The history of jazz through the music of those that aren't in the annals, part 1

The "JFK" Quintet – New Jazz 
Frontiers from Washington
A Cannonball Adderley Presentation
Riverside RLP 396, Made in New York, 1961

So why is it, that some jazz musicians are canonized, and others not? What, if any, are the criteria for canonization in jazz music? There's some existential "to be or not to be" questions for you to take into the new year. So what are some of the criteria? Talent, innovation, dedication, success, association, luck? And why do some have it, and others not, asks for a case by case analysis. While the "haves" category musicians can be picked and studied through the annals of jazz music, the "have-nots" you come across by chance. By browsing through piles of thrift store records for example. In the next two weeks I'll take a look at two ensembles that belong to the latter category. Have-nots is probably not  the right typification for the musicians that I picked have a lot going for them too. They're the "nearly-haves", or b-list characters of jazz music. The first nearly-haves is a group of college students from Washington, DC who formed in 1961 and called themselves The "JFK" Quintet. They made two albums; the one under the auspices of Cannonball Adderley is from 1961, and then there is the obscure Young Ideas from 62, both on Riverside. They supposedly did a third recording session for Riverside in 1963 but there is no information or details on this session except that drummer Joe Chambers replaced Carl "Mickey" Newman. 1963 is also the year the group parted ways, and Joe Chambers is the one musician from the group who went on into the jazz annals a-list as a sideman for a variety of jazz notorieties. But Chambers wasn't there when the "JFK" quintet actually made a record and tenor-sax man Andy White (usually Andrew White) is the one musician who came out from the original group to have a significant career in jazz. White, who earned a music degree from Howard, became known for his transcriptions of Coltrane solos. As a multi-instrumentalist he also recorded with Weather Report, Stevie Wonder, 5th Dimension as well as a score of his own led combos. Other members of The "JFK" Quintet were also students at Howard; Ray Codrington (trumpet) studied psychology, and pianist Harry Killgo was a mathematics major. Drummer Carl "Mickey" Newman was a X-ray technician, and bass player Walter Booker, Jr. had a B.S. in psychology from Morehouse College. Booker ended up in Cannonball Adderley's band, Newman didn't record beyond "JFK". Codrington had a long career in music and is still active on trumpet in The John Brown Quintet, while for Harry Killgo I couldn't find any references besides The "JFK" Quintet on line save for an obituary from 2010 that didn't mention music at all. The tune Cici's Delight to which you can listen to below is opening track of side b on the record New Jazz Frontier from Washington. Andrew White who wrote the tune that sounds vaguely familiar was 19 years old then. The otherwise immaculate record skips at the very end, and I think it's a lovely addition to the tune.

'Twas the day before Christmas

Que Bonita... La Cancion Peruana
Dirección: Mario Cavagnaro
Discos Sono Radio, S.E. 9475
Industria Peruana

I don't exactly know how the association happens but when I browsed through some boxes of "new" thrift store records from the past two months, to post about some music appropriate for Christmas, this Que Bonita... record was screaming at me: Me, me , me! There's no Feliz Navidad"" song to be found on it, there's no snow depicted on the record sleeve, and the lady smiling on it isn't exactly dressed at her Christmas best, yet it is her that seems to whisper "Merry Christmas" to me in that naughty but innocent kind of way. Or maybe it's that warm and homey smile, or the red stripes on the blanket, or just the festive potpourri style of music that emanated from the vinyl inside. That's it—when I was young my family played these Schlagerfestival records,  the German equivalent of the type of record that all Western countries in the1960s, 1970s, and 80s, and beyond seemed to have: a festive medley of popular songs and melodies performed by some of the most popular singers of the country. And they all came with that smiling young woman dressed in a bikini (or a bit more—or a bit less). In Holland we had Alle 13 Goed, Italy had the San Remo series, and in Peru... Que Bonita... La Cancion Peruana. This blog is no stranger to either popular or traditional music from Peru, and in the case of Que Bonita... the popular is pushed to the commercial cliff, where it almost crashed and dies. Almost... The collected stars that perform on this record include Jesus Vasquez, who got her own little chapter here on these pages. Each of the stars perform two or three songs on the record, and also perform as "The Choir of Stars" in a few others. To share with you today, the day before Christmas, I picked a section of the Poutpourrit de Valses comprising lado A that is performed by this Coro de Estrellas. It is called Alejandrina. Happy Holidays!!!

"Authentic" Spanish folk

Folk Songs of Spain, Vol. 3
Seeco, New York, CELP-450
Made in USA, 1960

The performers on this record are unnamed. Searching on-line for this record does not reveal the identities of the performers either, the record is listed as "Various Artists". Listening to the record it appears to me that all the "various" artists belong to the same group (or troupe). I believe only a handful musicians and an additional handful of chorus singers make up this group (I expect that also a handful of dancers are associated with the group), and the same people perform on every song on the record. The very same musicians that also play on Volume 1, and Volume 2, of the series released by American Seeco label, formed in 1943, specializing in Latin American music. In the liner notes I come across the word "authentic", which 90 times out of 100 means exactly the opposite. And here the use of "authentic" indeed confirms its suspect nature. These recordings are not "authentic" in the real sense of the word. The only thing authentic about this record is that the performers are real "Spanish" musicians. The very same musicians who play "authentic" music from the land of the Basques, the southern cities like Sevilla, Galicia, and Catalonia. I believe the musicians heard on these records are a performance group, possibly sponsored by the Spanish government, like a "National Ballet" touring the world. They were probably recorded for this record in New York City. The performers are professionals, very good in what they do, and all the songs are definately of high quality. But not authentic. The song I picked from this record is a bolero called El Parado. The bolero, of course, has become a world wide phenomenon through the gigantic success of the French composer Georges Bizet's take on the traditional Spanish dance. The inclusion of a recording of Bizet's Bolero in the film 10 in which Bo Derek makes love to the melody, didn't hurt the status of "one of the best known classical melodies" either. Bizet quotes the traditional Spanish melodies quite literal but I do believe that the group performing on the Seeco label takes as much back from Bizet as from their own tradition. That said I have to admit that I really like records like these. They often come with real great "authentic" photos from the old home-land.

