Bodacious screams Joe Meek and all the spacey connotations that come with that, but oddly enough if you take a look at that cover you'll see that it's produced by Bobby Vinton of all people. Apparently one of the members was friends with Bobby. In any case, a killer instrumental, one of the best I've posted on here
El San Juan is a sleepy latin-tinged surf dreamer, great in it's own right but way less Joe Meek.
This has gotta be the best thing I've pulled in a long time. Greasy instrumentals from Lafayette, Louisiana, covered in loud fake cat meows. As evidenced by the Crazy Cajun music (and this site here), this was a Huey Meaux joint, and from a little more internet digging it seems they're entirely separate from the Fabulous Continentals found on the Las Vegas Grind compilations, despite fitting right in.
Pussy Cat Part 1:
And Part 2:
I'd been meaning to upload it's Twistin' Time for a little while so when I pulled out my thrift store purchase of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" and found George Hudson's "Dance Time" instead (UGH, ROOKIE MISTAKE) I figured it was a sign that this must be posted.
That's not to suggest it's exactly mindblowing. These are twist records number a-billion and a-billion and one and though plenty of fun and worth it if you want another two twist records, there's not too much to make them stand out. Dance Time is the better record of the two, with a better swing and more exciting recording sound. However, if it's your thing It's Twistin' Time has a couple of pretty good organ-fueled instrumentals, where Dance Time only has one bluesy one. A whole lot of covers on these... and plenty off rip-off-might-as-well-be-covers. But who really cares?
Who is George Hudson anyway? I've been trying to get to the bottom of this and been kind of confused with what I've dug up. One site claims that his "Kings of Twist" are a supergroup including Hank Ballard, Jack Hammer, Chubby Checker and Joey Dee. If ze means that literally I don't know where that info's coming from and it seems way too sonically consistent for that to be the case. One site has said that he was a New York DJ and most of the singers, including Hoagy Lands, were uncredited.
I've even had a little trouble finding the cover for Dance Time because mine looked like this
Ugh, you got me this time, Al
It's Twistin' Time (Capitol T-1578)
A Side:
B Side:
Dance Time (1962 Capitol ST-1697)
A Side:
B Side:
These are zipped together here
I'd reckon over the past year I've probably played more off of Sublime Frequency's Bollywood Steel Guitar Compilation over the radio than anything else, with a possible exception of the extremely similar Sound of Wonder. But I never really followed up on any of those artists because I figured chances of coming across their works were pretty slim. New Orleans' Domino Sound Record Shack strikes again, with this artist featured on Bollywood Steel Guitar! And it was so cheap too (cover's pretty beat up I guess (and looks like a half-assed attempt at a Boston album)).
It's not exactly tough to figure out what a surf enthusiast would enjoy about an album like this, but that's hardly to suggest that their similar. Ganguly actually plays a Hawaiian steel guitar, and a lot of this is a lot more relaxed than most surf, though a little more exciting than your average 50's Hawaiian album. Some of these are funky, some of these are really weird. The real paragon of everything that makes this great is the sixth track, Hari Om Hari, featuring frantic drums, wild steel guitar and punctuated by goofy electronic effects.
If you want to know more about Sunil Ganguly he's really not that obscure, wikipedia page and everything. There are a few MP3 downloads of his other work, a few blogs mentioning him, but as far as I could tell know way to hear this album. And man, you should, I'd post a ton of this sort of stuff if I had any idea where to find it. This one, you can find here
Lee Allen was a huge part of the New Orleans sound during the R&B era and backed up an absurd amount of new Orleans big names on his saxophone, and this is a sample of his instrumental outing. You can read about it all down there on the back cover or anywhere really, I just said that in case blog links wanted a blurb of this post.
I was looking for this for a while, mainly because I loved my 45 of Cat Walk/Creole Alley and had to find the LP it was put out on. Not to mention the outrageous cover, with a tasseled stripper clearly pasted on to make this look CRAZIER. As I expected, this isn't a proper full-length and was made well after the fact, what I didn't really realize after when I bought it was that almost all of these songs were on his main LP "Walkin' With Mr. Lee". So what's the point? Cat Walk/Creole Alley are in my opinion his best two songs, it has a CRAZY cover, and a much fatter (and in this case scratchier) recording than my CD copy of Walkin' With Mr. Lee, which seems to have all the fun sucked out of it. And I suppose if I post it up here, the rest of y'all won't drop $40 on this just to hear the difference. Purchasing music is good, go buy the actually available Walking With Mr Lee. In fact, do it tomorrow on Record Store Day.
