Johnny Douglas and His Orchestra: "Dance Party Discotheque" (RCA Camden CAL-833; 1965)

 

Not quite what I expected, but after a little research, it seems to me that British discotheques of the 1960s--or even the U.S. kind--might have provided music which potentially could have appealed "to EVERY member of the family," as the liner notes claim.  Certainly, in providing music for the many dances presented on this LP--twist, pony, hitch-hiker (yes, hitch-hiker), mashed potato, and so on--discotheques (those which utilized recordings) could have placed the needle down on a Vicki Carr, Si Zentner, Wayne Newton, OR Rolling Stones platter.  Instead of Satisfaction, dancers might have been greeted with Frank Sinatra's 1964 Somewhere in Your Heart.  Or Barbra Streisand's insufferable People, though I'm not sure what dance might go with same.  ("Hey, gang!  Let's do the People Who Need People!!")

Since AM radio was mixing "adult" fare with the Stones, Beatles, Beach Boys, Manfred Mann, et al., it's not inconceivable that latter-day big band music might have been heard in 1960s dancing clubs.  This is just speculation.  I was there, but I was very young, and I wasn't going to dance clubs.  But I vividly recall hearing Red Roses for a Blue Lady on my mother's car radio around 1965, and since I didn't know that "blue" meant "sad," I thought the title was hilarious. 

And there's one track in this list which I was sure could not have been a 1960s hit--The March of the Mods.  No way.  But it was, in fact, a big hit 1965 hit for Joe Loss and His Orchestra.  Oh, and apparently the Finnjenka is either a Finnish dance or based on one.

This LP has me thinking of that wonderful "Dance Time Discotheque" side I featured (in February) from the Columbia Special Products set, The Unforgettable Years, which has five teen Top 40 hits in charming big-band-ish arrangements.  So, were such sounds really happening in discotheques, or were the major labels reinventing popular music trends on the spot, as opposed to after the fact?  Like, for example, Rolling Stone has done with the late 1960s and early 1970s, presenting these years as a time dominated by Bob Dylan, protest numbers in general, and Eric Clapton?  I sure as heck don't recall every second hit sounding like Bob, and I remember B.J. Thomas, The Ides of March, The Carpenters, Glen Campbell, The Beginning of the End, The Royal Guardsmen, The Buckinghams, and Gary Puckett.  Rolling Stone remembers an infinite number of Dylan wanna-bes, and maybe in their multiverse that was the case.  But not in mine.  But I'll check again, just to be sure.

And just to make the point that received memories of the popular past are often... lacking.  Sparse.  Reductionist, even.  Products of wishful thinking.  We might remember an era as we'd have wanted it to happen vs. having to admit, for example, that Gimme Dat Ding was a monster 1970 hit.  Or that Tiny Tim was burning up the charts starting in 1968.  No, it was all British blues-rock.  And people trying to sound like Bob Dylan.

This was recorded in England, with vocals by "The Eagles."  The material doesn't especially move me, but it's opened my mind to the possibility that discotheque music of that period may have been more varied, more generationally inclusive, and whatnot than Shindig or Hullabaloo could lead us to believe.  Or, maybe Enoch Light's discotheque LPs weren't as far off the mark as I thought.  (And I wish I'd kept those.)

Oh, and the only written-for-this-collection number is We Got a Good Thing Going.  My favorite track: Downtown--wish there'd been more like it.  And don't miss the clever but hilariously dated liner notes.

DOWNLOAD: Dance Party Discotheque.zip

Rock 'n' Roll Music (Twist)

We Got a Good Thing Going (Pony)

Somewhere in Your Heart (Fox Trot)

Popeye (Hitch-Hiker)

Hawaii Tattoo (Merengue)

The Huckle Buck (Huckle Buck)

Call Me (Fox Trot)

The Loco-Motion

Downtown

The March of the Mods

Dance Party Discotheque--Johnny Douglas and His Orch. (RCA Camden CAL-883; 1965)

Lee

Tubby Chess and His Candy Stripe Twisters Do "The Twist" (Grand Prix K-187)--this time, in true mono!

 

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

Rockin' Rollin' and Strollin' (1958)--Bob Bain and His Music, with the Jack Halloran Singers!

