his cello teacher, incidentally, had been pupil of Pablo Casals. Katz played at Town Hall at 13. He continued concert work and composing; conducted at the White House in 1941; was musical director of 7th Army Headquarters overseas; had his ballet, Lysistrara performed in New York in 1945; and the Heidelberg Symphony devoted a concert entirely to his compositions. After the war, among other activities, he was piano accompanist for Vic Damone, Mindy Carson, Lena Horne, Tony Bennett, Jana Mason and others. He then became a member – on cello – of the Chico Hamilton quintet. In recent years, he has also scored for films, taught and has been commissioned by cellist Gregor Piatigorsky to write a jazz work to be performed by the latter in concert. He has also contributed several original to the Chico Hamilton book. Fred recently signed with Decca as west coast supervisor of the label's jazz recordings and as an artist.

In jazz, a principal contribution of Katz has been, as Leonard Feather notes, "to put the cello to full use both in arco and pizzicato solos." Oscar Pettiford had already indicated the considerable jazz potential of plucked (pizzicato) cello, but with Oscar, the instrument has remained secondary to his primary instrument, the bass. Katz has been the first musician to utilize all of the cello in jazz as his chief instrument in that idiom.

Katz believes that the potential of the cello in jazz "depends upon the ability of cellists to wail and also on the writing done for it. I remember years ago the flute was considered a 'novelty' but the players themselves made it a definite part of jazz. The cello has much beauty in tis should, and if jazz will not accept it, this speaks very badly for the development of jazz. It seems to me quite ridiculous to object to an instrument's inclusion in jazz just because 'it hasn't been done.' Any instrument in the world that has been invented – or ever will be invented – has an inalienable right to make music in any or all forms. Music of all kinds, including jazz, in order to grow must seek now ways to expand.

As for his own position, Katz says "I would like to correct an impression about me that apparently is gaining some acceptance among jazz musicians and critics. That impression is that I am not basically a jazz musician. It might interest those who say this that before I joined the Chico Hamilton Quintet, I had played and still can play pretty funky piano. As a matter of fact, I made my living as a pianist. I had given up the cello, because I did not want to bury myself in either a symphony or worse yet, the pit of a theater. When they say my music isn't jazz, my answer is, 'what composition are they talking about?' At the moment in my development as a musician and as a person, I'm not concerned with conforming to anybody's concept of what they would like to hear. With all that is in men, I'm trying to write music in the universal sense. If sometimes a 'jazz' phrase make sense in a composition, I'll write it."

Country Garden is a 'tongue-in-cheek' arrangement by Calvin Jackson. Satori, explains Katz, "is a Buddhist term meaning a moment of truth. It was written, but the way, in one morning without the usual problems that plague a composer – why? The 'moment of truth,' incidentally, in Satori is played by the cello and clarinet near the end of the composition. The musical phrase that made sense to me that morning was a 'funky thing.'; Next time it may be silence – why?"

Andante is by Luther Henderson. "the release is all improvisation, also the end cadenza. A lovely work, very grateful to the cello." Circus was arranged by John Pisano, Chico Hamilotn's guitarist, and it's a particularly well-integrated, playful, lyrical experience. Wayfaring Stranger, a familiar folk song, has been arranged by Fred Katz. The tune has rarely, it seems to me, sounded as poignant as in this version by Katz' deeply singing cello. Time After Time was arranged by Bassist Hal Gaylor; and again, the emotional strength that the very texture of the cello conveys, deepens the impact of the song.

The Vidiot is a Fred Katz original as arranged by Calvin Jackson. The Lament Of The Oracles is described by Katz as concerning "an organization – The Oracles – of disgruntle acts and intellectuals' who didn't think anything was good except their version of 'anything'." The Toy That Never Was "is a story of a child who doesn't believe in Santa Claus because he never gets presents at Christmas. The fast middle part represents a nightmare where-in all the imaginary toys come to life – not pleasantly, but ironically. Sad but true, not only of children." It is preceded by Sonny Burke's flowing arrangement of I'm Glad There Is You.

Intermezzo is a melody that many inveterate admires of Ingrid Bergeman, this reporter among them, recall from her picture with "'Leslie Howard years ago. "I've always loved the melody," say Fred, "and I played it here more or less straight, because I felt it that way in the studio that moment." The arrangement is by Hal Gaylor, Chico Hamilton's bassist. Come With Me, originally titled Le Petit Swing, was composed and arranged by Bill Marx. "It's 'jazz,' says Fred, "Louis the XIV would have liked if he had liked jazz."

In an impressive analysis of a Fred Katz collection in Down Beat, Don Gold wrote: "It is simple... to quickly categorize and either accept or dismiss Katz' ability... What is important to me, and what should be important to all musicians, is that Katz has something to say and a background that enables him to say it intelligently." The point, as Gold underlined, is that Katz' music should not be listened to with a compulsion to first fit intent a neat category. It should be listened to initially on its own terms. "First comes creation," said Toch, "then comes theory, trying to describe and explain."  The labels, in short, came after the work not before. – Nat Hentoff, co-editor The Jazz Makers (Rinehart)

Country Gardens
Satori
Andante
Circus
Wayfaring Stranger
Time After Time
The Vidiot
Lament Of The Oracles
I'm Glad There Is You
The Toy The Never Was
Intermezzo
Come With Me

Dixieland Mambo - Phil Gomez And The Jazzbos

Quiet Village
Dixieland Mambo
Phil Gomez And The Jazzbos
Omega OSL-46
1959

From the back cover: Phil Gomez went to Europe in the fall of 1956 with Kid Ory, where the band played concerts in every major city on the continent, and while in Europe they worked on a French movie and did an album in Paris. The most recent movie he has appeared in is The Benny Goodman Story, and Phil has gathered fans from his recent Television work on the Bob Hope Show and Stars Of Jazz. At present he is signed with Jerry Colonna accompanying him on tours and personal appearances.

This is one of the interest cover of Quiet Village. Quirky album from the cover art to the Dixieland/Latin blend.

Dixieland Mambo
Green Eyes
Ja Da
La Cucaracha
Dixieland Cha Cha
Quiet Village
When The War Breaks Out In Mexico
Brazil
South
Mucho Mambo
New Orleans Mambo
When The Saints Go Marching In

Have You Heard - Johnny Smith

Shalimar
Have You Heard
Johnny Smith
Arrow LP 1200
1958

From Billboard - June 23, 1958: Arrow Records will issue its first LP shortly. The set will feature organist Johnny Smith...

From the back cover: He (Smith) hails from the mid-west where in the small club and cocktail lounge circuit of Ohio And Michigan he has been able to both please the listeners and develop a highly distinctive style that continues to win followers for him. Chris Columbo who drummed with Bill Davis organ-led trio immediately sought out Johnny Smith when he cut away from his own group. Johnny was a perfect fit for the new-formed group and soon was being rated as an important find for jazzdom's organ ranks.

Not From Dixie
A Quiet Gass
Brief And Breezy
Joanna
The Floater
A Profound Gass
Slow And Easy
Brothers Go To Mother's
Fallout
Blues For Mother

Contemporary Music Ingrid Dingfelder Plays Flute Music

Contemporary Music Ingrid Dingfelder Plays Flute Music
Ned Rorem - Book Of Hours
Ingrid Dingfelder, Flute; Martine Geliot, Harp
Bohuslav Martinu Trio
Ingrid Dingfelder, Flute; Jerome Carrington, Cello; Anita Gordon, Piano
CRI SD 462
1977

Since this album appears to be completely obscure, I've posted both sides.