There is something that is kind of appealing about this country/gospel LP. Jim Gill runs through a bunch of styles (often within the same song) and the band is pretty tight. There is definitely some cool, smart and humorous songwriting going down here and often that’s a tough thing to find on gospel LPs. From […]
Dreamy & relaxing new age soundscapes, heavy on flute & synth. This LP has four long tracks that will take you away to your happy place. Released in 1980 on Avocado Records, beautiful stuff from Santa Monica. Check out a clip of “Morning Meditation” to start your day off right. [Audio clip: view full post […]
This 1973 LP is a product of a “workshop” styled big band which was put together in Wellington by American Frank Diliberto. The album itself tries to cover a few too many different styles of Jazz to be a consistent listen from front to back, but there are definitely some great moments. Diliberto directs the […]
Here’s a cool 45 that is a product of the headache inducing labyrinth of entangled record labels out of Greenville Mississippi in the mid-late 1960s. The fact that this is such a direct bite of Darrell Banks’ massive “Open The Door To Your Heart” seems audacious & probably is. Vikki Styles released just two (possibly […]
Sometimes it seems a bit easy to overlook just how much of a nuclear blast upon music worldwide old Elvis Presley really was. What with so many images of overweight Vegas Elvis floating around it’s pretty easy to forget that young budding singers everywhere wanted to be just like him. Now by everywhere, I don’t […]
Today Wally James Cosgren is a singing evangelist in Florida with his own ministry. But this 45 obviously harks bark to an earlier time, possibly the early 1970s? Two original songs appear on this 45, “Lonely Guitar” is a ballad & “Guitar Fraction” is more of a uptempo offering. Both feature Wally on guitar & […]
I have never seen this label before & I guess from the number that it’s maybe the third or fourth release on what appears to be a private or custom label out of Lincoln, Nebraska. I don’t think it’s related to the other large custom Century label at all. I don’t know if the band […]
This 45 from 1969 really makes me wish I knew of more records that were released with the combined purposes of boosting potato chip sales (Smiths Crisps) and kick starting new dance crazes (The Crunch). The Crunch as a dance craze never caught on and how to do The Crunch is definitely lost to the […]
The Troubled Mind(s) were a late 60s band that started off in Napier, New Zealand around 1966/67 and then moved to Auckland around July 1967. The band seems to have disbanded shortly after releasing this, their third and final 45 in February 1969. Their earlier stuff covered more of a traditional 60s R&B style and […]
This is an excellent feel good Gospel LP out of 1970s Wisconsin. I like the fact that it only has one sermon & the other six tracks are great uplifting songs. I’m not usually a fan of stuff with big choirs but the strength of the soloists & the band on this are for some […]
This is a really solid set of mid-late 70s folk/country/blues. Everything is well played & Rucker has a great singing voice. Variations in instrumentation keep things fresh throughout (harmonica, banjo, fiddle etc) & Rucker is adept & convincing over all the material. Of the thirteen tracks here four of them are from the Robert Johnson […]
I’m not usually so big on big band/stage band music these days, but there is still something about a tight, well played, forward thinking arrangement that can still hook me in on any given day. This LP from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside’s premier jazz ensemble from 1979 is a case in point. I picked this […]
Every Easter weekend since 1963 has seen the National Jazz Festival held in my home city of Tauranga, New Zealand. For a number of those early festivals through to the 1980s, highlights were recorded & released on a compilation LP. This one documents the sixth festival from 1968. Granted, although I haven’t actually lived in […]
New Orleans based label Seven B is definitely something of a mixed bag & can usually be categorised as 45s Eddie Bo was involved with & ones that he had no part of. Finding 45s on this label will either land you with unbearably cheesy country, slightly more tolerable piano instrumentals or some of the […]
Here’s an interesting record from a bygone era. Not only were Auckland’s Zodiac Records one of the biggest local independent labels of the 50s & 60s, as an aspiring musician you could also use their facilities to cut your own record. This 45 was recorded on the 5th of October 1955 in immediately pre-rock & […]
This is an interesting soul/funk 45 out of Chicago that would appear to date from about 1969/70. Not much is known about the group & I have been told by different people that they were & weren’t the same group that recorded for Blue Light as the Intensions, so that just really confuses things. It […]
This is a monster of a slice of mid-60s Australian garage rock. I haven’t researched that much about this 45, but I do know that it will melt your speakers! (check out when the pummelling guitar riff comes in about 3/4 of the way through) The flip is their version of “I’m A Man” that […]
Ray Columbus & The Invaders were the most commercially successful of New Zealand’s R&B based beat bands. Formed around 1960 in Christchurch, they went through a number of lineup changes before disbanding in 1965. 1962-63 saw them move north to be based in Auckland before leaving for Sydney, Australia for 1964 onwards. Their early 1964 […]
John & Ed Strickland seem to have been something of a none to one almost hit wonder group, it’s actually been pretty tough to find any information on these guys or this 45. The actual A side is a nice mid/slow version of Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City Blues” that draws equally from country & R&B […]
This was exactly what the world needed back in 1975, another version of “Tobacco Road”. It’s one of my favorite songs ever & has been covered by every man & his dog worldwide. This 45 is a version of it by a band that I’d never heard of & a label I’d never seen before […]
Crazy beatnik jazz from the 50s, heavy on the scat, bongos & humour. They have another EP before this one but I don’t know of anything else this group did apart from these two EPs on King. I suspect they both featured smilarly excellent cover art & the longer tracks (“Who Parked The Car” & […]
Joe Cobb was a well known radio DJ on Chicago’s WVON for many years in the 60s & 70s. He cut this 45 for the local Ex-Pect-Mo label in 1972 & it was then picked up nationally by Cutlass out of Nashville who gave the record the much more colorful label & slightly altered X-Pect-Mo […]
Since there seems to have been something of a run on UK jazz on Waxidermy lately, here is an interesting 45 to share. Alan Clare was a UK pianist who had a pretty long career & a touch of mainstream success from the 40s through to the 80s. Most of the online discographies for Clare […]
I believe Choreo was a company that specialised in instructional dance records. This 45 has a couple of nice jazz tracks that feature somewhat quirky intros before hitting with some pretty nice jazz grooves. Does anyone have more information on the label, or know if they have other worthwhile releases? [Audio clip: view full post […]
This 45 is a pretty good piece of late 1950s rockabilly from New Zealand. Back in those days it seems that New Zealand rock & rollers would do songs about anything “Pie Cart Rock & Roll” & “Blackberry Boogie” come to mind. This song written by on Dood Williams (cool name) comes to us on […]