Twist Around the Town--Tommy Navarro and the Sundialers (Urania UR-900; 1961)--Great Twist-ploitation sounds!

 

Sorry for my three-week absence.  I was sick for most of that time with what I'm mostly sure was a respiratory infection (I've had so many, I know them by heart).  Luckily, and uncharacteristically, my system managed to fight it off without medical intervention, though I came awfully close to visiting the local Urgent Care center.  Having a home nebulizer probably helped.  Anyway, I'm back and mostly healed...

Another Twist-ploitation LP today, and a fine one--and yet another Diane thrift gift (thanks Diane!).  And you may be wondering, Aren't I tired of these things, already?  No, not at all!  First off, these LPs tend to be a heck of lot of fun; even the low-to-no-budget examples (like today's) are unusually well performed.  Twist LPs, more often than not, are good ol' R&B of the rocking type (which explains how some outfits were able to recycle 1940s sides as Twist efforts)--in other words, Black rock and roll, which earns a separate category simply because things were far less integrated in the 1950s.  To put it mildly.  We always need to keep in mind that "rhythm and blues" was actually simply a marketing category, at least initially--it referred to music that sold to a Black audience.  Thus, Bing Crosby's White Christmas was an R&B hit.  Seriously.

And I have what I guess is an unusual philosophy regarding pop music crazes like the Twist: Namely, that such crazes merit in-depth study due to their sheer volume.  This may be counterintuitive, but I don't believe in reducing pop music trends to four or five representative samples, simply because I doubt that any craze can be thus narrowed down--at least, not accurately, as there is always greater diversity/variety than we'd ever expect.  Also, it can be much fun to document the common features of, say, budget Twist-ploitation LPs like this one.  Such standard features as the desperate PD-mining for Twist-trumental tracks (Casey Twist, taken from And the Band Played On, and Around the Town Twist, taken from The Sidewalks of New York).  And I fully expected Casey to be a rip of Casey Jones, but I was way off track--it's taken from the line, "Casey would waltz with a strawberry blonde."  And the title track--who could've guessed its source?  I didn't, and maybe because The Sidewalks of New York, despite its Mitch Miller revival, isn't the kind of song that springs to mind.

The Twist Around the Town liner notes are your typical try-to-make-a-cheap-product-sound-respectable type, but they're unusually literate, and thus they lack any hilarious grammar-crunching phrases.  Rats.  But the essay does seem to help confirm something I've strongly suspected: Namely, that the Twist was so well-received within and outside of rock and roll because it was a safe sort of music--R&B without the sort of suggestive lyrics which had so many White parents up in arms (and, to be fair, there were a lot of super-suggestive lyrics in early r&r), and because the music, which was virtually a revival of the big band boogie-woogie craze, was so endlessly adaptable.  Anyway, the notes try to convince us that the Twist was as much beloved by adults as by teens, though I'm not convinced.  (Would budget liner notes lie??)  But Urania is to be commended to providing a complete, if repetitious, essay instead of what we'd expect on the back jacket--i.e., photos of other Urania offerings and a series of big-font "We provide the best in modern audio"-type bragging.  Blurb-wise, we get a humble, small-font "Urania records are full range high fidelity recordings, etc." notice.  Very tasteful of Urania.  Very restrained.  Refined, even.

But the most interesting thing, maybe, is the apparent swiping of recent chart hits, plus the use of Summertime, which is somehow still under copyright today (remember when PD was a thing?).  Now, maybe Urania cleared Bricks and Bones (a Twist-ation of Ray Charles' Sticks and Stones), and Jackie Wilson's Lonely Teardrops and I'll Be Satisfied, but then again, maybe it figured that this under-the-radar effort could get away with Twist-isizing four non-PD numbers.  The retitling of Sticks and Stones suggests as much, but who knows?  The back jacket credits, at first glance, seem to be giving Tommy Navarro composer credit for the songs he performs, but I think Urania was simply designating the performers (Navarro vs. The Sundialers).  Or maybe it was attempting to convey that Navarro's numbers were predominantly originals and not swiped hits.  Maybe all this was simply the usual budget-label carelessness.  So many fascinating possibilities.

More fun than it has any right to be!  Enjoy:

DOWNLOAD: Twist Around the Town (Urania UR-900; 1961)

Lee