Rosa Balistreri

Amore tu lo sai, la vita è amara
Back cover

Rosa Balistreri – Amore tu lo sai, 
la vita è amara
Cetra, LPP 184
Made in Turin, Italy, 1971

While Rosa Balistreri is not as generally known as, say Edith Piaf, locally in Sicily, and throughout Italy, she is as highly regarded by the people as any of the 'chanteuses' that acquired a world-wide recognition. What she has in common with some of the greatest European (female) folk singers, such as Piaf and Amália Rodrigues, is that she is of the people (meaning: grew up in poverty, had a life of hardship and sorrow, and eventually the triumph of the individual). Rosa Balistreri was born in 1927, grew up in a very much brutal, feudal Sicily. As an escape she began to sing Sicilian folk songs but it took her through many inhumane jobs and relationships before she was, at the age of 39, able to make a recording. Balistreri fled from Sicily to Florence in the 1960s, but moved back again in the 1970s. She died in Palermo in 1990.

I find it very strange that I never came across this singer, never in my 30+ years of interest in European folk music. While I have several records of musicians she's associated with, and even a Sicilian folk record or two (be it that of the celebratory tourist kind), I had never heard of Rosa Balistreri before.

The song below is called Mirrina and it's an agricultural song (and that's the extend to which I can translate the Italian liner notes).

'Twas the Season

Odetta: Christmas Spirituals
Vanguard, Stereolab, VSD-2079
Printed in U.S.A., 1960

The following text is from 'Tis the Season that I wrote for Berry's Top 100 in 2010. I was still in Ohio then and bought the Odetta record at the Family Store in Cleveland.

      'Tis the season for thrift stores to organize their records. Once a year the Christmas records are separated from the secular records. I enjoy this, it makes it easy, I only need to browse through a considerable smaller selection to try to find something I like than I do the rest of the year. So why did I browse through the bin with Christmas records the other day? God only knows but there she was, the embodiment of the Afro-American presence in the 60s folk scene in America: Odetta. A Christmas record indeed, the songs are all 'Negro-Spirituals' and most songs are about the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus. The song Virgin Mary Had One Son may very well end up in the Top 100 and become the first ever Christmas song in the Top 100 history. God bless Odetta. The album is called Odetta: Christmas Spirituals and was released by Vanguard.

Hungaroton Records

V. Magyarországi, Táancház Találkozó 
Fourth Hungarian Dance-House Festival
Hungaroton, SLPX 18101
Made in Hungary, 1985

What puzzles me is the proportion with which Hungarian records appear in thrift stores in Southwest Florida. There is no indication to me that there is a large Hungarian community in the area, so where do all those records come from? But the records keep coming. By now I could have dedicated a whole blog to the folk music of Hungary which I will leave it to one who has more affinity with such music and to one who can read the Magyar language. There are some sites out there, not too many, and not many who update very often. But the standard of records with Hungarian folk music as their topic seems consistently high. It's not that such music is superior to that of other countries/regions, it's just great music, all the way across. Hungarian music was put on the map early as Hungarian composers Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók did a lot to document the music. And maybe unlike many other countries the Hungarians, as a nation, are proud of their musical heritage. Another musician who did a lot for Hungarian Folk music is Ferenc Sebő. He is from a later generation than the aforementioned composers. In September I documented the album Folk Music from Lőrincréve with arrangements by Sebő. I mentioned there that he launched the career of Márta Sebestyén. At the time I didn't include a track on which Sebestyén could be heard but this time I can't overlook her again. Sebestyén is currently the best known musician in the field of Hungarian folk music, probably the best known living Hungarian musician in general. Sebestyén's mother, a musician too, had studied under Kodály.  

Folk Music from Lőrincréve was released in 1986, and this Fourth Hungarian Dance-House Festival is from the year before. Interestingly the identification number of the former SPLX 18102 comes directly after the 18101 of Dance-House Festival. The two tracks shared here are both from side B; Somogyi és Nógrádi dallamok is a medley of short tunes featuring a bagpipe played by Zoltán Juhsz and a fiddle by Márta Virágvölgyi and Szállj el feskemadár a voice solo performed by the aforementioned Sebestyén.

Saliha

Saliha
Soca, SO 330

About every other week I add a new reason to: "What constitutes a good a day at the thrift store?" This week's goes like this: "When I need more time browsing through the records than Maria does looking at the whole store." Needless to say: "We are collectors!" When she goes to one without me she often checks for records, checks if I should go too. Sometimes she even brings a record or two home for me. And I gotta say this: "I'm usually not disappointed." She brought me this wonderful Arabic cassette tape. I always loved the music on it but could not post it here because: (1) I didn't know anything about it, not even the singer's name, and (2) I did not know how to create an MP3 out of a cassette tape. These two issues are now overcome, at least to a certain extent: (1) The singer's name is Saliha, and (2) I downloaded and learned to use Audacity.

Saliha is a Tunisian icon born Salouha Ben Ibrahim Ben Abdel Hafidh in 1914, at the village of Nebr, in Kef. Saliha was born to a poor family and had only one sister called “Eljia”. She recorded between 1938 and 1958 (the year she died). I chose the bit more introverted track 2 from the cassette to share.

