Category Archives: Jazz Obscura

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

Posted on by Little Danny | Posted in Exotica/Space-Age, Instrumentals/Surf, Jazz Obscura | 4 Comments

Vibraphones, flutes and California Latin jazz

I’ve posted extensively about Afro-Latin music in California (here, here, here and here). The subject fascinates me, so I’ll try not to belabor the point too much. Latin jazz in the post-War Bay Area and Los Angeles was a diffuse, … Continue reading

Posted on by Little Danny | Posted in Exotica/Space-Age, Jazz Obscura, Latin | 11 Comments

Naked City Latino

Few of Tinseltown’s directors, writers, cinematographers or creative minds – and certainly none of its soundtrack and television composers – turned a blind eye to opportunism in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Each location or genre came with its familiar set … Continue reading

Posted on by Little Danny | Posted in Exotica/Space-Age, Jazz Obscura, Latin | 7 Comments

Message from the ghetto

What ties this week’s selections together is not merely their spoken word component (though it’s significant, certainly). Nor is it just their cause of change and greater societal welfare. Awareness-raising ballads, agitprop invective, activist commentary, summons-to-action and subversive parody are … Continue reading

Posted on by Little Danny | Posted in Jazz Obscura, Miscellaneous Flotsam, Soul | 1 Comment

West Coast boogaloo, part two

(Ed. Note: More this week on West Coast versions of the quintessential ‘60s Spanish Harlem musical phenomenon, the boogaloo, that fusion of black R&B; aesthetic with Latin rhythms and orchestration. Broadly speaking, the boogaloo’s West Coast cousins tended to be … Continue reading

Posted on by Little Danny | Posted in Jazz Obscura, Latin | 6 Comments

Ed Bland

Ed Bland is an American composer, musical arranger and producer with a considerable catalog of contemporary classical compositions – “Art Music,” as Bland would note – to his name. Bland is, at least among a coterie of vintage soul fans, … Continue reading

Posted on by Little Danny | Posted in Jazz Obscura, Soul | 13 Comments

Office Naps Fall 2007 Psychedelic Pop mix

This is the rose-colored soundtrack I strive to cocoon my life in, a CD-length metaphor for the first time you watched Solaris. Part of the ongoing Office Naps psychedelic pop mix series. Office Naps Fall 2007 Psychedelic Pop Mix The … Continue reading

Posted on by Little Danny | Posted in Garage Bands, Instrumentals/Surf, Jazz Obscura, Mixes, Psychedelic/Pop | 14 Comments

Bossa America, part two

(Ed. Note: This is essentially a continuation of an earlier Office Naps installment on American versions of the Bossa Nova. That first post can be found here.) It’d started in the mid-‘50s with sophisticated young Rio musicians hooked on American … Continue reading

Posted on by Little Danny | Posted in Jazz Obscura, Latin | 4 Comments