Hairspray Soundtrack (MCA 1988)
John Waters is good at putting together soundtracks to his movies and Hairspray was no surprise. Mostly late 50s to early 60s AM mini classics, you get Jan Bradley's Mama Didn't Lie, Ray Bryant's The Madison Time, The Five Du Tones' Shake A Tail Feather which The Romantics would cover, Foot Stompin (The Flares) is good time jive. Waters always had a deep love for Little Peggy March's I Wish I Were A Princess. Only Rachel Sweet is the newbie with the title track which fits the mood, despite dated drums and production. Toussaint Mccall's Nothing Takes The Place Of You is a odd choice to end this soundtrack, a very dark moody break up song. Waters would up the ante on Rachel Sweet on the half assed Cry Baby S/T, however, that album introduced me to the original Rubber Biscuit by The Chips and the mutant doo wop Bad Boy from the Jive Bombers. Hairspray is more to the point.
B+
The Essential Porter Wagoner (Real Gone 2014)
Country music in the 1950s and 60s were a whole different sound rather than the Florida Georgia Line/Dustin Lynch/Hunter Hayes/Old Dominion bullshit you hear on I Fart KHAK. Wagoner had put out a ton of music for RCA but never got a well deserved overview till Real Gone licensed the BMG/Sony import collection. Porter could do it all, bluegrass, gospel, honky tonk, whatever the case may be. Jasmine put together a collection of Porter's 50s output and called it the First Ten Years which ends with I Enjoyed As Much Of This Than I Can Stand. This collection gathers the best known songs and choice cuts. It's odd how the CDs start out with fun songs like Howdy Neighbor Howdy and Y'all Come and he's covered Uncle Pen a good five or six times. What Porter does best is really tackle the dark side of life, be it suicide (Cold Dark Waters), Depression (Your Old Love Letters, Sorrow On The Rocks), running into exes (I Enjoyed As Much As This...) mental health breakdown (The Rubber Room) down on their luck folks (Skid Row Joe) and revenge and murder of cheating spouses (Cold Hard Facts Of Life, Julie ) or jealous rage that leads to murder (The First Mrs Jones). Cold Dark Waters makes Love Will Tear Us Apart sound more upbeat. I do have other Porter Wagoner compilations that tell part of the story, the Essential Porter Wagoner the go to album tho Cold Dark Water and Rubber Room found themselves on a budget priced Pair best of. Real Gone issued this as a limited edition best of and it still remains the best overview of one of the more varied artists of the country music 60s era.
Grade A-
Playing The Black And Whites (Pickwick 1989)
Featuring Dick Cary, Cliff Jackson, Art Hodes, Nat Jaffe
I'm a sucker for old piano blues and jazz and this unloved comp was found for a quarter at the pawnshop in Waterloo and has been up there for many years it seems. All the selections came from the Black And White label, which was famous for blues and jazz and hillbilly music. T Bone Walker got his start there. These notable four had stellar music careers in the jazz field and Cliff Jackson and Art Hodes have the most rocking barrel house boogie and rag time. Jaffe's songs tend to stray into pop MOR territory with ho hum versions of These Foolish Things and If I Had You. The ADD recording is misleading, it's sounds like it was processed via the CEDAR method, which smooths out the scratches big time. Royal Garden Blues from Jackson pays tribute to James Johnson and Fats Waller. Even in 1989, these four were hardly known outside of the hard core jazz know it alls, and thirty years on, most are probably dead. For off the wall, piano pieces, it makes decent background music.
Grade B+
Andy Williams-Lonely Street (Cadence 1958)
A song cycle concept in the way of Frank Sinatra sings Only For The Lonely, this is mostly quiet afterhours music of love gone lost. This record kills off whatever rock moves that Andy ever made, not that he really did, he was always MOR lust pop music. He adds melancholy to Autumn Leaves, doesn't go overboard on Unchained Melody and turns Hank Williams I'm So Lonesome That I Could Cry from country to pop. But in terms of melancholy, Williams's finest hour is the title track. Joy Division wasn't the only band that could sing depressing and make you live it too.
Grade B
Dealer's Choice-Best Of The Blue Band (Hot Fudge 1988)
You'd never would have guessed that the former Bobby's Blue Band would be a Iowa legacy and icon on the music circuit. Bob Dorr and Jeff Petersen, the mainstays through their four decades of blues really were the band to see when they were in town. Even today Dorr and Petersen can be found at various blues jam in the state. But in the early years, The Blue Band connected themselves with Reggae and rock blues that was more Southside Johnny than Bruce (Madness On Main Street) and good time oldies that bordered on bawdy (Walk Right In) and down right fun (Cincinnati Fireball). You also get extended blues jams featuring Molly Nova and her amazing electric violin and distinctive vocals, to which her presence made The Blue Band the most varied and entertaining before she and Turk E Krause (who later joined the Blue Band after this comp was made) moved on. While the 90s brought forth more recognizable and well known stars (Billylee Janey and Bryce Janey, Dan Johnson, the before mentioned Krause) The 80s' version of The Blue Band captured perfect midwestern blues rock.
Grade B+
The Animals-K Tel Presents The Animals (BCI 2006)
The Animals were my fave band growing up. It started with Gonna Send You Back To Walker and then Inside Looking out. But out of all the British Invasion bands, The Animals flamed out and by the mid to late 60s Eric Burdon led them to hippie dippy land. Then Burdon retired the name and then the Original Animals got together for a 1977 album that was worthy and two 80s albums that were not and the live album was terrible. Burdon couldn't sing, neither could Alan Price, and the band imploded again. John Steel somehow kept the name and in the 1990s The Animals came with a ignored album of greatest hits and crappy new songs. No information of who played what but John Steel is probably the only original Animal on this. Or maybe Hilton Valentine. The Cover photo is the New Animals minus Eric.
Since K Tel (or better yet BCI) didn't give a shit, the new songs are basically tossed off tossers with not much thought to them, To Love Somebody is actually listenable had they edited the song by about two minutes. Stand Up I actually found myself singing the chorus, but Howlin is simply stupid and Night Fighter isn't much better. I heard better bar bands cover We Gotta Get Out Of This Place and *GAWD* the electric Casino drums suck. The highlights remain House Of The Rising Sun, San Francisco Nights and When I Was Young. They're also the three original recordings on this 1.98 comp.
Grade C-