The Lament at a Funeral

The Columbia Library of Folk and Primitive Music
Collected and Edited by Alan Lomax, Volume IV: France
Edited by Cl. Marcel-Dubois and Maguy Andral
Columbia Masterworks, KL-207, made in U.S.A., 1952

Funerary lamentation is a widespread practice among catholic countries/regions. It is said to have originated in Roman times but the origins of the singing at wakes and funerals may well go further back than Christianity does. A lamentation is an improvisation of an unaccompanied female wailing voice. The singer is often a relative of the deceased but also could be a hired professional "wailing" woman. In Ireland she's called a "keener", in Romania a "bocitorre", and in this example recorded in Corsica "voceratrice". Laments can be divided up into two categories: that of the wakes and funerals for adults, and for those of children. The adult ones are mournful while children's laments can have a festive quality to them as it is celebrated when a child "becomes an angel" without having experienced the hardships and impurities of life. The practice has become nearly extinct now but it used to be a tradition in nearly all catholic societies. It could be found throughout the Mediterranean, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other pockets of Catholicism that existed around the globe. I grew up in the Catholic Netherlands, but I don't think lamentation was ever practiced there. It certainly wasn't  when my grandparents died while I was still a little boy in the late 1960s. The Netherlands had a sober kind of Catholicism, it had the introverted ascetic characteristics of it but not not the extroverted spirituality. The folk music in Mediterranean and Latin American countries were influenced by a rich spirituality and a cult of the death. In the sound example below you can hear the 80 year old "voceratrice" Barbe-Marie Monti perform a funeral lament. She is sitting at the foot of the table with the corpse when she starts: Permettetemi un Momuntu. It was recorded in Corsica in 1948. The accompanying text that goes with the lament on the album The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music: France states that in Corsica funeral laments are often the start of a vendetta or family-feud. The improvised laments can contain inflammatory incriminating lyrics, especially if the death of the relative was a violent one.

The World Library

The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music
Collected and Edited by Alan Lomax
Volume VII Indonesian Music
Edited by Dr. Jaap Kunst, Indisch Museum, Amsterdam
Columbia Masterworks SL-210, 1954, Made in U.S.A.

Academic style field recordings from all over the world have been and continue to be the main focus of my record collection. Within these records I like the older ones the best, recorded and collected at a time when there still was little influence of the Western popular music styles onto the traditional music of a certain ethnic group somewhere on this planet. A whole bunch of academic  ethnomusicologists, as well as hobbyists with high ideals, traveled around the world in the middle and later parts of the 20th Century, to record and catalog the music they thought of as a fast disappearing local cultural identity. One of the most prominent collectors out there was Alan Lomax, who spent his life collecting and recording the folk music of the most remote regions of the world. He started documenting the various folk styles of the most remote areas of the US but soon broadened his scope to the whole world. His ambition was to have a giant library that collected all the traditional musics from around the world. He was part of the Library of Congress that focused mainly on the music of the US including all of the various immigrant group's traditional music identities, and founded the World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. All the music had to be available to any and every person interested. The scope of that library was broad and ambitious but only 18 volumes were ever compiled by the Columbia label. All 18 of these are sought after and very hard to come by. I just scored my second in a second hand record store in Miami: The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Collected and Edited by Alan Lomax – Indonesia, Edited by Dr. Jaap Kunst, Indisch Museum, Amsterdam is the full identifying title of the record in front of me. The record is divided into four geographical sections: New Guinea, Moluccas, Borneo, and Bali. The first song from this album to share here is an Ewa dance song and is from the Papua part of New Guinea, it's a song by Roro natives, who live scattered in small villages along the South Coast and on Yule Island. The song was recorded by Reverend A. Dupetrat of the Catholic Mission at Yule Island in 1951.The second exerpt from the album comes from Borneo and is a Rice song performed by a group of Land Dyak women. This was recorded by a team from UNESCO-UNO also in 1951.

Bartók Plays Bartók

Bartók Plays Bartók
Béla Bartók, piano
recorded in Europe 1941(?)
Remington R-199-94, 1952
Printed in U.S.A.

Béla Bartók – Sonata for Two 
Pianos and Percusion
Béla Bartók at the Piano
recorded in 1940
Polydor, PLP 6010
Printed in the U.S.A.

Classical music is a bit underrepresented in these pages considering the vast amount of such records available at the numerous thrift stores in town. There are several genres, or topics that I collect within the broad field that is classical music. One of the topics that I always grab whenever I see one is that of the composer playing his (her's is a bit rare outside of contemporary classical music—a genre not often found at thrift stores) own music. I was delighted to find not one, but two records with the music of one of my all time favorite composers: Béla Bartók. Bartók here plays his own piano music. I found the record downtown Fort Myers in Franklin Shops on 1st Street, more a touristy, beachy kind of curiosity shop than a thrift store, a boutique really. Still the records were only a dollar a piece if you buy twenty of them. I had no problem doing so. The two Bartók records, together with a third one, were neatly bound into an album by the previous owner. I love those personal touches added by music enthusiasts of yore. Bartók Plays Bartók is an album of short solo piano pieces, one is a piano adaption of a work written for strings, another is a piece for two pianos. The second piano is played by his wife Ditta Pasztóry Bartók. Ditta Bartók has even a more prominent presence on the second album, which is a performance of the piece Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Béla Bartók is heard on piano, Ditta plays the second piano while Harry Baker and Edward Rubzan are the percussionists. The album is then completed with  some short piano solos performed by Béla Bartók.

I've selected three pieces to listen to here. The first two are from the Sonata album, you hear the third movement of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, followed by a very short melody that is part of the collection For Children. The third soundfile is called Preludio All'Ungherese and is from the Bartók Plays Bartók record.

More country comedy

Souvenirs from Slovakia: Songs and Dances
Eugene Farkas Gypsy Ensmble of Bratislava
Apon-2498, Apon, NY, Made in USA

You have to be careful in blog-world not to step on anyone's (copyright owners' expensive) toes these days.  I received a notice last week that my item on Ham & Scram was removed due to copyright infringement. It's back up now but without the sound. Now, I don't want to step anyone's toes and if the rightful representatives of a certain music don't want their property published within these parameters I'll be happy to remove the content. The weird thing about the notice concerning Ham & Scram was that I received it when the page in question was visited only one time. Copyright owners must be getting resourceful, they must have some alert built in to their computers so that if an item appears on line from anywhere in the world, they are notified and can block it immediately. I' m always conscious of this fact that certain musics are protected and publish only those songs that I believe are 1. old enough, 2. obscure enough, and 3. not available on CD. I truly believed that Ham & Scram met those criteria. Besides: I only post one song and not a whole album, and I rip it in the lowest possible resolution. If a certain album is for sale elsewhere on the net I think a post with one song, like mine, would provide some free valuable advertisement for those with commercial interest. Not according to whoever it was with an interest in Ham & Scram. That said, I don't think there will be any problem this week publishing a song from a record with even less internet presence than the Ham & Scram album. Where the Ham & Scram record was referenced about 5 times on line, I could not find a single reference for Souvenirs from Slovakia played by the Eugene Farkas Gypsy Ensemble of Bratislava. I like to think that this means that the record is rare and valuable but it's more likely that it's just a forgotten worthless piece of history that was only put out to make a few bucks on tourists. I'm sure if Eugene Farkas is still alive, he wouldn't think it was worthless, I don't think it's worthless, I'm sure Zuzanka Antošková would be thrilled to hear it. The number of records from Slovakia in my collection is proportionately very small (only two). During the golden era of souvenir records, as well as ethno-musicological records, roughly from the mid-fifties to the early seventies, Slovakia was not an independent country but part of Czechoslovakia. Zuzanka Antošková is the soloist with the Eugene Farkas Ensemble on the following track called Hore Hronom, Dolu Hronom (the Hron river).