If you've never heard any of this instrumental stuff, I'll give you a warning. Some of this can get very laid-back. If you want some jumpers, just follow the track titles. If it sounds jumpin' it probably is. When he's good though, I think he's one of the great examples of how the saxophone was once king in Rock & Roll, a fact now forgotten.
The Black Sea Surfer just posted Aki Aleong's excellent 1963 surf album which pushed me to get this up here. I bought it intrigued by the monster surf instro "Body Surf" but is there more to him than that? Just look at the guy in the picture down there (and the blurb) of course there is! He looks so happy to put this album out! This 1962 album is full of dance scorchers at a high energy level. Just listen to that yell introducing "Mashed Potatoes". It makes me wanna do it! New Orleanians, dig the cover of Eddie Bo's "Popeye". There's some great instrumentals too, including "The Fly" and "Pony-Time". Seriously, this is one of the more fun twistin' albums I own. And you would hope so if he really has a 20 piece band backing him up (no, it doesn't sound that way). Then again if they're all teenagers who knows.
I've got to be completing my Crown Records collection by now. This is the same gist: a few instrumentals amongst some pretty good vocal tracks, backed by Jerry Cole and a whole lot of engine sounds. I can't say that any of these really stand out to me, but it's still a solid enough album. I know y'all go nuts for anything surf or drag related anyway, so it's not like anything I say about it really matters. Here, see what Pipeline magazine has to say:
For the “Shut Downs” album I was already pretty aware how it was going to sound before the needle touched down into the grooves, having previously heard to rest of the Crown hot-rod releases – and I wasn’t wrong ! Acclaimed studio sessionman Jerry Cole was once again the uncredited main force behind the long-player and his distinct single-layer vocals, coupled with his rhythmic guitar and an accompanying sax, are the most noticeable factors in all of the label’s auto releases – and in fact, such is the similarity between each offering that I’m sure many of the melodies are simply adapted and re-used accordingly (it’s just that I haven’t worked out which ones they are yet …). Yes, they sound under-produced and fairly basic … but each release does manage to stick one or two tunes in the memory bank and they’re all worth a listen – but not one after the after for sanity’s sake.
In the instance of this particular album it’s the opening number, “With My Baby”, that gets the feet tapping and makes you wonder where on earth you've heard it before (answer - Cole rewrote it and included again on the later album by the Winners - see elsewhere) whilst the subsequent track has Cole clearly thinking in Dick-Dale-mode … and that’s not a bad thing …
By the way, this is not to be confused with the Del-Fi records Deuce Coupes. In fact, I'm not entirely sure whether the artist here is The Deuce Coupes or the Shut Downs.
Anyway here's a link to it and a tracklist
Side A
Side B
RRHHWW and RockIsDeadRIP have both proclaimed their fandom of Billy Mure before, though I suspect we both feel that way for his abilities as a guitarist. Well here's the other side. This album cover and album title both give it away: this is mostly a spage-aged pop record, inventing music from other lands based on silly stereotypes, with little bad-ass rock & roll to be found.
In fact, I've saved you the trouble: this one track In A Persian Market sounds to me like Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited decades before their time
For the type of music it is, it's pretty good, but I'm posting this here more for Billy Mure completion than to knock you internet folks out. So if you're curious, check it out
This album is a cash grab. But really, before Rock & Roll became thought of as an art form (around Pet Sounds/Sgt. Peppers) it was probably more worth your while to identify what wasn't done with money as the primary focus than what was. Chubby Checker's version of the twist set a huge gravy train in motion with so many people wanting to take a ride. Plenty of groups tried to fill a niche in another dumbass dance move like The Frug. This album went straight for the honey hole, to the point where the artists' name isn't even on the front cover.
And I like their approach. Here we have 12 instrumentals that try to expand twisting to whatever ridiculous activity you may be enjoying. Chew gum to the Doublemint Twist! Do the Scientwist in your laboratory! Bullies, intimidate the puny to the Intimitwist(or is it meant for intimate situations?)