 

From 1958, a very interesting--and surprisingly good!--LP by guitarist Bob Bain, who had worked with Bob Crosby, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and Nelson Riddle.  Naturally, he took easily to rock'n'roll, being a professional on a par with Al Caiola and George Barnes.  Which is to say, he had approximately 500 times the "chops" of Scotty Moore (no offense intended).  And, even with the Jack Halloran Singers in the background, most of these tracks rock nicely.  Or nicely rock--whatever.  When I saw "with the Jack Halloran Singers" on the back cover, my first thought was, "This will be a campfest."  It isn't, however--save maybe for Strollin' Home, a take on Antonin Dvořák's  Goin' Home.  That's getting just a little too silly.

And an interesting feature of/from this period of popular music--Namely, dances taking precedence over song titles--hence, the album name, Rockin' Rollin' and Strollin'.  And with each selection tethered to a current dance step.  This might provide some insight into the 1960-1962 twist craze, in which that particular dance was hyped as a new era in popular music.  Never mind that the twist is nothing more than old-fashioned eight-to-the-bar boogie-woogie.  With a backbeat.  Some of these would easily qualify.

Some of the tracks, including (not surprisingly) The Stroll, are offered up in a slow tempo, but there are plenty of brisk numbers, too.  And, many years ago, I met someone whose two chief categories of music were slow and fast.  It depended upon his mood.  Anyway, four numbers written and/or co-written by Bain, including Keen Teen, written in collaboration with Bain's old friend Freddie Slack.

And the jacket is pretty cool, though few of the young models look all that excited.  And... a surprise at my "Shellac City" YouTube channel, which is getting so few views, I'm not sure why I bother.  A new subscriber, and one with nice words for one of my restorations: The famous audio engineer Steve Hoffman.  Nothing like a compliment from one of the best.  And a couple days back, I blog-posted three shellac rips which pleased me a lot, all made on my VinylStudio program alone (my old MAGIX program, alas, is finished).  No response, so I deleted the entry.  Well, Steve Hoffman likes my work, anyway.

Oh, and the The Rock N' Roll March, as listed on the cover, shows up on the label as The Rock 'N Roll March.  Just what in the heck is so hard about 'n' as the contraction for "and"?  ("What are you doing?"  "I'm n'rollin'!")  N'rollin' to The Big Doowah.

DOWNLOAD: Bob Bain--Rockin' Rollin' and Strollin'.zip (Capitol T965; 1958)

The Stroll

Night Train Guitar

Keen Teen

At the Hop

The Rock N' Roll March

The Great Pretender

Raunchy   

Yeah Yeah

The Rock and Roll Waltz

The Big Doowah

The Dipsy Doodle

Strollin' Home

(With the Jack Halloran Singers)

Lee

Various artists for March, 2025--Vic Damone, Ray Ellis, Bobby Vinton, Tom Jones, Lester Lanin, more!

 

Seventeen tracks, ripped from both stereo and mono LPs, with (alas) no provision for a stereo-to-mono change for individual tracks.  Hence, the mono tracks aren't channel-summed, but life can be like that.  I'm now using VinylStudio as my stand-alone ripping and editing program (since my "ancient" MAGIX software has ceased to operate properly), and after a couple hours of learning the basics, I experienced a complicated glitch--one which had both me AND the AlpineSoft (makers of VS) help person puzzled.  And, somehow, I was the first to figure out the problem.  Namely, I had "cut" several sections of the audio project file, but upon saving/exporting the tracks, those deleted areas remained (not being "recognized" as deletions, which threw off my track indications).  I communicated my theory to the tech, he confirmed it, and he promised that the issue would be fixed.  How about that?

Meanwhile, I went to extra trouble to rescue these tracks--Namely, by burning them to CD-R (directly from VS), then RE-burning them and labeling everything in Mp3tag.  For some reason, the ripping software initially auto-identified the project as a Lena Horne album.  Yeah, no one sounds more like Carmen Cavallaro than Lena, I must say.

As ever, my "VA" collection hosts no theme, beyond an emphasis on fun and interesting tracks.  (I think so, anyway.)  We start with Lester Lanin's Salute to the Beatles, one of the earliest Fab Four acknowledgments in the post-teen-listener realm.  (Other "pioneers" in this regard include Henry Mancini, Herman Clebanoff--who is in this list--, and the Johnny Mann Singers.)  And, no offense to Arthur Fiedler, but his ridiculous take on I Want to Hold Your Hand turned me off to any and all Boston-Pops Beatles treatments.  Pretentious in a truly obnoxious way, that performance is sheer middlebrow junk.  A portent of "Pops" to come.  (No, I'm not a Pops fan.  How did you guess?)