Country Comedy

Country Comedy: Songs & Frolic by
Ham & Scram, featuring Buzz Busby
Mount Vernon Music, MVM 176
Made in Mount Vernon, NY, USA

This one could have also been called Don't Judge a Book By its Cover, Part 2. My expectancy with this record after investigating the cover was to hear backwoods slapstick humor and I was worried that such a well loved yet ominous folk ballad as Pretty Polly is, would be totally butchered by such irreverent looking characters on the cover (and I didn't even show the back side!) And I was wrong, totally wrong, their Pretty Polly is in fact one of the most intriguing versions I've heard, and the  record as a whole easily falls into the A category of American traditional music. Ham & Scram is the musical duo of Pete Pike and Buzz Busby from Washington, DC. Guitar player Pete Pike from Virginia is mainly known for his association with the mandolin player Buzz Busby, who is an established name in the history of Bluegrass music. Bernarr Busbice was born in 1933 in Louisiana and among his credits is the formation of the popular group The Country Gentleman in 1957. But after the successful decade of the 1950s, Busby's career went downhill due to his "growing fondness of alcohol and drugs". After a term in jail he only occasionally performed and recorded. He died of heart failure in 2003. You can listen to Pretty Polly below.

Don't judge a record by its cover

Svívbajok ellen, kisasszony, 
szedjen tangót!
Various artists, Pepita LPX 17734
Made in Hungary, 1982

Charlotte Harbor Exhaust on Tamiami Trail is the garage I bring my car to when there's a problem with it I can't fix. It has happened too often in recent weeks. There's a little thrift store right up the street from it. It's called the Thrift Depot and I wrote about it last week, and the week before that, in respect to some Hungarian records I picked up there. So when I had to wait again a few days ago while my car was being worked on, I knew that they wouldn't have any new records at the Thrift Depot but I went nevertheless. All Hungarian records I had picked up on previous visits were really nice, and I knew there was one more I had left behind and I was going back for it. I didn't buy it last week because of the cheesy cover: How can a record with such a hideous cover be any good? Anyway, it was still there, as a matter of fact it was in the exact same spot I had left it a week earlier, right in front of one of the five rows of records situated on the floor. I spotted it the very moment I opened the door of the store. I inspected it before I forked over my dollar bill and it was fine. It was in good shape, dedicated in pen on the front cover (I would however not consider this a signed record), and that was all I could tell about this record because all the texts are in Hungarian (or Magyar). When I got home, not feeling too good because I had just spent more than a year's worth of my thrift store records budget, I immediately played the record, and all was good. As if I had gone to a doctor, just for him to a put a stethoscope on my back and tell me nothing was wrong with me. I kinda knew nothing was wrong but I needed his reassurance. (No, I don't look anything like that doctor or patient on that sleeve. I sort of look like the cross between the two of them, but older. Put her hair on him, shave off his moustache, and add a decade or two worth of age, then you've got an approximation of what I look like. I once had a very detailed dream featuring myself in a situation in Hungary around the time of the second world war. If there exists such a thing as reincarnation I surely would have been a Hungarian in my former life.) The record is full of songs that are tangos (I could have deducted that word from the Hungarian title) that sound like they could have been recorded in the late fifties or early sixties. It's a beautiful record and I picked for this week's "Song of the Week" the 4th song from side A: Ne Szólj! by the singer Mária Mezei. Almost every song could've been chosen, that's how good it really is, but since I have this tradition of posting songs sung by singers named Maria, I opted for this one.

On the Tamiami Trail

...Szeretö Szívvel: Erzsébet és Sándor
Sándor Dioszegi with Bette Bere et al.
LMPS—2, Made in USA, 1979(?)

I've really now settled in into the "a-post-every-Sunday-morning" routine. This now is week #52 and that means I've been at it exactly one year. The 52 different LPs I tackled in a year provide a good sampling of the music I've bought in the South Florida thrift stores, but there are too many skipped genres to be a perfect sampling. Just a few days ago for example, I picked up a copy of The Modern Dance by Pere Ubu—easily one of the best finds of the year—but not quite the record I tend to pay attention to in the context of this blog. There are not really any criteria for selection but I do shy away from those records that are too familiar or too much part of the "official" canon of recorded music. More than half of the (estimated) 500 records I bought at thrift stores the past 52 weeks were bought at one of the many on Tamiami Trail. That street might well be the most densely populated—in terms of thrift stores in proportion to the number of buildings—in the country (probably a grave exaggeration, but just to illustrate my point). Tamiami Trail is known under various guises, in my hometown of Fort Myers the names Cleveland Avenue, Route 41, and Tamiami Trail all refer to the very same street. The name is not an exotic Native American name but a mingling of Tampa and Miami, between which two cities the street runs. I've not explored the full length of the street and I will certainly come across many more great stores in the months to come. ...Szeretö Szívvel (with a loving heart) I picked up at the very same thrift store on Tamiami Trail in Charlotte Harbor as Folk Music from Lőrincréve I wrote about last week. Keeps the Hungarian theme going for another week. This record was not produced in Hungary but in the US though, as performers are first and second generation Hungarian immigrants. And unlike last week's this one is not of folk songs but of so-called art songs. Side one has classical love songs while side two consists of chansons, musicals, and dance tunes. My pick to share this week comes from side B and is called Esti vallomás (Confession of love by twilight—poem by Erzsébet Kutas).

