1950s, Kitsch&Exotica


and early ’60s is no exception to the rule. Any number of these songs wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the ballrooms and casinos of pre-


revolutionary Havana, or wafting across the terraces and cafes of Old Havana today even. A contemporary of Pérez Prado, El Gran


Fellove has also been an influence on other Latino music legends, such as Celia Cruz, Tito Puente and Johnny Pacheco. He’s now regarded as a pioneer of a type of Latino scat called chua-chua and also scored a hit with a ground breaking ska/mambo crossover ‘El Jamaiquino’. It’s obvious here though that he was equally at home with more traditional Cuban guarachas or rhumbas. Open your mind to El Gran Fellove today and let some chua- chua sunshine into your life. Rich Deakin


Tristram Cary


TRISTRAM CARY It’s Time For Tristram Cary KENNY GRAHAM AND HIS SATELLITES Moondog And Suncat Suites Both Trunk CDs www.trunkrecords.com


You wait ages for a new release from Trunk Records and then two turn up at once. Although in all fairness, this is essentially where the


similarity to buses end. Borne out of post-war Britain’s necessity to


not simply rebuild but restructure, early British electronic music and specifically its pioneers – those magnificent men with their home-made, ex-military issued oscillating machines – have sometimes lacked the retrospective treatment they so rightly deserve. Take the late great Tristram Cary; engineer/composer/studio builder, a veritable jack-of-all-trades and quite literally a master of electronic sound, his experimental endeavors were years ahead of his time, long before the assembly of the BBC’s acclaimed Radiophonic Workshop even. Producing musique concrète, SFX and


sound sculptures for TV, film and exhibition, in


JACK ELLIOTT At Landsdowne Studios, London Bear Family Records CD www.bear-family.de


Ramblin’ Jack Elliott is a folk music legend who originally hails from Brooklyn but who cut his teeth as a recording artist on these 1955-60


sessions laid down in London. Elliott was in Europe turning the people there on to his beloved American folk music, mostly touting the songs of his great idol, Woody Guthrie. About a third of the 33 songs on this


collection are Guthrie originals, and there are also renditions of several Jimmie Rodgers compositions. Alexis Korner contributes


‘Shaped For Living’ we get a sublime jazz severed to the ambience of diegetic noise, from smashing jam jars to busy road traffic. Along with more foreboding atmospheres of audible discomfort in ‘Tests For Casino Royale’, which brood to the same levels of uneasiness that later surfaced in his career with his movements for the Daleks in Dr Who. Which sadly, are absent amongst this collection. Away though from the world of electronic music but still very much in keeping with the reinvention of the avant-garde, as the


recently reissued Julie Andrews/Martyn Green album Songs Of Sense & Nonsense suggests, the influence Moondog (AKA Louis Hardin) had over musicians in ’50s Britain was one of investigational curiosity. On Moondog And Suncat Suites, British jazz legend Kenny Graham, under the hand of Joe Meek, turns out a frighteningly good homage to Moondog’s offset and idiosyncratic compositions. Turning in a stellar line-up featuring pianist Stan Tracey amongst others, and recreating classic Hardin numbers like ‘Fog On The Hudson’ from a lesson in time signatures to an exotic ’50s number, snakelike rhythms perfectly intact. Richard S Jones


mandolin playing on some of the sessions, and Derroll (as in Donovan’s ‘Epistle To…’) Adams picks banjo and sings along at times. Naysayers could reasonably complain that


you might as well just listen to the Woody Guthrie originals, but Jack Elliott is a folk icon in his own right and always worth hearing. The duets with Adams are excellent, and the booklet is lovingly done and informative. Brian Greene


EL GRAN FELLOVE Mango Mangüé Vampi Soul CD www.vampisoul.com There’s something timeless about many of the sounds to have emerged from Cuba over the last 60 years or so, and this El Gran Fellove compilation spanning the late ’50s