Lanin's Salute to the Beatles, by contrast to Arthur, is great fun--and surprisingly effective.  It rocks!  Clearly, composers Lowe (?) and Lanin set out to faithfully capture the Invasion sound, and they did fine.  Carmen Cavallaro's 1951 Deep Night will always be one of my most favorite cuts, and though it's not technically exotica, it sounds very much like same.  So, in that regard, it is exotica.  Gimmick-free exotica, its impact owing to genius musicianship from all involved.  Andre's You and the Night and the Music is, to my ears, perfect mood music, and it dates back to at least 1950, if not earlier. Then, Clebanoff's terrific 1964 EZ-ized "P.S. I Love You," credited to "McCartney-Lennon."  From the conductor's Teen Hits LP, which unfortunately contains too few genuinely "teen" numbers.

Day Dream is from the amazing 1957 Joe Reisman LP, Door of Dreams, and it was penned by Irving Joseph and Joseph (Psycho) Stefano during the latter's brief songwriting stint.  Joe went on to write the brilliant screenplay for Hitchcock's Psycho, and he produced the first season of the best sci-fi show in TV history, The Outer Limits (as in, the original; don't get me started on the reboot).  Hard to believe that it's already 17 years since Joe's passing!  Stefano's least celebrated (but highly-rated) effort was the TV movie, Snowbeast.  I've seen it, and it's bad.  I hope JS got a Bigfoot-sized paycheck, anyway.

Joey's Song (did somebody say "Joe"?) has Joe Reisman presenting his own song in an especially catchy version.  On to Bobby Vinton, still with us and an unusually talented teen-idol singer whom I saw in person at the 1965 or 1966 Lucas County Fair.  The big surprise was that my Dad, a jazz musician and highly vocal nonfan of rock and roll, was pleased by Vinton's performance.  And we have 1965's Tina, co-written by Vinton and gorgeously produced, plus the Burt Bacharach-conducted (and redundantly titled!) Forever Yours I Remain, miscredited to "David Bacharach."  Hm.  One of Burt's brothers?  Anyway, one of the finest little-known Burt numbers.

                                                                                                                      Above: Vic Damon Sings

Vic Damone's superb 1959 The Night Has a Thousand Eyes is not the equally memorable Bobby Vee number, and unfortunately we're hearing it in faux stereo.  Which takes nothing away from the expert performance and score, of course.  Probably my favorite Damone side, and sometimes I think this fabulous vocalist don't get enough respect.  Then, speaking of Bacharach-David soul/R&B, we have Tom Jones' excellent 1968 rendering of I Wake Up Crying.  I recall it was sometime during the 1980s that I realized I love Tom Jones.  His singing, that is.  This great talent is still with us, and I'll never forget his NPR interview in which Tom demonstrated a razor-sharp sense of humor and humble sense of self.  Talk about a "real"-person celebrity.  Then, some extremely well-done 1961 Ray Ellis (and Chorus) renderings of School is Out, Pretty Little Angel Eyes, and Little Sister (forgive the slightly early cutoff).  Ray Ellis, sounding in 1961 like the musical director for Grease.  Uncanny.

1954's Stomp and Whistle is an expertly performed rock and roll side by David Carroll, of all people.  (Harry James also covered this number.)  And the Ray Charles Singers' 1968 Windy is pure "EZ" Top-40 as it once existed on FM.  Lovely nostalgia.  Great jacket, too.

More EZ, courtesy of Horst Jankowski, with a fine cover of the Jimmy Webb classic, Mac Arthur Park (or, if you're Richard Harris, Mac Arthur's Park), and a Jankowski-co-written instrumental And We Got Love (Ein Hoc der Liebe), which I found irresistible.  And it was in the mid-1980s that EZ radio stations suddenly dropped the classic, relaxing Jankowski/Kostelanetz/Conniff style in favor of an annoying thump-a-dump variety clearly designed to please my generation's love for what I term "thump-thump."  The change seemed to occur overnight--weird.  That's when I gave up on EZ.  (A good book title, there.)

To the music...

