Jackie Mittoo & the Soul Vendors
Evening Time

1968
Studio one
Coxsone’s Music City

SOLP-8014B
12″ 33rpm album

Bringing us into autumn in style, here’s Jackie Mittoo:

Before I get too far into the archive, I’ve just got to give it up to Jamaican sensation, Jackie Mittoo. Known in places as the father of reggae, Mittoo may just be the most bad-ass organ pounder to walk the earth.

More on Mittoo:

Jackie on Wikipedia

The Soul Vendors

Official Mittoo Myspace

on YouTube

Liner Notes:

There are very few Musicians of any style or era, whose appeal is such that it is safe to recommend them to anyone for enjoyment in personal performance or on Record, Jackie Mittoo is such a Musician.

Jackie “Soul” Mittoo’s Musical Talents became apparent at a very early age. By the time he entered High School, Jackie was already a semiprofessional.

Jackie came to the attention of Recording Executive, Clement S. Dodd, in Kingston, Jamaica; and while still in School, he worked as a staff Musician for COXSONE RECORDS, appearing as ’side man’ on many Recording Dates for that Label.

It became obvious that one day Jackie would be ready to record under his own name. Several months ago, Jackie’s First Recording Session was set, and at that first date, Jackie Recorded RAM – JAM. The rest is Recorded History,

Next Step was for Jackie to record. a Long Playing album, JACKIE IN LONDON, which enables him to reach out and bring his own way of playing a variety of Tunes.

During his appearance with the COXSON’S ROCK STEADY REVUE in England last September (‘67), the British FANS were quick to acclaim Jackie and the Soul Vendors.

On this Album, EVENING TIME, the arrangements were being made for the Cool Cool of the Evening, THE PARADE OF ‘68 FADS.

GIRLS! GIRLS! in BIKINI, HIPSTERS, MINI in various colours, Latest Model portable record players, have dominated the Beaches, Parks and other Locations that offer Musical Entertainment. Jackie Mittoo and the Soul Vendors were first registered for participation in this Summer’s activities. This Sound is the kind of Music that Fans expect during the months of Summer in Jamaica.

SOUL BEAT! ROCK STEADY! BIG BEAT! BIG PLEASURE! that’s what you get consistently, when you’re hearing the SENSATIONAL SOUND called EVENING TIME.

SIDE A

1. EVENING TIME
2. ONE STEP BEYOND
3. NAPOLEON SOLO
4. BEST BY REQUEST
5. LOVE IS BLUE
6. HIP HUG

SIDE B

1. HOT MILK
2. AUTUMN SOUNDS
3. FULL CHARGE
4. HOTSHOT
5. ROCK STEADY WEDDING
6. DRUM SONG

RAY STEVENS
with The Merry Melody Singers
1,837 SECONDS OF HUMOR

1962
MERCURY
MG 20732
12″ LP Album

In response to the question, “And what’s the deal about being a hermit?” :

Ray Stevens is celebrating 50 years in the music biz. This album was one of his first, which was followed by a slew of records, hits, and ridiculousness. The joker is still producing too! If you weren’t in the Ray Steven’s loop already, check out his official site, and buy some merch:

http://raystevens.com

Or watch some Ray Stevens videos:
Ray Stevens on YouTube

From the liner notes:

THE KID FROM CLARKDALE

(Reading Time: 180 Seconds)

If Clarkdale, Ga. has had few claims to fame to date, it has one now, in the person of Ray Stevens, a multifaceted talent who was born in that town.

Ray sings. He is a skilled satirist. He is an accomplished songwriter (with more than 40 hits to his credit, including Sergeant Preston of the Yukon). He plays piano, trumpet, sax, clarinet, bass, drums, tuba, mellophone and violin. He took his first music lesson at the age of 6; by the time he was 15, he was fronting his own combo. At the same tender age, he became a leading disc jockey in Albany, Ga. (on station WGPC); a year later, he was carrying on inimitably for viewers of WALB-TV in Albany. After a stint as a music major at Georgia State University, he was ready for the giant-sized rewards of show business.

Today, when he isn’t roaming around the country on assorted projects, Ray can be found zooming around Atlanta, Ga. (his current home) in a gleaming Italian sports car. When he is spotted in such flight, the slender (six feet tall, 140 pounds), dark (brown eyes, black hair) sportsman usually is headed for the nearest water hole. But such diversions are rare for Ray these days.

Throughout [this record], Ray is assisted by the Merry Melody Singers and orchestra conducted by Jerry Kennedy. Both the Merry Melody Singers and orchestra conducted by Jerry Kennedy found it extremely difficult to concentrate on the music at hand during the recording of this album. It isn’t that all hands aren’t first-rate professionals. They are. It’s that Ray Stevens’ wit is enough to turn any reasonable soul into a giggling mass.

