Office Naps | 45rpm curios

An offshoot of the Exotica Project, the Lonely Beat focuses on post-War music inspired by, or evocative of (sometimes only loosely) the cluster of motifs, images and clichés associated with the mid-century American city. This is a city based in some reality but remade by pop culture - the gritty, dangerous, bohemian Naked City.

L O N E L Y B E A T

Jazz Dramatique

Posted on 2013/05/21 by Little Danny

Over at the Lonely Beat I discussed the Naked City, the version of the modern American city in the post–War popular imagination. And how a singular form of American commercial music, in time referred to by collectors as “crime jazz,” would converge in the late 1950s as a sort of jazz shorthand for the all images, clichés and motifs of the city.

This week we dig a bit deeper into a particular subset of crime jazz.

Never mind that these selections’ tie-ins with actual crime thrillers is vague (“Jazz Dramatic”), if non-existent (“Lili’s Theme”). Recorded between the late ‘50s and the early ‘60s, and inspired by bestsellers like Henry Mancini’s Music from Peter Gunn, Warren Barker’s 77 Sunset Strip and Pete Rugolo’s Music From Richard Diamond, these have all the hallmarks of a golden era of crime soundtrack music.

But the three selections are more than just the sum of their jazz atmospherics, walking bass lines and bursts of brass, organ and strings. These share a peculiar theatricality with other jazz-based themes of the era – themes that, during opening credits, foretold ninety minutes of intrigue and high-stakes thrills. These selections embody the spirit of DRAMATIC ACTION. The sense of danger, justice and dark, moving forces is flamboyant, even hysterical. Sometimes it’s not enough for music just to be listened to. Sometimes it has to kick down the door and scream at you.

1. Paul Dunlap, Lili’s Theme from “The Rookie” (Capitol 4293)
Born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1919, Dunlap started out young in music, his aspirations eventually bringing him to the University of Southern California for advanced studies in music in 1940. Through a family connection his compositions caught the attention of the influential director Samuel Fuller – a propitious moment for Dunlap, as it led not only to a series of film scores written for Fuller (starting with 1950’s The Baron Of Arizona), but a professional career spent largely in Hollywood as a film and television composer, conductor, director and arranger.

Though he wrote scores until 1980 (his final contributions were for that year’s Gorp), Dunlap’s most prolific years were in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Dunlap composed for many genre and B-movies – science fiction and fantasy pictures, comedies (including several ‘60s-era Three Stooges movies), Westerns, detective thrillers and horror movies. Among this run were cult notables like 1957’s Blood of Dracula, 1958’s How to Make a Monster, 1959’s The Angry Red Planet, 1959’s The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake) and 1963’s Shock Corridor. And, along with Fuller, Dunlap’s associations with writer and producer Herman Cohen (beginning with 1957’s cult classic I Was a Teenage Werewolf) and director Harold D. Schuster (beginning with the 1953 Western Jack Slade) would also prove quite fruitful.

In his later years, Dunlap wrote opera and choral pieces, and expressed some ambivalence about a legacy so identified with the cinema. ¹ The composer passed away in 1990 in Palm Springs.

Dunlap was hardly a household name. Few composers were, aside from obviously marketable entities like Henry Mancini, Quincy Jones or Bernard Herrmann. He was a professional, though, and despite the constant pressure of limited resources and preparation time his use of stark moods, dissonance and jazz elements elevated the low-budget productions they scored. The innovative electronic effects of 1959’s Invisible Invaders and the beatsploitation jazz of 1959’s The Rebel Set come to mind here. As does this selection, also from 1959.

Full of gritty angst, the arrangement on “Lili’s Theme from ‘The Rookie’” is quite inspired, a dramatic swirl of strings, organ and electric guitar that evokes the crime jazz aesthetic while avoiding some of its more formulaic motifs. (European film music fans might also notice the distinct organ stabs that neatly anticipate later work by Italian soundtrack legend Piero Piccioni.) I haven’t seen The Rookie – an obscurity, even among comedy fans – but haven’t found any reason to doubt that this side transcends the movie.

Sources: Be sure to read Randall D. Larson’s great 1983 interview, where Dunlap discusses his process for composing film music extensively, among other subjects.

2. Det Moor Orch., “Jazz Dramatic” (Gallant GT-3004)
Credited to the Det Moor orchestra, this selection is the handiwork of composer, arranger and conductor Bob Mersey.

Born in 1917 in New York City, Mersey began his professional career in Los Angeles. An arranger and composer from the start, Mersey’s arrangements started appearing on releases by Abe Lyman and, most notably, Woody Herman’s Orchestras in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s.

Mersey joined NBC radio as a staff arranger after World War Two, a stint in Europe scoring film productions following that. Returning to the states in the ‘50s, he released some easy-listening singles in the late ‘50s under his own name as well as under nom de plume Spencer Ross (Ross’s “Tracy’s Theme” was a minor instrumental hit in 1959).

Mersey’s catalog ran deepest during the ‘60s. His string of contributions as staff arranger, composer, conductor and producer at CBS television, Columbia Records and Columbia’s Colpix Records division included work on Andy Williams’ “Moon River” and Barbra Streisand’s “My Name is Barbra,” not to mention recordings by Aretha Franklin, Johnny Mathis, James Darren and Nina Simone, among others.

Mersey’s Columbia and Colpix recordings tend to overshadow the rest of a not-inconsiderable body of work, though, including credits on a number of different labels (arranging for Dion, Johnny Nash, Frankie Avalon, among others).