ROBERT MITCHUM Calypso – Is Like So… Bear Family Records LP www.bear-family.de


Bewitched by the rhythms he heard while working on films on Trinidad and Tobago, square-jawed American actor Robert Mitchum decided he


needed to create a set of island songs of his own. Recorded in 1957, at the height of Harry Belafonte-led calypso mania, the resulting album is a kitschy period piece and a noteworthy celebrity record. Most of the songs are standards of the


genre, things like ‘From A Logical Point Of View’ and ‘Beauty Is Only Skin Deep’, although at times Mitchum endows the songs with some of his own off-the-cuff lyrics. The rhumba- inducing musical backing is spot-on and Mitchum’s attempt at affecting Caribbean- flavoured vocal phrasing is bad enough to be good.


Belafonte had no need to be worried about


his place on the calypso throne but Mitchum did leave the rest of us with a campy lounge classic. And that sleeve! Brian Greene


THE MODERN JAZZ QUARTET The MJQ In The Movies Giant Steps CD www.giantstepsrecords.co.uk Hats off to Giant Steps for doing the relevant detective work and collecting together The MJQ’s various ventures in the world of the silver screen on one CD.


Interestingly, given The MJQ’s high visibility


and commercial success throughout their career the soundtracks in question come from two relatively obscure ’50s movies. First up are the six tracks including MJQ live


favourite ‘The Golden Striker’ originally composed for Roger Vadim’s ’57 feature No Sun In Venice (Sait On Jamais) whose cool and sophisticated mood owes much of its colour and atmosphere to the ethereal sound of Milt Jackson’s vibes. The second half of this double feature comes by way of six tracks scored for


Robert Wise’s gritty ’59 film noir Odds Against Tomorrow which starred Ed Begley, Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte. In between times ‘Baden Baden’ – as later featured in Jim Jarmusch’s 2003 offering Coffee And Cigarettes – provides a readymade intermission of sorts. Grahame Bent


PHIL MOORE Fantasy For Girl & Orchestra/Portrait Of Leda Righteous CD www.cherryred.co.uk


American composer, arranger and conductor Phil Moore spent the ’40s and ’50s in various jazz and big bands, recording with many


great singers, before settling in Hollywood to work on movie scores and conceptual work. Righteous have compiled two of the latter here. Fantasy, from 1947, is the sound of a big


band being put through its paces. The title track features the unsettling voice of Annette Warren and is splendidly noir-ish. The remaining tracks however, despite some dramatic flourishes, lack the imagination to warrant repeated plays, and when compared to the best period lounge music feel incomplete. Portrait is a much later piece (’58) and hits


the spot more convincingly. Split between three movements, it is truly exotic, and the warblings of the mysterious Leda Annest, whose Sumac- esque turn is breathtaking and fits wonderfully with the understated, fizzing arrangement below. Phil Istine


VARIOUS ARTISTS Beat Scene: Kerouac, His Contemporaries And Influences El CD www.elrecords.co.uk VARIOUS ARTISTS The Cool Scene At Cafe Bizarre Righteous CD www.righteous23.com


Two compilations; two contrasting motherlodes of vintage bohemiana. First, Beat Scene, which is effectively a soundtrack to the life and times of Jack Kerouac thanks to the way it vividly documents the fertile crossover between poetry and jazz that defined the beat era


via blending spoken word recordings from Kerouac, Lenny Bruce, Al ‘Jazzbo’ Collins, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ken Nordine, Kenneth Patchen and Allen Ginsberg with the freewheeling be bop and interstellar jazz of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, George Shearing, Charles Mingus and Sun Ra. The Cool Scene At Cafe Bizarre meanwhile


brings together the best of two long lost albums The Cool Scene and Greenwich Village’s Cafe Bizarre, and in doing so mixes and matches tracks from Lennie Tristano, Gerry Mulligan and Chico Hamilton with all manner of hipster weirdness from the Mad Monk, Ringo Angel, Felix Lupus, Jamaica Johnny Cayonne and more. Grahame Bent


71


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92