When you get up in the morning, you must have a song - Ray Charles

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Thunderball - Jazz All-stars

To cheese or not to cheese... I used to have scads of these type records. Dudes who could actually play some decent jazz but being on the west coast they could find decent bucks in the film studios...who could blame em?

But, but this isn't from some soundtrack. This is some goofy studio set up. Yeah its kinda cool, but really, the harpsichord was just a bad idea.

The real back story on this lp is that it was nabbed by one of my very best friends that visited several years ago. That trip cost him plenty. He had to leave his cache of lps behind while I dubbed them onto disc for him. This one slipped through the cracks and was only discovered during the recent move.

What I really needed was something to lead up to post 200.
This is post 199.

Thunderball and Other Secret Agent Themes
The Jazz All-Stars

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
4. Win, Lose Or Spy
5. UnderCover Agent Theme
6. I Spy
7. Iprcress File Theme
8. The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
9. The Saboteur
10. Majorca Express

Secret Agents 001 J.J. Johnson
002 Mundell Lowe / 003 Ernie Royal
004 Milt Hinton / 005 Joe Newman
006 Bobby Crowe / 007 Johnny Knapp
008 Sy Saltzberg / 009 Larry Charles

..and while I have heard of most of these folks, I don't recognize them all. But I don't think they are using pseudonyms, but what the hell do I know? All I know is some dude named Johnny Knapp got to smooze chicks with that "007" moniker for a very short time. Right place, right time.



DLP - 206

Monday, July 11, 2011

Cole Porter Swings Easy In Stereo

This was too cool to just leave on the Cole Porter blog.

This is actually one of the cooler things I have nailed down. A reel-to reel tape that professes to be "Produced by Soundcraft and Directed by Larry Clinton exclusively for use as a promotional bonus - NOT FOR SALE"

While not necessarily a huge fan of the assembled musicians, several have done some interesting stuff over the years. Thrown together here though they form a tight little unit. The music and performance is exactly why I like to champion pre bop jazz sometimes. To borrow a phrase I heard recently, it swings like a gate. Even though I have never heard the names of the pianist or the clarinetist outside if these sessions, they manage to hold their own with the journeymen.

This session was assembled as part of a special series Soundcraft Magnetic Tape was releasing to showboat their product. And in wonderful new stereo as well.

Cole Porter Swings Easy In Stereo

1. What Is This Thing Called Love?
2. It's Delovely
3. Begin The Beguine
4. It's All Right With Me
5. I Love Paris
6. My Heart Belongs To Daddy
7. Night And Day
8. Just One Of Those Things

Bob Haggart - bass
Cozy Cole - drums
Charlie Shavers - trumpet
Sam Taylor - tenor sax
Buddy Weed - piano
Sol Yaged - clarinet
Barry Galbraith - guitar
Urbie Green - trombone

From what I can tell this was recorded in 1957 or 58
Soundcraft - no matrix number assigned.