ABBA – Gold (517 007-1) (1992)

I’m not a huge fan of ABBA, but I thought it might be fun to have in the house for parties or surreptitious cross-dress cavorting. Of course, as any thrifty vinyl consumer will tell you, finding cheap-ass ABBA Lps is no huge thing, but finding this particular compilation definitely warranted £1 purchase this a.m. at the Wincheap bootfair. I’ll explain. Released at a transitional time in the music industry where pop records of this kind got, at most, a first press on vinyl before being deleted, there are relatively few ABBA Gold vinyls about — I’ve certainly never seen it on Lp (though, given that it’s sold something like 30 million copies, I’ve seen more than a few on CD). As a result, it’s one of the few ABBA units to hold much value. So, as these things go, it seemed like the one ABBA Lp for me to own.

The Essential Vic Dickenson (VJD 551) (1977)

Early 50s revival of earlier ensemble polyphony style by Columbus, Ohio-born trombonist-bandleader on the reliable Jazz Vogue label. A lot of avant garde water had passed under the jazz bridge by the time Dickenson came to record these two small group, John Hammond-produced sides (originally issued by Vangard separately as Vic Dickenson Showcase Volume 1 and 2); by and large, however, these revolutionary changes are not reflected in either the repertoire (e.g. “Jeepers, Creepers”) or performances, which favour bluesy and easy swinging melodicism. Nonetheless, the solos are time-stretched in a way that Kid Ory, et al. would never have dreamed in the 1920s; clarinettist Ed Hall shines in particular.

Picked up this afternoon in Hythe, where there seemed to be a lot of mid-century mainstream jazz.

Madonna – The Immaculate Collection (1990)

No retail shopping for me on Record Store Day, just cheapo chazzing. In fact, I already had Immaculate Collection on CD*, but couldn’t resist this early singles double Lp helping of the pop martinet whose musical and visual image mongering takes David Bowie’s similar chameleonality to absurdly cynical lengths and whose glamorisation (leading ultimately, and ironically, to normalisation) of sexual fetishism has virtually defined all solo female pop singing subsequent.

The liner notes offer a remarkable balance of slavering and intellectual pretension. Oh, Madonna, you so bad!

More Herb Ritts action on the inner sleeves.

*I will likely Music Magpie the compact disc version.

Free Soul – Essential Argo/Cadet Grooves Vol. 3 (ARC 510) (1991)

It was a barrel-shooting excersise the choice this morning to spend 50p at Mind in Cheriton on this Acid Jazz-inspired* Charly compilation of late-60s to late-70s funk-soul-jazz originally released on Chess Records subsidiaries Argo and Cadet and designed for the Rare Groove-head in your life.

As if the presence of Terry Collier’s ebullient “Ordinary Joe” and jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby weren’t enough clue-wise to convince me of purchase, the thanking of Soul Jazz Records (who must’ve only just been founded when this collection was issued), Honest Jon’s, James Lavell, Talkin’ Loud, etc. in the liner notes sealed the deal.

Interestingly, no information readily exists for Volumes 1 and 2 of this purported series.

*It says “File under Funki/Jazz” [sic] on the back cover.

Teenie Chenault and the Country Rockers (ERS-517)

I can’t tell from the (autographed!) sleeve and research is inconclusive, but I believe this is a compilation of 60s singles by Virginia country musician Teenie Chenault released around 1969-1970 and may have been produced by Pete Drake. And 90˚straight edge high-lonesome country it is with pedal steel cryin’ in every alcohol consumption/relationship troubles song; the only exception to the good lovin’ gone bad scenerio is “You’re No Inspiration” and that’s about a woman who doesn’t cheat, run around, beat time, etc. on her man and is therefore “no inspiration, Gracie, for a hit song.” Nice little turnaround there.

While the song-writing and vocal delivery inevitably lack the panache of the first-rate country singers of the day, the band is very good and there’s something otherwise heartwarming about this nifty regional C&W Lp: In a sense, it’s real folk music, you know.

Awesome cover that I have to suppose is of an earlier vintage; even country singers, who are, almost by definition, several years behind the times, wouldn’t look like that by the turn of decade, though, funny enough, Bryan Ferry certainly looked like Teenie (below) a couple years later. Chenault’s band were regulars at Wheeling, West Virginia’s Jamboree USA, which is just a few miles from my Grandparents place, so it’s possible that I would have seen the Country Rockers advertised as a young boy.

The most interesting piece of writing I found about Chenault comes from the book, Tourette – That’s What Makes Me Tic, starting on page 108.

What this record was doing in Faversham, I don’t know; but what I was doing in Faversham was looking for records like this.