This body of work most definitely includes Mersey’s album Great Jazz From Great TV and its crucial track “Jazz Dramatic.” Released in 1962, the album is among both Mersey’s most obscure releases and his finest efforts. Comprised entirely of original Mersey compositions, Great Jazz From Great TV has all the right stylistic archetypes – cool club sequences, chase dramas, lonesome midnight nocturnes, etc., and all the right titles – “Club Cool,” “Flutesville,” “Forever Frantic,” “Call Girl,” etc. The Det Moor orchestra themselves were an uncredited group of, according to the album’s liner notes, European studio musicians, but the entire album sounds every inch a hip ‘50s Los Angeles studio jazz orchestra. It’s a pitch-perfect suite of crime jazz regardless.

The session itself was recorded a year or two prior for Sam Fox Music, a long-running clearinghouse for studio production music, and saw its eventual commercial album release on Gallant Records, a short-lived record label operated by Sam Fox, his son Fred Fox and New York City music industry insider Hal Dennis. Its tracks would be heard individually as incidental music and cues in an array of shows throughout the 1960s, including Route 66, Ben Casey, Manhunt, My Three Sons and, later, the Doris Day Show, Gumby and Spider-Man.

3. Alvino Rey and His Orchestra, “The Bat” (Capitol F 4239)
“King of the Guitar” Alvino Rey was a bandleader and pioneering electric guitarist with a long career that extended beyond his swing-era heyday.

The specifics of Rey’s biography are better documented elsewhere (check these overviews for a start: Marc Myers’s Jazzwax and Smithsonian Magazine), but, briefly, Rey (born Alvin McBurney in 1908) started on banjo while growing up in Cleveland; barely out of his teens and playing professionally, Rey adopted the electrified steel guitar, then largely seeing use in Hawaiian music. He followed several years in the late ‘20s as journeyman guitarist with a long spell of national exposure in Horace Heidt’s Musical Knights, where he helped pioneer the lap steel in swing music. Rey formed his own group, the Alvino Rey Orchestra in the late ‘30s. The group, which included not only the Four King Sisters – themselves formerly of Heidt’s group (Rey was married to one of the sisters, Luise King) – but also young jazz modernists like Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, and fledgling arrangers like Neal Hefti, Ray Conniff and Billy May, established themselves as a big attraction in Los Angeles, scoring hits in the early ‘40s like “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” “On the Alamo” and “Music ‘Til Dawn.” Rey formed a new orchestra in 1946 after returning from World War Two service in the Navy, and would enjoy more success – “Cement Mixer,” “In An Eighteenth Century Drawing Room” and “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover” were hits – for a time with this much larger group. The guitarist had a recurring role, and national exposure, again between 1965 and 1968, alongside the King Sisters on The King Family Show. Alvino Rey led small groups after that, including a long spell at Disneyland, and eventually settled in Salt Lake City, where he died at age 95 in 2004.

While a household name at mid-century, Rey deserves to be better known these days, if for nothing else than for his early embrace of electronic technology. Perhaps it was that he never had the fortune of having an iconic guitar named after him like fellow bandleader, guitarist and inventor Les Paul, or that his earliest guitar showcases didn’t always transcend electronic novelty. But Rey was one of the earliest to push the boundaries of the electric guitar and electronics in the swing era, making his instrument sing and “speak.” Not to mention the equipment he hand-built and hand-wired from an early age, or his development of the pedal steel guitar and the proto-vocoder electric “talk box.”

It didn’t help that for a time after World War Two Rey tied his fortunes to large jazz orchestras, whose prospects for success in the post-War years were diminishing rapidly. Either way, Rey’s career was shifting from leading groups to lucrative behind-the-scenes session work during the ‘50s, and, to my ears, it’s this part of his discography that holds up the best. Represented to a certain extent on Rey studio albums like Ping Pong and My Reverie, it’s his prominent guitar work on a series of bandleader Juan Esquivel’s late ‘50s and early ‘60s records for RCA and Reprise that are most exemplary. Rey’s splashy playing – various swoops, runs, screeches, squiggles, futuristic accents – were a captivating and instantly defining feature of the swank stereophonic sound of Esquivel’s orchestra, their recordings channelling mid-century America’s manic, Googie-esque sensibilities with a matching confidence.

“The Bat,” recorded and released during Rey’s golden period, reflected something of the same space-age production aesthetic, though, as the eponymous theme to the 1959 Vincent Price movie, it forewent cocktail perkiness for something much grittier. Rey owns the side, his ascending slides adding an unusual and otherworldly quality to textbook crime jazz bombast.

“I can only hope that I will be remembered for my piano concerto, or my choral piece, Celebration, and not the inferior movies I was forced to be associated with.” imdb.com ↩

The lonesome drifter’s tale

Posted on 2013/03/19 by Little Danny

Three mournful country melodramas this week. All released between 1957 and 1960, these make for a fun, highly atmospheric bunch.

These selections are somewhat tricky to place in the continuum of post-War commercial records. They share some of the darkness of the archaic dirges and haunted story songs of American folk music, certainly, and more perhaps directly, the windswept melancholy of Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Ramblin’ Man,” Red Foley’s moody “Midnight” and Lefty Frizzell’s haunting “Long Black Veil.” They also generously invoke some of our more sombre pop Western motifs. Johnny Cash tracks like “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” or the “The Caretaker” come to mind here, not to mention dozens of versions of “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky,” “High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me)” and “Streets of Laredo.”

Drifters and haunted country melodramas this week on Office Naps.

