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From '50s NYC clubland, a Yma Sumac-inspired version of "Babalu" by jazz/calypso singer Phyllis Branch.The radio show
The show is Lost Frequencies. Every Monday night from 9pm to 11pm (CST) on Marfa Public Radio I explore the atmospheric side of post-War music: bop & vocals, soul/R&B heartbreak, exotica & soundtrack moods, Latin jazz, oddball instrumentals, honky-tonk ballads, early electronics - even some dreamy '60s psychedelic pop. Tune in at Marfa Public Radio or at KRTS 93.5fm.Categories
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Category Archives: Instrumentals/Surf
Primitiva
Some raw, wild instrumental combo rock ‘n’ roll from the late ‘50s this week. Contemporaries, these three selections embody the type of sound that would keep rock ‘n’ roll vital and interesting before the British Invasion. While there’s no highly … Continue reading
Party!
A point I like to make endlessly around here – and I’m far from the first to do so – is that rock ‘n’ roll didn’t cease to exist in the few years between its first explosion in the ‘50s … Continue reading
The Space Race
The Soviet Union’s successful launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite in October of ‘57 was just one of several early culminations in what had already been a long-simmering struggle for space between the Soviets and the United States. Sputnik was … Continue reading
The Middle East after hours, part two
In the first half of the 1960s, when this week’s selections were recorded, exotica hadn’t waned as a commercial or creative force. And the Arabic world was one peculiar, and significant, branch of the exotica tree. It was a … Continue reading
Midnight in the Naked City
The common tropes of Asphalt Jungle, Peter Gunn, D.O.A., The Maltese Falcon, This Gun for Hire, Johnny Staccato and dozens of other classic crime and detective serials and movies are well documented. Watching how certain motifs – the chase scenes, … Continue reading
Journey into Mellow
A shorter post this week, owing not to lack of enthusiasm but rather to the scarcity of specifics about the subjects, as well as to their somewhat unclassifiable nature. In the late ’60s there seemed to briefly prevail a commercial … Continue reading
Desert fauna
I’ve talked a lot about the ascendance of the guitar instrumental in the interstices of ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll and ‘60s rock, how the nascent rock ‘n’ roll was sustained by the instrumental form during those years, how bands like … Continue reading
Cool, man, cool
These selections are noteworthy not only for their curio factor, but also for their contributions to the same aesthetic that made Cozy Cole’s “Topsy” (hear excerpt here) and the Viscounts’ “Harlem Nocturne” popular. They seem to speak the same Lonelyville … Continue reading