The Beatles – A Collection of Beatles Oldies But Goldies! (PCS 7016) (1966)

In one of his greatest flourishes, Ian MacDonald likened the Beatles’ creative growth to the flowering of a desiduous plant whereby the band, as in nature, regularly and beautifully renewed itself; he contrasts this with an industrial model, which seeks improvement simply through volume of sales. In spite of its non-chronological sequencing, no other EMI Lp issued during the band’s lifetime illustrates this point more vividly than A Collection of Beatles Oldies But Goldies.

Correctly sensing the era of lovable moptoppery drawing to a close and there being no other product for stocking-stuffing to hand, Parlophone dropped the first British Beatles Best Of in time for Christmas ’66. And so with a generously appointed 16 tracks totalling nearly 40 minutes and the first Lp appearance of seven songs previously available only as singles (here, re-mixed for stereo), Oldies But Goldies, almost despite its cynical conception, crackles with life and represented good value for your Xmas £sd. Interestingly, not all extant EMI Beatles 7″s were included: début single “Love Me Do” (1962), whose rudimentary tweeness might’ve mildly embarrassed the band at this point, was summarily dropped.

Sleeved with an inappropriate David Christian illustration more suited to The New Vaudeville Band and given a deliberately hectoring, trite title, the album charts an incredible three-year ride from warm but simple inanities like “From Me To You” (1963) to intricately-produced  clever, clever social comment such as ”Paperback Writer” (1966). A greater raison d’être differential exists nowhere else in pop.

To the list of Beatles’ justly lauded popular music innovations (in-house writing, sampling ["Revolution #9"], feedback ["I Feel Fine"], cross-cultural pollination ["Norwegian Wood", et al.], studio bound existence, etc., etc., etc.), you may add the dubious one of the perfunctorily appended bonus track in the form of “Bad Boy”, a piece of “pressured hackwork”, according to MacDonald, which was heretofore unreleased in the UK making Oldies just that much more requisite for completists. No masterpiece, it describes a juvenile miscreant who “worries his teacher, till at night she’s ready to poop“. Seriously, imagine having to sing that.

Robert Whittaker’s [sic] jade-enhanced rear cover photograph was taken on 30th June in the band’s hotel room during the 1966 Japanese tour.  Note the large doodle just above McCartney’s head. It might just be an inchoate version of this or something similar.

My £1 thrift store purchased copy is a 1973 fourth pressing (black and grey label, two EMI box logos), so no big shakes money-wise.

Classic Willie Nelson (UAS 29945) (1976)

What with a few of his own standards (“Funny How Time Slips Away”, “Hello Walls”) and those of others (“Nightlife”), songwriting on this budget-looking United Artists comp of the Red Headed Stranger’s early 60s Liberty Records material is always well above par. The treatments, Owen Bradley-style background singers/strings à la Jim Reeves, while a bit Hollywood, don’t overwhelm Nelson’s reedy, talk-sing vocals, the contrast even adding to the pathos. The mood is meditative throughout apart from a very uptempo, very jazzy “Columbus Stockade Blues”. The version of his own “Crazy” can’t touch Patsy Cline’s more famous take, but then what can?

Another from yesterday’s Demelza House bunch…more to come.

Sergio Mendes & Brazil ’66 – Greatest Hits (AMLS 985) (1970)

More like the Fifth Dimension than the cross-over jazz of Stan Getz, let alone the urgent Bossa Jazz of the Tamba Trio, this is the fun-sized Brazilian pianist/bandleader Mendes in full-on American E-Z Listening mode. A couple Bacharach/Davids, three Lennon/McCartneys, plus the inevitable “Mas Que Nada”, Brazil ’66 constructs syncopated sixties Sunshine Pop which verges on the unctuous if you’re in the wrong mood or a fan of anything heavier than, say, the Carpenters.

Mmm…unifold cover.

Montana Taylor/Cripple Clarence Lofton – Low Down Piano – Archive of Jazz Volume 15 (BYG 529 065)

Barrelhouse boogie-woogie piano courtesy Folkestone’s Age UK by little-known, highly skilled practitioners from the first half of the last century on eccentric French re-issue imprint; bit more city-fied than the titular Low Down suggests, as I would say. Taylor sings of a world gone bad on these 1946 Chicago sides, taped after a few years lay off from music. Cripple (!) Clarence shows he’s the more flamboyant of the two on the second side’s Windy City recordings from 1939.

More mood specific music for the Asbo libarry.

Bananarama – The Greatest Hits Collection (1988)

Herb Ritts was to 80s photography what Norman Seeff was to the 70s.

Does anyone else have a soft spot for the pure 80s pop of Bananarama? Is that soft spot in the head?

While the record police would no doubt haul me down to the station for questioning upon finding such cheerful inanity in my collection, I maintain this largely unison-sung Bananarama best-of is well-built, unpretentious good fun–a worthwhile aural equivalent to a girls’ night out.

It’s not all about the Modern Jazz Quartet, you know.