But ultimately these three recordings came into existence not only wholly independently of each other, but also without clear commercial precedent, or so it seems. Straddling a fine line between country, folk and blues lament, they’re paced at a funereal crawl, their intimate, cinematic moods summoned with the miracle of post-War recording technology and magnetic tape. There is a certain theatricality in a lot of good country music, but these selections, with their visually evocative productions, their narratives of loneliness and gloom, their protagonists cut adrift, they’re existential tours de force.

1. Curly Sanders and the Santones, Walking Blues (Concept 45-Con-92)
Born in 1935 outside of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Ray “Curly” Sanders was a singer and songwriter who found some success in the ‘60s and ‘70s, gamely changing with the times without ever quite having a breakout single.

Sanders, still in his teens, enjoyed a run of disc jockey stints in the ‘50s and, as early as 1954, was making singing appearances at local showcases like the Renfro Valley Barn Dance and the Lincoln Jamboree.

A young Ray "Curly" Sanders. Image courtesy of the great Hillbilly Music

Sanders’s recorded output commenced in late 1956 with “Brand New Rock and Roll.” ¹ Other 45s would be pressed locally around this time, too, including “Walking Blues,” but “Brand New Rock and Roll” is easily Sanders’s most prized side, showing Sanders adapting to the new rock ‘n’ roll form with the sort of raw enthusiasm that appeals to deep-pocketed rockabilly 45 collectors.

Following a year spent in El Paso, Texas, Sanders made his Grand Ole Opry debut in 1959. The contract with prominent West Coast indie label Liberty Records that followed would inaugurate a long schedule of country music recorded for a variety of labels, big and small.

Sanders, who worked henceforth as Ray Sanders, followed the dream throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, gigging tirelessly and finding some success with Liberty Records in 1960 (“A World So Full of Love” and “Lonelyville,” both top twenty country hits), and, later, with Imperial Records (“Beer Drinkin’ Music,” 1969) and on United Artists (with a version of “All I Ever Need is You,” 1971). Sanders won Top New Male Vocalist at the Academy of Country Music in 1968, and made television appearances on Hee Haw in the early ‘70s. (Hee Haw, for all of its cornpone humor, did help a lot of country musicians land national exposure.) He played with Ray Price for a time as well, but by the late ’70s Sanders was working the California club circuit, semi-retirement to Hawaii following that.

All of his singles and albums as Ray Sanders, along with his songs covered by other country artists, are good; it’s just that they’re somewhat straightahead Nashville product at the end of the day. At least personally speaking, it’s Sanders’s idiosyncratic clutch of late ‘50s 45s on local record labels which invite the most interest. Among these are the aforementioned “Brand New Rock and Roll,” of course, along with “You’re Smiling (I’m Crying),” an echo-drenched ballad. And this selection, written by fellow singer Dell Shirley. “Walking Blues” sounds like nothing else in Sanders’s discography and, as with the other selections, it is unabashedly and very successfully theatrical, a colorful piece of forlorn somnambulation.

Sources: Rockin’ Country Style, Praguefrank’s Country Music Discographies, Starday Custom Series, Hillbilly Music

2. Harry Charles, Petoskey Town (Wildcat WOO35A)
This week’s mystery disc.

This 45 was released in 1960. Harry Charles is very likely the same Harry Charles responsible for two other isolated teen pop 45s from the ’60s: “My Laura” b/w “Challenge of Love” (released on New York City-based Rowax, 1963) and “I’ll Be There” b/w “I Want the Best for You” (released on the Oklahoma City-based Boyd Records, mid-‘60s).

The mysterious singer Harry Charles in 1963, then a Nashville resident. Photo courtesy of Billboard magazine.

But nothing actually leads me to believe that Harry Charles was in fact based in central Texas at the time, despite his 45′s release on Wildcat Records (a cool San Antonio-based indie with a short, sweet run of R&B, Tejano, pop, country, rock ‘n’ roll and vocal group sides in the late ’50s and early ’60s).

A contemporary account from the Petoskey News in 1960 refers to Charles performing at the local high school dance. Though again it’s not clear whether he was visiting the titular northern coastal Michigan town as a stunt to promote this 45, or whether he was actually from the area, and was singing from some experience. And another reference puts him in Nashville in 1963.

Harry Charles’s obscure trajectory aside, what a record. Miles, stylistically, from the commercial pop of his other 45s, “Petoskey Town” paints a striking tableau, its well-placed cymbal rolls and Charles’s mournful vocals conjuring the frozen north country with grim effectiveness.

Sources: Petoskey News, Billboard Magazine.

3. Eddie Miller and His Band, Ghost Town (4 Star 1740×45)
Eddie Miller was born in 1919 in Camargo, Oklahoma, and while recalled primarily as a songwriter, he got his start as a musician, playing with and, beginning in the late ‘30s, leading his own Western Swing groups.

Like many from a post-Dust-Bowl Great Plains, he was drawn westward around World War Two, and spent a good deal of his subsequent career in Southern California. As an aspiring songwriter, Miller – with a reformed version of the Oklahomans – would release “Release Me” (a song co-penned with guitarist Bobby Gene Yount) in 1949, one of a number of 45s and 78s he recorded for 4 Star Records, a prolific Los Angeles-based country label.

“Release Me” tanked at the time but would become a titanic country and pop hit for several different performers. (Ray Price’s and Kitty Wells’s 1954 versions and Englebert Humperdinck’s 1966 version are especially well-known.) And while Miller’s own recordings tapered off, his songwriting success continued apace, with top ten hits for Carl Smith (“There She Goes,” 1955), Eddy Arnold (“After Loving You,” 1962) and Ernest Tubb (“Thanks a Lot,” 1963).

