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From '50s NYC clubland, a Yma Sumac-inspired version of "Babalu" by jazz/calypso singer Phyllis Branch.
Author Archives: Little Danny
Office Naps, the Sex Issue
Anyone who shares my perverse fascination with mass-produced pop culture would probably also tell you that the best place to understand the role of sexuality within a particular society is, in fact, its mass-produced pop culture. Recorded music’s diffuse and … Continue reading
A black & white affair
It’s not the psychedelized, socially conscious soul of Sly & the Family Stone or Cloud Nine-era Temptations I’m talking about. Nor is it the tripped-out voodoo of the first Funkadelic record (Funkadelic) either, though that’s getting a bit closer to … Continue reading
Watermelon Man
A young Herbie Hancock – all of twenty-two years old and fresh from Takin’ Off, his debut album on Blue Note Records – introduced his “Watermelon Man” (hear excerpt here) to the Cuban-born conguero and bandleader Mongo Santamaria one slow, … Continue reading
New Wave Covers of Mid-’60s Hits
(Ed. note: Jeff and I go back to our days of sweating alongside each other for funk records. Now he proudly maintains Houston’s tradition of damaged art punk and smoldering equipment with Black Snakes and Kangaroo and the Baroque Millionaires. … Continue reading
Tram? and the changes afoot
As sure as packing boxes are teetering dangerously and there’s a cat with a feline premonition of something big afoot, I move this week. It’s not the sort of move across town where I enlist a friend unlucky enough to … Continue reading
Girls
Rare was the girl group that played their own instruments in the mid-1960s. The prevailing attitude amongst both major and independent record labels seemed to be that the distaff could handle singing and frontwoman duties, and separate backing musicians (and … Continue reading
Spoken weird
As long as there have been phonograph records, there have been spoken word records (poet Robert Browning in 1888, for example). Speeches, inspirational lectures, sermons, poetry, plays, books, short stories, travelogues, oral histories, memoirs, random thoughts and confidences, comedy routines … Continue reading
Mod jazz
From the avant-garde to the mainstream, it’s easy to brood on the status of jazz in this lifetime, at least insofar as its public visibility and cultural vitality go. Jazz seems to hit low after historical low, and, likewise, it’s … Continue reading