It's no surprise the album hasn't found its way into the rock & roll history books yet. That's because those books are horseshit. But also because these are pretty straightforward twistin'. No memorable hooks, though some pretty impressive use of stereo. Some of these, especially the Astrotwist, wouldn't be too out of place in a Las Vegas Grind et. al. compilation, though I wouldn't really say these are raw or raunchy... just simple, well done and enjoyable twistin' tunes.
The Nitecaps play that raucous saxophone-fueled kind of instrumental rock & roll that gets forgotten behind the monstrous word that is "surf". Here they've prepared a fiery lineup of covers and pun-titled songs to promote their dance move of choice and mine: The Frug. I would kill to know how to do the frug, but my dreams of having an RRHHWW reader releasing a slew of Youtube oldies-dance instructional videos are mostly abandoned, though Wikipedia hasn't forgotten this particular dance.
Anyway, this is a good one. The worst songs are still worth a hipshake and tracks like "Sassy Frug" their rendition of "You Can't Sit Down" are an outright riot.
EDIT: I've been beaten timewise and (unsurprisingly) info-wise on this one. Check out the Houndblog
You know what, let's dispense with the hooplah: I have zero reservations about calling Twitchy one of the best Rock & Roll instrumentals of all time. I'm not even going to talk about it just yet, I'm going to post this link and within 5 seconds you'll probably agree that it's a candidate
Twitchy
(this is not my recording. It's made its way onto a few compilation CDs that don't appear to be easily purchased. I have my own recording in the same folder if for some reason you'd prefer record noise)
So what's his deal? Thankfully, Wikipedia's on the ball with this one but if you can't be bothered to open a new window, Born in Morgan City, Louisiana, was a session musician, talent scout and even is credited with arranging Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" and Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On". And of particular interest to instrumental enthusiasts, worked with B. Bumble and the Stingers (who I have a 45 of if anybody would like to see it up here)
So to sum it up further: Louisiana born musical bad-ass and NEVER let the word "Orchestra" scare you away from a good rock & roll 45.
So what's the B-Side like? Excellent actually. It's not nearly as unique-sounding as Twitchy but it's a great sassy 50's-style rock & roll instrumental that I would probably put on here even if Twitchy weren't on the same 45
Flippin'
Wiggles and Waggles are a joke band as far as I can tell, though I'm not able to find anything more than this single. The songwriting credits go to Roy Bennet and Sid Tepper, who have written tons of songs for Elvis, Dean Martin, Andy Williams, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Eartha Kitt, Frank Sinatra, Cliff Richard, just look up Roy Bennet on wikipedia. Given the nature of these songs, I would venture a guess that this is their own little project, since there doesn't seem to be any other star involved, at least in a prominent way.
I held off on posting this because if you'd take a gander up there, my copy of Rock and Roll Session is completely destroyed, but I knew I'd heard it somewhere. Sure enough, I turn to the Las Vegas Grind series of compilations, who have what sounds like the exact same thing (it's not exactly coverable) under the name Louie Overseas with the song title changed to "A Studio Session". Sure, sometimes compilations foul up the name in hopes to get away without paying royalties, but this doesn't even give a hint. So here's their copy, not in terrificly better shape than mine. I've renamed it to the real thang
Rock and Roll Session
Hey! Mr. Hoolihan is much more musical (I've played it on my surf show). It's a fun rock & roll instrumental with occaisional vocal bits contemplating the vaguely scandalous thing affecting their friend Mr. Hoolihan.
Hey! Mr. Hoolihan
Don't be dissuaded if the name reminds you of PT Barnum and you're expecting some sort of circus music. Despite a less than eventful solo career, he was extremely successful as an arranger. To copy and paste from wikipedia, he has become most widely known as an arranger, for a very wide range of performers including Count Basie, O.C. Smith, Frank Sinatra, The Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Little Richard, Gladys Knight, Al Wilson, and the Pump Girls. This doesn't really sound like any of those, it's a straight up sax-fueled rock & roll instrumentals from (like most of these 45s) 1958.
Tia Juana (yeah, that's how it's spelled on the 45) is a blast. Raunchy, fast and crude. Tequila came out in the same year and I wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with this track, but melody-wise it's completely its own song.
Tia Juana
Blue Mood isn't nearly as fun. Why do they always have to pair up a good, fast single with a slower number? MORE POWER PLEASE. I mean, it's a good song, but you just go ahead and listen, I don't really have any actual knowledge to spread here.
Blue Mood