Eddie Miller was a somewhat inconsistent songwriter – there are a lot of dashed-off novelties in his voluminous catalog – and, as far as performing went, a limited singer. But “Ghost Town,” among his last releases as a solo artist, is an entirely convincing performance. ² Miller fully commits to his spurned, world-weary drifter character. “Ghost Town” enjoys a slightly fuller production than the other two, but there’s that haunted, walking rhythm again, the song’s ghostly steel guitar accents and its mood of empty streets and lament making for an arrestingly visual tone poem.

While Miller’s returns from his published songs remained considerable into the late ’60s and ’70s, he decreased his output, shifting his energies into country music advocacy, helping to co-found both the Country and Western Music Academy in Hollywood (now the Academy of Country Music) and the Nashville Songwriters Association.

Incidentally, Eddie Miller cast Ray Sanders in his mid-’60s “country opera” The Legend of Johnny Brown, which was released as an album in 1966.

Eddie Miller died in 1977.

Sources: Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Wired for Sound, Steel Guitar Forum

78 recordings attributed to a Curley Sanders, likely a Texan, appeared in 1949 on Dallas’s Star Talent label, and in 1953 on Los Angeles’s Imperial Records. I believe these are unrelated to the Curly Sanders in question. ↩
There has been some speculation at the Steel Guitar Forum about whether this was the “Release Me” Eddie Miller or whether it was, in fact, Eddie Miller, singer from the Texas-based Western Swing band the Miller Brothers, who also recorded for 4-Star Records. I do believe “Ghost Town” was the handiwork of the “Release Me” Miller, however. ↩

Posted in Country | 6 Comments

The Guild Light Gauge

Posted on 2013/02/18 by Little Danny

It was my pleasure to recently speak with Fern Nash, the singer in both the Guild Light Gauge and Collection, whose 45s I featured back in May 2011.

This was something of a coup – there was so little that existed in the way of details about these 45s. I was additionally surprised to learn that the two 45s were in fact directly connected through Fern and members of the Guild Light Gauge. (I had originally written about the Collection and the Guild Light Gauge as entirely separate entities, connected only by a shared label and arrangement/production team.)

I’m thrilled to at last be able to provide some more details about the Guild Light Gauge, the Collection and Fern Nash.

Born Fern Kaufman in 1947, Fern grew up with two sisters in Queens, New York, her father a jeweler by trade, her mother a housewife. While her father occasionally sang, Fern was, of her family, the one most inclined to music – she displayed an ear for playing music early on, picking out tunes overheard from her older sister’s piano lessons. She also wrote lyrics, and loved harmony singing, teaching herself how to play guitar and flute along the way.

Fern entered Queens College in 1965, studying to be a teacher. There she met fellow Queens College student Eddie Simon (Paul’s brother – they vocally sounded quite similar, apparently). The two started harmonizing together during impromptu singing sessions at fraternity house events. It was Eddie who introduced Fern to Ann Willcocks, then also a student, and from this trio of singers the Guild Light Gauge formed.

The Guild Light Gauge, from a series of publicity photos. Fern Kaufman (Fern Nash), Eddie Simon, Ann Willcocks. Bass player Stuie is in glasses. Note incorrect spelling of "Gauge."

Paul Simon and Artie (as he was known) Garfunkel were both around Queens College as well, and it was Paul who dubbed this new group the Guild Light Gauge, a name based on a particular weight of Guild guitar strings.

The Guild Light Gauge live at the Bitter End, Greenwich Village. (l-r) Fern Kaufman (Fern Nash), Eddie Simon, Ann Willcocks.

A fourth member, Stuie, joined them a bit later, playing bass for the group.

The Guild Light Gauge, whose focus from the start was on harmonies, were absorbed into the New York City folk scene. Their time together would include not only a residency at Greenwich Village’s Bitter End in 1968, but a variety of more unlikely appearances, from Long Island racetracks to a spot opening for Spanky & Our Gang in West Virginia. In these years, Nash cited everything from the Everly Brothers to the Critters (“Mr. Dyingly Sad”) to Laura Nyro and the Beatles as favorites, but singled out the lyrics and music of Joni Mitchell as an influence.

The Guild Light Gauge, Cloudy
Both the Guild Light Gauge 45 (“Cloudy” b/w “14th Annual Fun & Pleasure Fair”) and Collection 45 (“Both Sides Now” b/w “Tomorrow is a Window”) were recorded while Fern was still in college.

The Collection, Both Sides Now

The Collection 45 was recorded at a different session than the Guild Light Gauge, and again featured the vocals of members of the Guild Light Gauge – that’s Fern heard as soloist on “Both Sides Now” – though without Willcocks’s participation. Both Jimmy Wisner and Artie Kornfeld were also on hand during these sessions.

While steeped in gorgeous, period-specific production and studio accoutrement, these vinyl releases did not necessarily reflect the largely acoustic format of the Guild Light Gauge, according to Fern.

Fern graduated from college in 1969 – in time to make it to Woodstock later that summer – and moved to Boston, there joining a group of folk singers named AHS. Recently married, and with her license to teach, Fern would relocate back to New York City in 1972, where in coming years she worked a variety of gigs, sessions and engagements on the periphery of the music world, including singing jazz (with the Bones of Contention – thirteen trombones!), writing jingles for Hudson’s, acting in commercials and joining a local musical theatre group. In 1986, Fern began teaching music at Public School 139 (in Rego Park, Queens), and led her elementary school students in the Public School 139 Glee Club (who were featured singing at televised sporting events at Madison Square Garden and Shea Stadium).

Fern Nash, retired since 2010 from P.S. 139, and living in Bayside, Queens, has a full-grown daughter and son-in-law (both music major graduates), and a two-year-old grandson who enjoys the music he’s surrounded by. Fern’s long-time love for singing and arranging continues to this day – she owns, and still plays, the piano she learned on as a child.

