A re-up, by request, from Aug. 22, 2022. I've revived most of the original text:
Today's budget twist-ploitation offering is a surprisingly entertaining Grand Prix (Pickwick) LP by Tubby Chess and His Candy Stripe Twisters.
Or, if you'd prefer, Tyler King and the Twisters; Robby Robber and His Hi-Jackers; Big Bill Twister and His Minters; Tiny Doolittle and the Twisters; Barry Norman and the Toppers; Beep Bottomley and His Twisters; Ray Gunn and His Blasters (my favorite!); Mickey Mocassin; Jerry Long and the Teen Twisters; or The Five Diamonds. Take your pick: all or some of these tracks were also issued across the budget spectrum under these fake group names.
There's a common link here: Record producer and exec Ed Chalpin, who penned every one of today's selections (save for The Twist) under the nom de plume Ed Dantes. The fine folks at the excellent Facebook page Brand "X" Records helped me in tracking down the alternate band names, though the priceless Ed Chalpin/Ed Dantes info is courtesy of my friend Brian McFadden, a journalist and pop culture expert whose books Rock Rarities for a Song and Rare Rhythm and Blues on Budget LPs I've plugged before at this blog--and I'm plugging them again. They're great, highly informative reads, and both manage to provide a very useful budget-label overview.
So... Ed Dantes; real name: Ed Chalpin. (Be sure to read the terrifying story of Chalpin and Jimi Hendrix at the Wikipedia link.) A very busy provider of sound-alike hits to a variety of jobber-rack record labels during the early 1960s, but were his own compositions any good? Well, in this case, they're highly derivative, and they display every sign of having been churned out in a hurry, but they genuinely rock. (Or, rather, twist.) And, whoever these anonymous singers and musicians happened to be, they're more than adequate.
And, back to the present (March 28, 2025), this rip was made with VinylStudio from a monaural copy, whereas my previous post was channel-summed from the fake stereo edition, which required a good deal of volume normalizing, thanks to the endless r/l panning by the engineer (presumably, to enhance the stereo effect, I guess). So, true mono this time. Whether or not these tracks even exist in true stereo, I don't know.
DOWNLOAD: Tubby Chess and His Candy Stripe Twisters Do The Twist.zip
The Twist (Hank Ballard)
Oh This Is Love
Swinging Papa
Yes, She Knows
My Baby Couldn't Dance
I Need Your Love
I Just Couldn't Take It
Hey, Little Girl
Take a Chance
Loving You
(Selections 2-10 by Ed Chalpin)
Lee
12 comments:
Fats Domino ... Chubby Checker ... Tubby Chess. How many of these were there? Was there a Porky Parcheesi? Or, alternatively, a Skinny Scrabble?
LOL! Or maybe Buff Battleship...
Do I feel a complete new theme for posting songs/artists comin' up Lee? :-))
Good things come to those who wait! Excellent transfer. The Mono mix sounds really good! It is so good to listen to this album once again. With all the unnecessary echo removed, the Mono mix gives us an edge that was missing in the Stereo one. As I mentioned the first time this album was posted, a couple of these tracks, particularly "Oh This Is Love" and "I Need Your Love" would have been perfect for the Ben E. King-lineup of the Drifters. "I Need Your Love" also sounds like it was recorded at a different time and not during the same sessions when the bulk of this album was recorded. Some of Ed Chalpin's lyrics to these songs certainly have that rushed out feel to them. "Swinging Papa" could have easily been the monster Chubby Checker hit that never was, while "Yes She Knows" adds some solid Doo-Wop vocal harmonies to the mix and has a great saxophone solo in the instrumental break, plus it helps to bring a solid Rock flavor to the proceedings. The group that recorded the bulk of this album should have recorded the title cut as well; I could barely just get through the first couple of minutes before I clicked off. By far one of the best, if not THE best budget-label twist albums out there. Four out of 5 stars from me.
Reprising the "Biographical information" on this "Group" that I found on the back of the Ray Gunn and Robby Robber versions of this album: :
"As a group, the boys have been together for nearly two years, and have backed such artists as Ben E. King (misspelled "Benny King" here), Rosemarie and Bo, Pete and Ernest, Tony Middleton, etc. on such labels as Atlantic, United Artists, King, etc. The goal of the boys is to make a hit LP on their own, and with this waxing of the TWIST we think they have it made."
"'Robby' Robber (guitar) and leader of the Hi-Jackers is 20 years old and formerly with the Scot Brothers."
Bob Gibson (bass guitar) is 24 years old and from Detroit. He is formerly with the Diabloes."
"Steve Barnes (1st tenor) 23 years old. Has appeared with the rest of the group on the Mill Grant TV show."
"Joey Grant (2nd tenor), 21 years old. Was formerly with Harvey and the New Moonglows, & also was featured in a Rock and Roll movie."
Like your comment, Buster! Made me laugh.
Surprisingly, your original link still works! The heavily-echoed fake Stereo reminds of Mercury's Electronically Reprocessed Stereo albums.
RecordCollector,
You mean, with the last two posts? Yeah, I'll probably feature a couple more of these, then move on to... whatever strikes me! I don't plan to redo my twist-ploitation period of 2022-2023, which I undertook to test a theory of mine--namely, that pop music fads and crazes are things to explore in depth, that such efforts (contrary to logic) often prove far more fun and feature more variety than we'd think. By all logic, one twist-ploitation LP should sound like any other, but as I anticipated, this was not the case.
musicman1979,
Thanks for the nice words--I was very pleased with the VinylStudio program results, though I'm obsessing over a click I'd failed to suppress. (It's just my OCD at work!) Yes, fine stuff, and wonderful to hear the un-messed-with mono. I'd forgotten about the infernal echo that typically goes with faux stereo (and which mars all attempts to sum the channels and/or pick one channel and "double" it). Thanks for the jacket info on the artists (I wonder if we can trust it!).
And I also detected a few pre-twist-era tracks. As for "The Twist," I think it's probably the standard Pickwick knockoff. I'll have to compare it to the Top Hit Tunes version at my YT channel, since at that point, THT was co-releasing Pickwick material. Four out o five stars seems just about right. And what am I doing up at this hour? I mean, besides typing at my PC?
Lee, thanks for your reaction to my comment.
Yes, I was indeed refurring to the last 2 posts. It's those posts with the uncommon stuff that I dig here at your blog :-)) Actually I dig all your posts on the www.
Don't forget the great Lard Lotto.
Thanks for adding to my Twist collection. Can't find this stuff anywhere else.
RecordCollector, Ice Nine,
Thanks! And I'll keep this material coming. I wish my main (former) hosting site hadn't dropped so many of my 2022-2023 shares. Needless to note, people aren't fighting to get their mitts on the kind of stuff I'm sharing, so I have no idea why there would be copyright concerns. And, in the case of the Ed Chalpin tracks, they were replicated across the budget lines back in the day, and so it's no big deal to share them out 60-plus years later.
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