A curious aspect of this record is that there is no record label, not an indication where and when it was printed either, which probably means that it is somebody's private enterprise. What the record does have, and goes into my nice collection of it, is a signature of the composer on its sleeve. The musicians are credited on record: all songs by soprano Bette Bere accompanied by the composer Sándor Diosszegi on piano. The artist who made the watercolor that adorns the sleeve is also named: Csaba Zongor. The watercolor is signed Csaba 79 which gave me an indication as to how to date this record. It's not my favorite sleeve ever but hey...

Lőrincréve Népzenéje

Folk Music from Lőrincréve
Arrangements by Ferenc Sebő
Hungaroton, SLPX 18102
Made in Hungary, 1986

I found this lovely LP with Hungarian folk music in a thrift store in Charlotte Harbor. A half year ago I also found some Hungarian records at that very same thrift store. Coincidence? It had a plastic sleeve around it—for the protection of the photograph of this lovely man in a Hungarian folk dance pose—that told me the LP had been taken good care of. Despite the title being in English all texts are Hungarian (there is a hint that there once would have been a paper inside with English texts), so I can't give you many specifics or background stories concerning this record. What I do know is that the music on the record are traditional folk songs/tunes arranged by Ferenc Sebő. The track that I selected is vocal without instrumentation. The track consists of three songs performed by the vocal ensemble Tátika Énekegyüttes. Sebő is a well known folklorist, musician, and band leader, he launced the career of the famous singer Márta Sebestyén. Track B4 consists of the songs Kék ibolya, ha leszakítanálak (Blue Violet), Falu végén van egy vályú (There Is a Through), and Én Istenem, teremtőm (Oh, My God, Good Lord). The last two seem vaguely reminiscent of other songs (in a different language) but I can't bring them home. (Listen for yourself.)

Peanuts

Showtime at the Drumbeat
Tropical Recording Co., LP – 2470
Southeastern Records, Hialeah, FL, 1964

Showtime at the Drumbeat
backside with signature

The (semi) legendary John Berkely "Peanuts" Taylor (MBE) ruled the show club industry in Nassau, Bahamas in the 1960s and 70s. Peanuts owned the Dreambeat. It was founded in 1964, the year I was born. The club doesn't exist anymore but Peanuts still occasionally delights the tourists coming in to the Nassau seaport with a virtuous drumbeat performance, "a snapshot of the young tiny Peanut that danced its way into hearts over seventy years ago." Records with Peanuts Taylor are not that rare here in Southern Florida, so close to the Bahamas, but I am delighted every time I find one. You can imagine then how I felt to come across this signed copy of Showtime at the Drumbeat to add to my ever growing collection of signed records. More than half of this collection features performers from the tourist nightclub industry. Showtime at the Drumbeat features calypsos by various different performers, all managed by Peanuts, some became well known in their own right (i.e. Richie Delamore, Johnny Kemp). To share with you I did however select one of the four tracks on the album performed by Peanuts himself on goombay and conga drums. All four tracks are untitled and the following is the third. The one track in which Peanuts is most prominently featured.

The Little Sparrow

Edith Piaf – Les Plus Grands Succès
avec l'orchestre Robert Chauvigny
Columbia, C 83 340, Made in Germany

There's nothing unusual or rare about this disc with music of Edith Piaf. Every single song on it I already had on one of my other Piaf records, it was even my third or even fourth copy, or version for some songs on this "greatest hits". The biggest ones are all on it: there's La Vie en Rose, Non, Je ne Regrette Rien, Milord, Les Trois Cloches, and so on. I liked the cover image, green stickers were half off at the Goodwill so I only had to pay 50 cents, and it has been a while since listened to Piaf, so I took it home. And when I played it after all these years since hearing all these songs, I was stunned because of how beautiful these recordings really are. So intense, so timeless, so beautiful. If you're like me and you haven't heard the songs of Edith Piaf for a few years, I recommend to dig into your vinyl collection, go to the French chanson section (or to the the letter P, or to wherever you may have filed Piaf under), and play your Piaf records again. I guarantee you won't be disappointed. Listen to this 1950 recording of Hymne à l'Amour to get you in the mood. And if, by any chance, you're one of the few people in the world who doesn't have a copy of this song, you can download it here.                 

Teresa Trull

Teresa Trull – The Ways a Woman Can Be
Olivia Records, LF 910B
Los Angeles, CA, 1977

The best thing about shopping for records in thrift stores is when you come upon a specific mini collection from a specific individual. These mini collections are often quite intriguing and when I'm intrigued enough about a previous owner I like to buy all the records that were dumped at this thrift store. I live for the days that I find records from an unusual (in terms of rarity of record finds) country all together in one store. Once I bought a whole box filled up with Latvian records and another time I bought 15 Philippine records in one haul. Sometimes you'll find records of a certain topic or genre, and another time the type of labeling will give away that the records once belonged to one collection. The collections are most interesting to me if it concerns somewhat obscure records, a different set of records than those that anyone could have. I didn't think anything of it when I came upon two Chris Williamson records yesterday (one I already had—I only like it so-so), but when more women-only records from the 1970s showed up my mind became focused. It's not the first time I've encountered a feminist thrift-store record dumping but this was yet more specific. Studying the sleeves of records by Teresa Trull and Jade & Sarsaparilla it became clear that I was dealing with a collection that once belonged to a lesbian woman (or couple). I went back through the rows of records I had already been through to find all those LPs that probably came from this anonymous collector. I ended up with 7 records, including two by Edith Piaf that I suspect belonged to the same owner. Next week I'll post something about this Parisian cultural icon nicknamed The Little Sparrow but today I'll forward a song by Teresa Trull. I had never heard of her but that is not a surprise given that liner notes state that the record is intended for a female audience only (I'm a male by the way). Everything to do with the record is feminine, from the name of the record company to the production, and all music, lyrics, and musicians as well. That I had never heard of her does not mean she's completely unknown mind you, she's not. She has her own Wikipedia page and has recorded several albums. Maybe she's not a mainstream name but obscure she isn't either. Listen to the song Woman-Loving Women from her first album The Ways a Woman Can Be from 1977.