Note: Fern remained close friends with Ann Willcocks after the Guild Light Gauge dissolved. Willcocks, who worked at Sony Music for many years (eventually rising to a Vice President position), is now retired and living in Atlanta, Georgia, and, according to Fern, still sings in her church’s choir.

Finally, there’s great YouTube footage of Paul playing “Anji,” with Eddie joining him on guitar (and Fern Nash making an appearance around 1:40).

Posted in Psychedelic/Pop, Updates | 2 Comments

Bright Lights

Posted on 2013/01/15 by Little Danny

Like AM Radio Dust, its companion volume, Bright Lights is just as much an exploration of lost spaces and places as it is of sound.

I hope you enjoy it.

Bright Lights
(single MP3 file)

Susan Rafey, “The Big Hurt”
Jerry Lee Trio, “Banshee”
Rick Durham and the Dynamics, “Southern Love”
Stan with the Marauders, “Echo Valley”
Maggie Ingram with the Ingramettes, “Melody of Love”
Zena Ayo, “Long Long Gone”
Mike Baltch Quartet, “Delilah”
Cheryl Thompson, “Black Night”
The Checker Dots, “Alpha Omega”
Fantastic Dee-Jays, “This Love of Ours”
The What Four, “Gemini 4″
Carole King, “A Road to Nowhere”
The Bittersweets, “Hurtin’ Kind”
Charles Wright and the Malibus, “Runky”
The Missing Links, “I Cried Goodbye”
J. Gale and the Games, “A Million Nothings”
The Benjamin Specials Gospel Singers, “I Am on the Right Road Now”
Link Wray, “Girl from the North Country”
Shirley Mc Donald accompanied by The Kay Nines K-9′s, “You”
The Santells, “These Are Love”
Houston and Dorsey, “Ebb Tide”
Dub Benson, “Shaping Up Today”
Henry Kaalekahi, “Hookipa Paka – Maunawili”
Johnny Love, “Rain Drops”
George Johnson, “Capricorn”
Fay Simmons, “Bells”
Cee Cee Carol, “The Right Guy”
Lou Smith, “I’ll Be the One”

Posted in Blues, Country, Exotica/Space-Age, Garage Bands, Girl-Groups, Gospel, Instrumentals/Surf, Jazz Obscura, Mixes, Now Sound, R&B/Vocal Groups, Rock 'n' roll, Soul | 8 Comments

Raqs ‘n’ Roll

Posted on 2012/12/31 by Little Danny

The records that capitalized on post-War America’s tastes for Middle Eastern music encompass an absolutely fascinating continuum.

At one end there were the country-by-country ethnic field recordings released by Folkways, Lyrichord, Monitor and other specialist labels, academic packages for armchair anthropologists. At the other extreme was the unreconstructed orchestral exotica of albums like Ron Goodwin’s Music for an Arabian Night, Bob Romeo’s Aphrodisia and Sonny Lester’s How to Belly Dance for Your Husband and a proliferation of novelty “Oriental” rock ‘n’ roll singles like Bill Haley’s “Oriental Rock,” Johnny & the Hurricanes’ “Sheba” and Ralph Marterie’s “Shish Kebab.”

And somewhere between ethnography and exotica lay a substantial subset of secular Arabic music that was very successfully marketed to American audiences. The music originated amongst a set of musicians, generally first- or second-generation immigrants, who played a loose circuit of restaurants, theaters, hotels, night clubs and social functions in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. Though nominally authentic, theirs was a music that was modern enough to appeal to American consumers with a casual interest in Middle Eastern music and rhythms. The albums these groups made, found easily in local record stores, and typically sleeved in colorful covers featuring belly-dancers in kitschy “Casbah” interiors, sold very well, with bigger names like Fred Elias, Gus Vali, Artie Barsamian, Eddie Kochak, Eddie Mekjian, Naif Agby, Mohammed El-Bakkar, George Abdo releasing dozens upon dozens of recordings in their time. The music itself tended to reflect these groups’ diverse repertoire of Armenian, Lebanese, Syrian, Turkish, Greek, Egyptian and Jewish folk songs, ballads and dances.

But there were also the occasional recordings that were a bit stranger, and a bit more difficult to classify. Generally these attempted to mix Arabic and Western forms, taking shape as either curious rock ‘n’ roll hybrids or exotica larks incorporating Latin dance rhythms or elements of American jazz or pop.

Sometimes these experiments worked beautifully, becoming something more than the sum of their parts. Sometimes they just came out strange. Nearly always they were interesting.

This week we look at three of the best.

1. Eddie Kochak & Hakki Obadia, Jazz in Port Said (Bossa Nova Araby) (Georgette 403)
Released in 1962, the spellbinding “Jazz in Port Said” was one of the earliest recorded products of a long-lasting collaboration between percussionist Eddie “The Sheik” Kochak and violinist Hakki Obadia.

Kochak was born Eddie Soubhi Ibn Farjallah Kochakji to Syrian parents in Brooklyn, New York. Drawn to drumming as a child, Kochak would come to be a specialist in the derbeki drum. Hakki Obadia is an Iraqi-born Jew and classically trained multi-instrumentalist who first established a name for himself in the Middle East with concert and radio appearances as a child prodigy violinist.

The two musicians first met in the mid-‘50s. Kochak was then performing and leading groups in various New York and New Jersey-area venues. Obadia was playing around New York City area, where he’d recently settled after pursuing music studies at Berkeley.

