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.

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.