Yolanda

Los Embajadores Criollos – Cofre de Recuerdos
I.E.M.P.S.A., Odeon del Peru, LD-1507

My wife is an avid collector of gems and jewelry. She's an authority if it comes to recognizing gems, stones, and minerals. So when I come across a record cover that features a treasure chest, or another collection of gems and jewelry, I'll take it along. This happens more often than you might think. Especially within Spanish language music records. For some reason the background in most of these records is red, the music often easy listening. But not always! Cofre de Recuerdos by the Peruvian trio Les Embajadores Criollos is a beautifully rendered album of Creole Peruvian songs. Half of the songs on the album have a woman's name as title. What's missing on the record is the customary Maria song. As you may have noticed by now I collect songs about and by Marias. Maria is my wife's name, and she has the most beautiful name in the world but this week we'll have to do with Yolanda (it's a nice name too, isn't it?) Los Embajadores Criollos aka "Los Ídolos del Pueblo" are Romulo Varillos, Alejandro Rodriguez, and Carlos Correa. They formed in 1949 and still perform to this day (even though leader Romulo Varillos died in 1998), the record presented here is probably from the late fifties. Enjoy!

Maria Toledo

Stan Getz & Luiz Bonfa – Jazz Samba Encore!
Verve V6-8523, MGM Records, USA, 1963

Musical Thrift Store Treasures is starting to look more and more like a Who's Who Named Maria. The newest addition in this category is the singer Maria Toledo (1937-2010), the first singer to record bossa nova with Stan Getz, and married to the composer (and Getz collaborator) Luiz Bonfa. Jazz Samba Encore! features besides Getz, Toledo, and Bonfa, also Antonio Carlos Jobim, another Brazilian composer (beside Bonfa) whose fame did in retrospect outshine Getz'. Jazz Samba Encore! was the follow up album to the hugely successful Jazz Samba (Stan Getz with Charlie Byrd) and the precursor to Getz/Gilberto, an even huger success than Jazz Samba. While Jazz Samba is a very familiar record (with the hit Desafinado) in numerous collections, and Getz/Gilberto (with its Girl from Ipanema) a requirement for any record collection, I had never seen or heard Jazz Samba Encore! A simple on-line inquiry to these three records show that there is a fourth one in the "Getz goes bossa nova series". Getz/Gilberto Volume 2 comes like the other three with a signature painting by Olga Albizu on the cover.

Listen to the song Menina Flor, written by Luiz Bonfa and Maria Toledo.

The Lotus Palace

The Alan Lorber Orchestra – The Lotus Parade
Verve Records, MGM, V6-8711, 1967
Made in the USA, Alan Lorber Productions, Inc.

This week's tune is by The Alan Lorber Orchestra. I had announced its coming last week by virtue of the nudity on the cover. In Wikipedia I read (I had never heard of Alan Lorber or that record) that Lorber was a leading arranger of pop music in the 1960s and that he created the so called "Bosstown Sound" (or "Boston Sound"), he had recorded over 2,000 records that earned well over $60 million. The Lotus Palace is one of the few records under Lorber's own name and his best known. The music on the record are played with electronic pop, and classical Indian musical instruments. The intention was to make a hybrid of pop, jazz, and Indian music, but the results are cheap and cheezy easy listening tunes, mostly soft versions of well known pop standards such as Up, Up and Away, and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Still, it's all well done—and for the sake of novelty—it resides in my collection's A-list. The pick of the litter is the tune Roopaka Dha Teri Dhin Dhin, the only song on the LP that is not a cover version but written for the occasion. The author is Collin Walcott, who plays the sitar on the record.

Hot Rhythm

Cal Tjader Mambo Quintet – Ritmo Caliente!
Fantasy Records, 3-216, 1957, San Francisco

The 1950s was the decade in which the 10" 78 rpm records were gradually replaced with the 12" 33 rpm ones. And cheesecake erotica covers appeared as soon as the LPs came along apparently to increase sale numbers. It probably worked too but I wouldn't know to what extend. I do know for a fact that there are record collectors out there that buy every depiction of nudity on a sleeve they can get their hands on. I'm not one of them but a cute nude picture doesn't deter my selections either. The naked women on the sleeves in the 50s and 60s were somewhat obscured as full nudity was taboo still. Three major categories can be distinguished: multiple exposures as on the Cal Tjader above, body paint (as on a famous Paul Mauriat cover), and slide projections. Next week's post will have an example of slide projections on women's bodies on an Alan Lorber jazz album. The Ritmo Caliente! vinyl is colored bright red and that's the last thing I'll mention about the appearance of the LP. 

The 1950s was also the decade that jazz music started to look at music from outside the US borders. The first focus was Cuba. Cuban jazz orchestras had already captured an audience in the big cities of the US before Dizzy Gillespie collaborated with Cuban musicians to make the first crossover Latin jazz recordings. It became a craze in the 1950s. Cal Tjader was one of the most important jazz musicians that hired Cuban musicians to play in his bands and his Mambo Quintet of the mid/late 50s is considered one of the outstanding Latin jazz combos of all time. Ritmo Caliente! consists of some of the earlier recordings by this band (and by Tjader as a bandleader). The recordings on this record were made in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1954, and a few additional tracks in New York in 1955. The biggest difference between the LA and SF recordings is the addition of a flute in San Francisco. The New York recordings had different personnel. Lamento de Hodi, the track below was recorded in 1955 in New York and features Jerome Richardson on flute, Al McKibbon-bass, Armando Perazas-conga and bongos, Manuel Duran on piano, and the vibraphones of Cal Tjader.