First as performers, and later in the recording studio, they would create and promote their “Amerabic” sound – the melodies and rhythms of various Middle Eastern Arab standards and folk songs updated for American audiences.

Their “Jazz in Port Said” was one of the earliest of these recorded collaborations. It was, in terms of its Western jazz sensibilities and moody, propulsive arrangement, also among their most adventurous early recordings. ¹

“Jazz in Port Said” also saw inclusion on their Ameraba: Music with the New Amer-Abic Sound. The album would be among the first in a series of very popular LPs by Obadia and Kochak, along with their frequent partner, the violinist and oud player Fred Elias. Many of these albums were recycled and repackaged throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s with successive waves of interest in belly-dancing, their Strictly Belly Dancing series proving especially popular.

Kochak and Obadia continued to release their “Amerarabic” music over the years. Kochak himself remained one of the bigger names in post-War Arab-American entertainment, and something of a fixture in New York show business. Obadia, who published his Oud Method book in 1969, worked as a music teacher in the public schools of Long Island, and continued to perform and record.

Sources: Katherine Benson & Philip Kayal’s Community of Many Worlds: Arab Americans in New York City, http://www.eddiekochak.net, Phyllis Saretta’s Eddie “The Sheik” Kochak.

2. The Sheiks, Ya-Habibi (Sultan S-1001)
“Ya-Habibi” ² was at least partly the handiwork of New York City-based Frank Cari and his songwriting partner Anna Vito. ³

As a freelance writing team, Cari and Vito penned a number of songs in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, largely for the doo-wop and teen pop markets. Their biggest hit, “High on a Hill,” performed by Brooklyn singer Scott English in 1963, was typical of the New York City pop sound that the British Invasion would soon obviate.

In this time Cari also operated both his Turban Music publishing concern and his Frank Cari Productions, which was responsible for a number of pop-oriented 45 releases. And finally there was Sultan Records, which Cari founded in the late ‘50s. Among the 45s released during the label’s brief few years were the Inspirations’ “The Genie,” the Accents’ “Rags to Riches,” and, more interestingly, the Aztecs’ Duane-Eddy-inspired “Aztec Rock” and the Social Outcasts’ “Mad,” a strange instrumental with a wisp of the Middle Eastern aesthetic. (Note the recurring Middle Eastern motifs here.)

But nothing in the Sultan catalog quite matches the electric, booming “Ya-Habibi,” which was among the label’s very first releases, and which is nearly psychedelic in its instrumentation and echo-chamber aesthetic. Its flipside, the slightly-less-unhinged-but-also-great “Sultan’s Delight,” was penned by Jack Ghanaim, a musician whose kanoon playing is heard on jazz bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s groundbreaking 1958 debut Jazz Sahara. Likely released in 1959, its players and backstory remain otherwise maddeningly mysterious, though it seems very likely that it’s Ghanaim heard on the oud on both sides of this 45. ⁴ Clearly there was more in the way of “authentic” musicianship here than the average Middle Eastern rock ‘n’ roll novelty, either way.

3. Ganimian & His Orientals, Come With Me to the Casbah (Atco 45-6142)
Oud player Charles “Chick” Ganimian was born in 1926 in upstate New York. Like many of the figures of in post-War Arab-American music, Ganimian grew up in this country; his father, an Armenian immigrant who’d arrived from Turkey, also played oud, and from an early age the younger Ganimian seems to have been fascinated with the music of his heritage.

In the mid-‘30s, the Ganimian family moved to New York City. In the late ‘40s Chick first formed the Nor-Ikes Orchestra, a group largely comprised of Armenian musicians, one of the first to consciously revive the music for mixed audiences, playing various social engagements for the broader Arab-American community.

Well regarded early on as an oud player, Ganimian did not record as prolifically as some of his peers. He was nothing if not bold about exploring different forms, however. A modest (and surprising) pop hit in 1958, his “Daddy Lolo (Oriental Rock ‘n’ Roll”) b/w “Halvah,” was crossover rock ‘n’ roll at its weirdest.

Which brings me to “Come With Me to the Casbah.” Released in 1958, its spoken word bits are straight Orientalist hokum but its fine solos and terrific arrangement still make for a fun experience. The selection would see release on a full-length album, also entitled Come With Me to the Casbah, that was released the same year on Atco Records, sister label to R&B giant Atlantic Records.

That album, recorded over the course of several sessions in 1957 and 1958, is an unusual and fascinating artifact, a mix of a slightly updated dances from the Arabic world, East-West rock ‘n’ roll novelties and fairly faithful readings of American standards performed on regional instruments.

The 1958 session that produced “Come With Me to the Casbah” featured an interesting roster. Not only did Ganimian’s longtime compadres in the Nor-Ikes – Steve Bogoshian (clarinet), Ed Malasian (or Malkasian, percussion), Aram Davidan (dumbek) and Souren “Sudan” Baronian (tenor sax) – participate in the session, but they were joined by Anglo jazz musicians Al Schackman (guitar), Peter Ind (bass), Dick Palazzolo (drums) and Peter Franco (drums).

Ganimian’s overlap with the jazz world is worth noting here. Obsessives might have noticed the Lennie Tristano connections; Peter Ind in particular had a long-running, crucial association with the influential jazz pianist Lennie Tristano, whose “school” was very influential in post-War bebop and cool jazz. Interestingly, both Bogoshian and Baronian had played with Tristano, too, though Bogoshian’s association, which is only alluded to in the liner notes of the Come With Me to the Casbah LP, is unconfirmed by other sources.

