Happy Birthday to Louis Prima who would have been 100 on Tuesday but today we celebrate Dave Brubeck's 90th birthday and glad to see he's still alive.
In the meantime, this is what's playing on the player.
1. Take Five (1973 Version)-Dave Brubeck 1973 (I just said the date dammit) Ya know I have heard countless versions of this with the classic lineup and others but perhaps the definite version comes from the band with Gerry Mulligan helping out Paul Desmond along with Jack Six and Alan Dawson who outshines Joe Morello if you can believe that. From the We Are All Together For The First Time, which sounds great on the gold disc put out by MFSL a few years ago.
2. Funky But Chic-David Johansen 1978 Mama says I look fruity, but in jeans I feel rotten sings he. Hell he even out Stones Mick Jagger with that line. Timeless.
3. Samson & Delilah-The Grateful Dead 1981 I'm sure they did better versions of this but I'm more familiar with version from Dead Set. Bobby Darin does a killer version of this too.
4. Dirty Bird-Brant Bjork 2010 You classic rockers out there don't know him but he played in the 1990's desert metal band Kyuss and they made 4 spotty to classic albums for Dali/Elektra (seek out Blues For The Red Sun or the S/T aka Sky Valley album for the best stoner metal) but he played drums. On his solo albums he switched to guitar and vocals and the results are not that much different than Kyuss although Brant forgos the oddball stuff that Josh Homme has been known to do in Queens Of The Stone Age. I guess the dude at Half Priced Books didn't think this was going to sell, he stuck it in the dollar bins to which the keen eye of R.S. found and bought.
5. Boogie-John Hartford 1971 Hartford was known as the guy behind Gentle On My Mind and did a bunch of albums for RCA before moving over to Warner Brothers and drove right down Bluegrass Lane although he had a pun-chant for the oddball. Actually I heard this on the FM underground station around 1973 and never knew who did it till I bought this album on a whim. Reissued via Rounder Records late 90s then deleted and sells for 50 bucks via Amazon. Found another used copy for 2 bucks at Frugal Muse when I did a mad dash to Madison a few weeks ago. Bargain hunters know what to find and where to find it. Some call it skill, I call it luck.
6. Diddy Wah Diddy-Captain Beefheart 1966 I actually got my GF to actually listen to CB's Lick My Decals Off Baby and she said she listened to it. I don't believe she listened to all of it but I'll believe her this time out. Anyway, this did garner some airplay and it was actually produced by one David A Gates who would go on to a music career of his own, the main singer songwriter of Bread. There's a lotta fuzz bass on this song and even a harpsichord just to let you know that the good Captain didn't sell out to make a hit but you can actually listen to it. I thought about challenging the GF to listen to the whole album of Trout Mask Replica but heck even I can't listen to all four sides.
7. Hello Dolly-Louis Armstrong 1964 I'm sure to the newbies out there who like song titles and top ten listings that even they cannot believe of the shifts of music tastes that I throw up here every week. It's probably to the point that I'm considered to be eccentric, erratic, a music lover or just a plain freak. Probably all of the above. Even I can't comprehend of the variety of styles of music we have here. But just going what I have been hearing of late. Armstrong rewrote jazz music of the 20s and 30s but by the time the 60s rolled around he was doing mainly pop or MOR music. Yep, AM radio did play this along The Beatles and Stones and Elvis and Bobby Rydell back then. Came out on Kapp Records. (as a youngster, I had a 45 of Louis' on Mercury and thought it was Hello Dolly but upon a second look, it was actually Mame).
8. When I Was A Cowboy (Western Plains) Alvin Youngblood Hart 1996 I used to listen to a lot of blues in the 80s and 90s but not as much as I used to or should. AYH isn't old bluesman but a relative youngster who incorporates plenty of delta blues (Leadbelly, Joe Louis Hill comes to mind), Chicago Blues and even ragtime aka Blind Blake so this dude sure knows his influences and can play them very well. This came out on the Okeh/550 Epic label back in 1996, back when Sony Music thought that they could make some money on the new blues field. Another 2 dollar find at HP Books.
9. Shut Up And Drive-Widespread Panic 2010 Jam bands are as the closest thing to rock and roll as it used to be on AOR rock years ago. And they have been around for over 20 plus years and were the major signing on the second wave of Capricorn artists in the 90s. Then once Capricorn closed up shop and Phil Walden passed on, WP moved over to Sanctuary Records before that label closed up shop and now find themselves on the ATO label. Good to see John Keane producing them again and they got Jimmy Herring (Aquarium Rescue Unit, Phil Lesh & Friends) playing guitar too. John Bell's singing remains an acquired taste but I must be a fan since I got 10 of their albums. The new one's pretty good and yes ATO even sneaked in a 2 cd live set that I have yet to hear. And may not.
10. Rock And Roll Contract-Badfinger 1981 Something from the last album they would ever do, Say No More. I guess this goes way back to 1975 for the aborted Head First album that Warner Brothers declined to released. However 6 years later, Tom Evans and Joey Molland along with the lesser knowns (although YES Tony Kaye played piano) went to Florida and recorded this on Radio Records with Jack Richardson (who produced the Guess Who and Alice Cooper back in he 70s). Nevertheless, Evans' frustration of the WB years and being ripped off came into being with the countless NO YOU CAN'T as the major theme of song. This was the B side to the failed single I Got You. It also didn't helped much that Badfinger was on another shitty label with Radio Records famous for those Stars On 45 Medley, playing Beatles songs to a disco track but even those hits would fail to keep Radio Records going and Say No More went to the bargain bins. Eventually, some big fan with enough money managed to reissue it via Real Records (no relation to the Iowa City Record Store) for about a week in 2000. You can get the MP3 copy via Amazon if need be. Fun Fact: Many copies of Say No More were so warped and so badly put together that they would skip in every place possible, KRNA tried playing the record one night and it was so warped that they couldn't play it. Fun Fact 2: Badfinger lipsynched their top 85 hit Hold On on the old Solid Gold TV show that WGN used to broadcast in 1981. The B side to that song Passin Time managed to get some airplay on KUNI, which meant that they got themselves a unwarped copy.....or perhaps the 45 itself.
Memories!
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