This is Rumania

This is Rumania
Parliament, PLP 119
New York, 1960

We've seen it all before; when the first word in the subtitle spells "authentic", it's most likely far from it. In the case of This is Rumania it's really not that far but yet far enough. The recordings were probably made in Romania (Rumania, as it used to be spelled) but were not made by the people of the land but by their stars and professionals. It is not folk music as the sleeve claims, but professional entertainment. In comparison with an authentic record (such as Folk Music of Rumania on Folkways, with recordings made by Bela Bartok) we hear some of the same melodies and rhythms but they are orchestrated and arranged. And unlike on the Bela Bartok one, the singers have of course perfect pitch here. As we've seen before too on so many records found in the thrift stores I've been writing about, two of the four solo vocal performers on This is Rumania have the first name Maria. I have quite a collection of singers named Maria, and it grows unproportionally fast. One of the Marias is the singer Maria Tanase, she is not new in my collection, but the other one, Maria Lataretu (1911-1972) I had never heard of before. That is not to say she wasn't a celebrity, she was, she has her own Wikipedia page if may use that as a criterion for famous. Maria Lataretu is the singer on the sample from the record I selected. The title La Vitai La Rasarit is translated on the sleeve as "I was looking eastwards..." and on the label as "I looked to the sunrise".

Boogie Woogie

Pete Johnson/Albert Ammons – 8 to the Bar
Two Piano Boogie Woogie for Dancing
Victor Records P-69, RCA Victor, 1941

Sixth Avenue is a street that probably exists in every city in every English speaking country, yet seeing the title Sixth Avenue Express on a jazz record you just know it's Sixth Avenue in New York City. I mentioned last week the purchase of this 78 rpm 4-record set by Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons. It contains eight sides with boogie woogie piano music, issued as a dance album. And danceable they are, from the slow moving walking-speed Walkin' the Boogie, to the fast pace subway train-speed of Sixth Avenue Express, all make your fingers snap and your toes tap. Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons are two of the three (with Meade Lux Lewis) great boogie woogie pianists, a craze that started in 1938 with a concert by Ammons and Johnson and lasted through the early 1940s. You can listen to Sixth Avenue Express below and download it here.

78 Discs

Wilmoth Houdini – Calypsos
Decca Album No. 78
Made in the U.S.A.
Recorded 9/11/1939 in New York 

Decca Album No. 78, inside

Decca Album No. 78, back

When I look for records at thrift stores I always check out the 78 discs but hardly ever do I come home with one. Hardly ever do I find a title I'm interested in and if I do it's usually in such a bad condition that I have to leave it behind. Often I don't even bother to look at those records without a protective sleeve. I am amazed how some (bloggers) still come up with so many treasures and baffled by the posts on (for example) Excavated Shellac. Where the heck do all those records come from? I've been looking for them discs for over a decade but gathered only about a 100 of them: an album with Latvian (classical) discs, some interesting C&W (Hank Williams, Lester Flatt, Roy Acuff, a/o), and I only found one blues disc ever (Tampa Red). Yesterday however I picked up some nice discs, one by Carmen Miranda, and a 4 disc album by Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons. I leave that for next week as I forward now the nicest album of my modest 78 collection: Decca Album No. 78.

The full title of it is Decca Presents A Special Collection of the World-Famous Music of Trinidad by Wilmoth Houdini and His Royal Calypso Orchestra. It's a beautifully packaged  three disc album. Half of the six songs on it deal with some current events of 1939, the year it was recorded. I love that about Calypso music, how their songs are so often narratives on topics that were talked about by the people in the streets. To share with you here I selected The Welcome of Their Majesties, which talks about the first ever visit of British Royalty to the U.S.

Trémolos

La Familia Santiago – Trémolos y Alabanzas
Grabaciones Genesis, GR-LP-3

Cristóbal Santiago, San José, Puerto Rico, 1972

Trémolos y Alabanzas is only the third record to appear on the Puerto Rican label Genesis. I wonder how many records Cristóbal Santiago ended up producing before the label would go belly up. Father Cristóbal Santiago recorded this record with his wife Rosa Viruet de Santiago, and their children Milagros, Wifredo, Altagracia, and Rosita. There are also appearances Raffi Amaro and Los Embajadores de Luz on this record. On the photo (above) the four children all look to be about the same age, I wonder what they're doing these days, 40 years after performing in church with their father. Do they still play mandolin? Do they still perform in church? The record is signed and dedicated to Hector Graciani and his fiance Doria Encarna, there's an address and phone number on the label, but whatever I type into a search box I don't get any results that link to this record. I like it when musicians have absolutely no presence on the internet; everything I write here about the Santiago family will be a first. And I can do no better than to make a few assumptions.  

There's something about Christian records that makes me want to revert irony, sarcasm, or even ridicule, when discussing the music. But you gotta believe me that this is something about me, and not about them, the Santiago family. It's me, raised a Christian, and no matter how well I realize the hypocrisy of it all, there remains more than just a little bit of a Christian in me. 

Below you'll find the title track of the record that was written by Cristóbal Santiago.

Legend of the Jivaro

Yma Sumac – Legend of the Jivaro
Capitol Records T770, 1957
Conducted by Moises Vivanco

A shrunken head speaks to the imagination. It represents the fear for the most unruly tribes of the world. Like the big human cooking pots from Africa, cannibalism in New Guinea, shrunken heads became part of the folklore of the Western world. The custom of shrunken heads was practiced by the tribes of the northeastern Amazon forest, including areas of Peru. I've seen a shrunken head once in a museum and that image certainly became etched in my brain. A year ago I found a postcard with a shrunken head image on it at a thrift store and now I own a record with a shrunken head on it. It is Legend of the Jivaro by Yma Sumac. If it's a real shrunken head hanging in front of Yma Sumac I do not know. The use of the word authenticity in the first sentence of the liner notes is usually a red flag. The claims made in the first paragraph of this text is that Sumac learned the songs from the notorious headhunters and that her voice is accompanied by "exotic native instrumental settings". The latter is certainly not true as the instrumentation is mostly the common western orchestra, occasionally embellished with some pan flutes or conga drums. Sumac herself was considered by many a hoax in the day (the 1950s) as it was rumored that she was a certain Amy Camus (Yma Sumac spelled backwards) who was born in Brooklyn. But her persona was authentic, she was born as Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo in Peru, and by the Peruvian government officially considered an Inca princess with direct ancestry to Atuhualpa. Hoax or not, she certainly had a magnificent voice that could reach up to five octaves. I selected two songs of hers to share with you today: Wanka (The Seven Winds), from the Legend of the Jivaro album, and Chuncho from Inca Taqui (Chants of the Incas). At the same time I was preparing this post I also painted Sumac's portrait to include in my Top 100 blog:
 http://berrystop100.blogspot.com/

The song Chuncho is found on my list The 100 Greatest Recordings Ever at #41.