Ganimian would continue performing in the ‘60s and ‘70s, making regular appearances and enjoying residencies in New Jersey and New York. His few recorded appearance from included a live date from 1978 (released later), as well as an independently-released 1975 LP with the Nor-Ikes. He would also occasionally appear on other jazz dates; he’s heard in the mid-‘60s on flautist Herbie Mann’s Wailing Dervishes and sublime Impressions of the Middle East albums, and on David Amram’s 1972 Subway Night. Perhaps only fellow oud player John Berberian would enjoy as much overlap with the jazz world in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Charles “Chick” Ganimian passed away in 1989.

Both musicians can be heard blending Eastern and Western forms prior to “Jazz in Port Said.” Kochak’s obscure solo 78 sides from the ‘50s saw him experimenting with bebop and Latin music on tracks like “Ha Bee Bee Blues” and “Mambo Arabia.” And Obadia’s “Cha Cha Baba” – heard on his 10 Nights in a Harem LP from 1960 – is excellent Latin exotica. ↩
Arabic term of endearment – loosely “my love,” or “my dear old friend.” ↩
Cari and Vito are shortenings of, respectively, “Cariola” and “Mangravito.” ↩
Ghanaim also played with Eddie Kochak in the ‘60s. ↩

Posted in Exotica/Space-Age | 1 Comment

Jeri Simpson

Posted on 2012/12/10 by Little Danny

I first posted Jeri Simpson’s “In My Black Lace” back in 2006. It has been one of the great mysteries around here, a marvelous, truly one-of-a-kind recording whose story I’d long given up hopes of ever learning. But I’m happy at last to have some more conclusive details on Jeri Simpson. Many, many thanks to her niece Susan and nephew James, who contacted me recently.

Jeri Simpson, circa early '60s. Jeri is seated second from the left. Her sister Doris is seated third from the right. Her brother Bill Simpson, one of the authors behind "Black Lace," is seated with his wife across from Jeri. Photo courtesy of Susan

Born Louise Geraldine Simpson in the 1920s, Jeri Simpson came up in a musical family in the Chicago area. It was, more to the point, a large family – Jeri, as she was better known amongst her family, was the youngest of ten children. Music was a strong presence in the Simpsons’ lives, with the five girls of the family forming a singing group growing up. (Susan’s mother Laura sang and played piano for the family.)

Two of the brothers – Jack and Bill, the authors behind “In My Black Lace” – were also drawn to singing and writing songs early on. Incidentally, another sister, Doris, later achieved some fame as screen siren Doris Merrick.

Jeri Simpson, In My Black Lace

Jeri had been in California for some time already – since the late ‘30s – when she recorded “In My Black Lace” in 1957. The session occurred in Los Angeles when Jeri was in her mid-thirties, and somewhere around the time of her marriage to Jay Ranellucci. Ranellucci worked deep in the music industry as a recording engineer and mixer for a decades-long stretch at Capitol Records between 1957 and 2007. (Ranellucci’s resume included not only the jazz-pop of Peggy Lee and Nancy Wilson, but also crucial early rock ‘n’ roll by Gene Vincent, country by Hank Thompson and Merle Haggard, FM radio rock by Steve Miller and the Band, and psychedelic jazz excursions by David Axelrod and the Fourth Way – among many others.)

Jeri Simpson in California, circa 1948 or 1950. Photo courtesy of Susan.

It seems likely, given Jay Ranellucci’s connections to the music industry and, in particular, to Los Angeles-based jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, that he also played some role in engineering the “In My Black Lace” session. Either way, it is a captivating recording to this day, an expertly produced exercise in moody jazz, Jeri borrowing a bit of Julie-London-style sensuality while imbuing it with her own wholly unique “exotic” flavor.

Jeri had, according to family members, a “sultry,” “sexy” aspect. No surprise, given the evocative atmosphere of “In My Black Lace.” But she was also a housewife and mother (one daughter) who raised dobermans and rottweilers as a hobby, and alas this 45 seems to have been her only commerical recording, at least to anyone’s knowledge.

Given the quality of both “In My Black Lace” – which seems clearly to have been written for Jeri – and its flipside “Sugar” and Simpson’s obvious vocal talents, it’s too bad. But as her niece Susan noted, “[she] wanted to be a singer but never pursued her dream.”

Jeri Simpson passed away in 2012.

Posted in Exotica/Space-Age, Jazz Obscura, Updates | 5 Comments

Nature Boy

Posted on 2012/11/19 by Little Danny

I can think of at least a few reasons for the continued appeal of the song “Nature Boy.”

There’s its philosophical, pseudo-mystical message for one. It was heady, if not radical, stuff for 1948, at least as far as pop songs went, and furthermore its gentle sentiment and lyrics, unlike many “message” songs, have weathered with enviable resilience over the years.

It helps that melodically it’s also a difficult song to get wrong. There’s a robustness to its structure, one that has engendered a particularly attractively set of moody, exotic arrangements amongst its many adaptations.

The original 1948 sheet music for "Nature Boy," with an image of Eden Ahbez. Image courtesy of Online Collections (The Strong) / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

There’s also the not-insignificant appeal of Eden Ahbez, the Wanderer himself and the songwriter behind “Nature Boy.” I covered Eden Ahbez here, this fascinating, quintessentially American character who also embodied, self-conciously, but still sort of admirably, “Nature Boy.” “Nature Boy,” the song, is Eden Ahbez – a combination of autobiography and self-mythology.

I’m not alone in my fascination with the song. Since its million-selling treatment by Nat “King” Cole in 1948, it’s become a pop and jazz standard. And it’s also inspired a decades-long, wildly varied body of readings across many styles. This week’s three versions are but a few of my favorites.