DOWNLOAD: Various Artists March 2025.zip

Salute to the Beatles--Lester Lanin, 1964

Deep Night--Carmen Cavallaro, piano with orch. and female sextette, 1951

You and the Night and the Music--Andre Kostelanetz and His Orch., 1950 or earlier

P.S. I Love You--The Clebanoff Strings and Orch., 1964

Day Dream--Joe Reisman and His Orch., 1957

Joey's Song--Same

Tina--Bobby Vinton, Arr. and Cond. by Charles Carello, 1965

Forever Yours I Remain--Bobby Vinton, Arr. Burt Bacharach, 1965

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes--Vic Damone, Glenn Osser Orch. and Cho., 1959

I Wake up Crying--Tom Jones, 1968

School Is Out--Ray Ellis Orch. and Chorus, 1961

Pretty Little Angel Eyes--Same

Little Sister--Same

Stomp and Whistle--David Carroll and His Orch., 1954

Windy--The Ray Charles Singers, 1968

Mac Arthur Park--Horst Jankowski, 1968

And We Got Love (Ein Hoch der Liebe)--Same

Lee

Downbeat didn't "make this" at all, man. "Original Dixieland Jazz in Hi-Fi" (ABC-Paramount ABC-184; 1957)

 

Back in 1957, Downbeat reviewer "D.C." wrote, "This was a monumental labor of love, but for the life of me, I can’t see the point at all."  Um, did he not read the title--"Original Dixieland Jazz in Hi-Fi"?  Did he skip the notes?  By itself, the title describes the point of this LP.

The reviewer continued: "If jazz is creative, and I’m sure it’s agreed that jazz is just that, then this record must fall into the classification of a curiosity. It seems so pointless to me that musicians with the ability to recreate would rather do that than make something of their own and out of themselves."  Painstakingly recreating 1917 performances in hi-fi IS an act of creativity.  How could it not be?  The reviewer failed to clarify the precise nature of his objection(s), and so we can only guess.  I'm inclined to think he was asserting that jazz, to qualify as such, must be improvised.  And it's possible (no way to be sure) that his concept of improvisation leaned toward the false construct wherein five or more musicians simply "blow" whatever's in their head at the moment.  I hate to ruin anyone's delusions, but a successful jazz performance is more than not a thing of deliberation.

But I can't read minds, and so I can't be sure why this cat was unable to "make" this LP, since "jazz is creative" fails to account for his summary dismissal of this amazing effort.  Plus, given that I've never much cared what Downbeat thinks, I'm inclined to dismiss the review as meaningless.  Imagine a jazz performance in which no one had agreed on 1) the key, 2) the tune, 3) where and when to repeat the verse, if included, 4) the tempo, 5) who plays which solo, and so on.  It would be total cacophony.  That is, unless the players were telepathically united.  Simply put, there's no way to recreate the ODJB's sound without writing it down.  Duhh.

Oh, and there's also the myth that "written-down" jazz isn't jazz.  Right.  Which explains why jazz arranging is a requirement for a Berklee degree.  A for-real cool cat has to know how to write down notes-aroony, dig?

And, my first time listening to these amazing recreations, my reaction was, "They're putting too much of a modern spin on things."  And I figured that it was probably an unconscious "move" on their part.  Then it struck me that the original performances, heard in "modern" fidelity, would inevitably sound unlike the original acoustical 78s in many regards.  In terms of inflection, dynamics, and the soundscape in general.  We're hearing more, simply put.  And, listening to these tracks side by side with the originals, my revised verdict is that these guys did one hell of a fantastic (and worthwhile) job.

The five brilliant musicians are Don Fowler on cornet, George Phillips on trombone, Earl Jackson on clarinet, George Ruschka on piano, and Darrell Renfro on drums.  And it was Fowler who did the astounding task of notating each 1917 "head" arrangement. 

I have no trouble "making this" LP (Daddy-o, cat, man), and in fact it's one of the great, swingsville, can-you-dig-it thrift finds of my "career."  From before Goodwill went nuts and over-priced its vinyl, only to stop putting out vinyl altogether after it stopped selling.  (A major "landmarks in marketing" moment.)  What a shame.  I mean, any cool cat can dig that selling items at 50 cents to a buck means turning a profit.  Whereas, no sales=no bread.  Dig?  Well, clearly someone ain't makin' that scene.  

Anyway, fabulous stuff! 

DOWNLOAD: Original Dixieland Jazz Hi-Fi.zip

The Original Dixeland One-Step

Livery Stable Blues

At the Jazz Band Ball

Ostrich Walk

Tiger Rag

Skeleton Jangle

Sensation Rag

Bluin' the Blues

Clarinet Marmalade Blues 

Mournin' Blues

Fidgety Feet

Lazy Daddy

(Original Dixieland in Hi-Fi; ABC-Paramount ABC-184; 1957)

Lee, real gone