El Peru con Flor

El Peru con Flor Sinqueña
Conjunto Armonias, Orq: Matices del Peru
Iempsa, 72.15.1821, Lima, Peru, 1989

I still can't get enough of playing those Peruvian records I got a few weeks ago and this one by "La voz filamonica del Peru" is my latest favorite from that modest collection. The record situates itself right in the center between the other two I posted on a few weeks back; it's to the left of the western orchestrated, beautiful and smooth music of the singer Maria Jesus Vazquez, but well right of the raw huaylas by that Huanca orchestra I wrote about. The orchestra here has the characteristics of the traditional huayno orchestras of Central Peru and other Andean regions. Flor's voice is pretty straight forward without any frills, no emotive extroversion, but solid and sober. The language is Spanish (as opposed to Quechua). Most of the tracks on El Peru con... are  in the huaynos style (a dance), but a few tunantadas are also included. Below you can listen to an example of both. First the uptempo huayno Vas a Llorar, and then the slower tunantada Mi Ultimo Aviso. I'm in the process of learning Spanish but I'm not nearly far enough to understand Spanish language web sites (I can barely count till twenty) so haven't been able to find too much information on the singer Flor Sinqueña. Translated sites don't go much beyond calling her "Flower Sinqueña. I once saw a film about rocker Neil Young on German TV; they translated the name Johnny Rotten in the song lyrics of Hey Hey My My as Johnny Verdorben.

Appalachia

Instrumental Music of the 
Southern Appalachians
Tradition Records, TLP 1007
Recorded in 1956

I do not like the sleeve, and it's not quite of the same caliber as some other field recording collections from the region (say Mountain Music of Kentucky, recorded by John Cohen), but it is still a great find, especially on a red tag 50% day at the Goodwill with a red price tag of 99 cents on it. You can't even buy a candy bar for 50 cents anymore, and the vinyl is in great condition. Finding field recording records in itself makes for a good day at thrift store. The field work on this record wasn't too extensive, everything was recorded in a few days and only two or three families were involved. It was all recorded in the summer of 1956 in Virginia and North Carolina by Diane Hamilton, Liam Clancy, and Paul Clayton. They're all instrumental versions of well known traditional ballads. In the liner notes the story for each song is outlined. The recordings are of good quality and the musicianship is of good quality as well. Below you can find a small sampling of the tunes on the record. Cripple Creek is performed on a fiddle by Hobart Smith, Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad on guitar by Etta Baker, and Sally Goodin on dulcimer by Mrs. Edd Presnell. Two of the three tunes are typically played on a different instrument than you can hear here. Sally Goodin is really a fiddle tune while the fidle tune Cripple Creek is mostly played on a banjo.

Maria Callas

Maria Callas as Lucia di Lammermoor
Opera in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti
Recorded in Florence, Italy, 1953
Seraphim, IB-6032, New York, 1968

One of the few truly great and historically significant performers whose records can be found real cheap at any thrift store is Maria Callas. I've gathered so many opera recordings over the years that I stopped collecting the genre, only for Maria Callas I make an exception. A whole shelve is dedicated to her records. One of the outstanding performances the soprano Maria Callas is remembered for is her role as Lucia in Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor. Her dazzling 1953 recording, directed by Tulio Serafin, made her the biggest star of classical music in the world. She was born in America in 1923 but didn't make her American debut until 1954, the same year as Elvis Presley's. I had heard Maria Callas as Lucia before but when I found this 2LP set by Seraphim, I had to play the whole opera right away. The aria I selected to share is called Il dolce suono...Spargi d'amaro pianto, it takes place at the end of scene one in act 3, when Lucia goes mad after after murdering her husband on the wedding night. The scene is known as the "mad scene" and is, according to the liner notes "the most famous, most challenging, most brilliant music ever written for the coloratura soprano". I'm not sure if it's my favorite scene from the opera but surely the most recognizable and iconic. I don't think it sounds all that "mad", maybe a little cuckoo, but not insane. The record I bought at a Goodwill store is in mint condition except for precisely the mad scene that has skips and scratches. The previous owner must have played that many times while leaving the rest as new. Lucia di Lammermoor was written in 1835 and premiered that year in Naples. You can listen to the full 11+ minutes of sheer cuckooness below.

Huaynos, Huancas, and Huaylas

Orquesta Seleccion Huanca – Lo Mejor del Huaylas
Fabricado por "El Virrey" Industrias Musicales S.A.
VIR–0001194, 1983, Peru

Lo Mejor del Huaylas is the traditional Peruvian record I promised to write about last week. It's an LP recorded by the Orquesta Seleccion Huanca directed by Freddy Centty. The terms "Huaylas" and "Huanca" are a little confusing because they both could refer to a geographical area or village in Peru, or to a dance. Huanca furthermore is the name of the Quechua Indians of Central Peru. I believe that the "Huaylas" in the title refers to the musical form (dance) and the "Huanca" in the name of the orchestra to the Native Central Peruvian Quechuas. In the form of the CD series Traditional Folk Music of Peru produced by Smithsonian Folkways I already had quite a selection of Huaylas and Huancas but until a few weeks ago I did have any commercially produced local examples of either style. To make it even more confusing I found a record by the singer Flor Sinqueña singing "Huaynos" at the same store I found the Huanca record. Of the three terms "Huaynos" is the most popular and generally known style of music from Peru. Be it Huaynos, Huancas, or Huaylas, if I find a record tagged with any of these terms in the thrift stores I'll take it. They're worth collecting and so far none has disappointed me. You can download Rompe Catre the first track from Lo Mejor del Huaylas here, and/or listen to it below.