1. Clete Grayson and the Thurston Trio, Nature Girl (Nature Boy) (Pacific PA-1007-A 45-111)

Released in 1961 on what was almost certainly a Los Angeles-based label, there’s surprisingly little else to be learned of either Clete Grayson, the Thurston Trio or Pacific Records (which was unrelated to the more widely known Pacific Jazz / World Pacific Records).

Either way, Clete Grayson was certainly a capable vocalist, and he sings here with winning gusto. His lyrical gender transposition is a unique twist, and the professional production isn’t too shabby, either, with an emphatically rockin’ beat and an ondioline making a rare solo appearance during the instrumental break.

With any style of mainstream, mass-produced culture, no matter how commercial, there are bound to be a few nonconformists, oddballs that slip through the cracks in the guise, in this case, of conventional pop music. One of thousands of teen pop and rock ‘n’ roll records being cranked out in the early ‘60s, “Nature Girl (Nature Boy)” might not have succeeded commercially – it’s just too strange – but it is unequivocally great.

(I owe my copy of this gem to Jack at the great Out of the Bubbling Dusk. Thanks Jack.)

2. Richard Barbary: Soul Machine, Nature Boy (A & M 953)

Richard Barbary is a puzzling case in the world of ‘60s R&B, a talented unknown who seems, after just one excellent, lavishly-produced album on a major label, to have just as quickly disappeared.

A singer with a smooth, world-weary baritone, Barbary had, at the time of this record, just one release under his belt – 1967’s “Get Right” b/w “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” the debut 45 for future soul powerhouse Spring Records.

But Barbary is better heard on his first LP, Richard Barbary: Soul Machine, which was rolled out with all the trimmings – sumptuous production, a cadre of cream-of-the-crop session players, deluxe gatefold album cover – by A&M Records in 1968.

Richard Barbary: Soul Machine, the album.

Produced by Creed Taylor, arranged by studio veterans Artie Butler, Horace Ott and Jimmy Wisner and recorded by legendary jazz engineer Rudy Van Gelder, it’s an East Coast recording but, with its up-to-the-minute production qualities, a West Coast sounding record. It seems to have been conceived somewhat in the style of a Lou Rawls, Willie Tee or Jerry Butler – smooth-voiced, sophisticated R&B singers with appeal to both pop and jazz markets.

“Nature Boy,” which is featured on Richard Barbary: Soul Machine, is one of the album’s highlights, both Barbary’s mellow reading and a subtle, Horace-Silver-influenced Afro-Latin jazz feel asserting the song’s inherent wistfulness.

A&M Records invested no small amount of stock in Barbary, perhaps cultivating him as their Lou Rawls. But his debut would, sadly, and for reasons unknown, turn out to be his only album. Furthermore, it seems to have been his last recording, period. I would love to know more of the story.

3. Etta Jones, Nature Boy (Prestige 45-237 A)

Like other stylists who never quite got their due – Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln springing to mind – the great Etta Jones never crossed over much into the more visible worlds of R&B and pop music, perhaps ultimately to the detriment of her career, though she was widely respected as one of the purest of all jazz vocalists.

Born in 1928 in South Carolina, Etta Jones came up in Harlem. After winning the attention of bandleader Buddy Johnson at an Apollo talent contest in 1943, she joined his popular orchestra, her exposure thenceforth leading to more work, including gigs with drummer J.C. Heard and pianist Earl Hines, and a set of fascinating mid-‘40s releases recorded with Leonard Feather.

Jones seems to have sung jazz from the very outset of her professional career. Her early recordings evince mature sensibilities – the Billie Holiday influence is at its most pronounced, and era-standard jump blues are suffused with deep feeling. But, despite the early promise, Jones was not swept up in a bebop revolution that might have logically included her. Her fortunes as an artist foundered as the 1950s progressed, but changed with 1960’s Don’t Go to Strangers, her debut full-length album recorded for the Prestige jazz label. Don’t Go to Strangers was a commercial success, and many critics have since cited the album as a water mark (it was also earned her the first of three Grammy nominations in her lifetime).

Don’t Go to Strangers would in reality be but one of a large number of highly consistent sessions for Prestige Records during Jones’s reemergence in the first half of the ‘60s. Her unusual reading of “Nature Boy” deserves a special place of honor here. Recorded and released in late 1962, her all-star support included Jerome Richardson (tenor saxophone), Sam Bruno (bass), Bobby Donaldson (drums) and either Kenny Burrell or Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar. Though it didn’t ultimately find much commercial traction, Prestige sensed enough potential in its chugging, Latin beat to release it as a single to the relatively lucrative jukebox/R&B market.

Her Prestige Records run ended in the mid-‘60s, and though Jones was never again quite as prolific in the studio, her performing career resumed with renewed energy for the next decades, a long-time partnership with soul jazz saxophone stalwart Houston Person proving especially fruitful.

Etta Jones passed away in 2001 from complications of cancer.

Posted in Exotica/Space-Age, Jazz Obscura, Rock 'n' roll | 6 Comments

Halloween radio special 9-11pm CST tonight

Posted on 2012/10/31 by Little Danny

This evening on Lost Frequencies:

Two hours of lost ’50s and ’60s bop, mambo, R&B, exotica, soundtracks and oddball surf instrumentals and country. No silly monster novelties, just deep haunted house moods and b-movie atmospherics.

KRTS 93.5FM or stream at http://marfapublicradio.org/ 9-11pm CST.

Posted in Miscellaneous Flotsam | 3 Comments

New at the Exotica Project:

The Irridescents' moody, unusual arrangement of "Bali Ha'i," circa 1963. The is the first pressing of this obscure Los Angeles surf combo's only 45.