Try this 12-inch sampling to hear what we mean.

TRACKLISTING:

AHAB THE ARAB
225 seconds

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES
162 seconds

POPEYE AND OLIVE OIL
185 seconds

THE ROCKIN’ BOPPIN’ WALTZ
95 seconds

PFC RHYTHM AND BLUES JONES
128 seconds

SCRATCH MY BACK (I LOVE IT)
124 seconds

THE ROCK AND ROLL SHOW
262 seconds

JULIUS PLAYED THE TRUMPET
155 seconds

JEREMIAH PEABODY’S POLY UNSATURATED QUICK DISSOLVING FAST ACTING PLEASANT TASTING GREEN AND PURPLE PILLS
142 seconds

FURTHER MORE
139 seconds

A HERMIT NAMED DAVE
220 seconds

Total 1,837 seconds

1970
COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM
XT – 112

“IF YOU TURN ON,” a KNXT television broadcast on drug abuse featuring KNXT news anchorman Jerry Dunphy, Caroll Burnett, Greg Morris and Arte Johnson, with comments by medical experts and a group of southern California youngsters.

This recording is edited from the original broadcast of “IF YOU TURN ON,” presented on April 1, 1970.

Sample Track:

Produced by KNXT – Channel 2 CBS
6121 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, California

The drug abuse problem has reached epidemic proportions. The community is worried. The hooked generation is defensive. Everyone has his opinions, his prejudices, and his theories when it comes to the subject of drugs.
What are the myths? What are the truths?

Following are the results of the special survey commissioned by KNXT to determine attitudes and beliefs of a representative sampling of Southern Californians on drugs and drug usage. It was conducted by the Field Research Corporation and submitted to 504 persons eighteen years of age and older.

KNXT Survey on Drugs

1. Marijuana is physically addictive.

JON APPLETON
APPLETON SYNTONIC MENAGERIE

1969
FLYING DUTCHMAN
FDS-103 STEREO

From the liner notes [this in 1969]:

Labels, categories, boundary lines – the neat classifications separating musical experiences – are dissolving rapidly. Young musicians and listeners, brought up in a “global village” because of the pervasiveness of television, recordings, and transistor radios, refuse to be compressed by past conventions. The popular music of the present is, for example, a continually changing fusion of rock, country and wester, blues, Indian influenes, echoes of Appalachian ballads, jazz, rhythm and blues, and many other elements.

Simultaneously, young composers – who, in another time, would have been called “classical” composers – are also probing, discovering, and transcending territorial markings of the past. Jon Howard Appleton, for example. Since 1967, he has been Director of the Electronic Music Studio at Dartmouth, where he is also Assistant Professor of Music. [This] The first album of his work – on Flying Dutchman – reveals the open-ended scope and resourcefulness of the new music as well as Appleton’s inventive singularity.

[... In many of his] pieces, Appleton begins with a natural – a concrete sound – and then develops it musically. He also works the other way. At those times, he will start with purely electronic sounds which suddenly reveal a concrete sound that the listener can immediately recognize as part of his natural environment.
In one sense, then, Appleton’s work can be described as a highly developed extension of “musique concrete.” He has spent hours getting the squawks of penguins, recording variegated water sounds, and collecting the wide-ranging sounds which human beings make in different situations. Appleton’s musical credo is that all sounds are potentially musical; the composer’s function is to select those which are more musical and to develop them within a musical context.

SIDE 1
1. CHEF D’OEUVRE
2. NYCKELHARPAN
3. INFANTASY
4. GEORGANNA’S FANCY
5. THE VISITATION

SIDE 2
1. NEWARK AIRPORT ROCK
2. SPUYTEN DUYVIL
3. SECOND SCENE UNOBSERVED
4. TIME SQUARE TIMES TEN

THE DIAL-A-POEM POETS
SUGAR, ALCOHOL, & MEAT

1980
GIORNO POETRY SYSTEMS RECORDS
GPS 018-019

Feature Track:
William S. Burroughs
from Nova Express
: I was traveling with The Intolerable Kid on The Nova Lark

THE POETRY:

Peter Gordon
Excerpt from Extended Niceties,
performed by Peter Gordon & David Van Tiegham

John Giorno
I Resigned Myself to Being Here

John Cage
Alex & Gretchen Corazzo
The 6th Patriarch Of Zen Buddhism
Once I Was Visiting My Aunt Marge
Dorothy Invited Me
One of Suzuki’s Books

Tom Carey
Good Night Irene

Andreí Vosnesensky
I Am Goya, Song of Moscow Ancient Church Bells

Miguel Pinero
New York City Hard Times Blues

Miguel Algarin
Setenta Y Cinco Abriles

Mitchell Kreigman
In The Bathtub, recorded at Z.B.S. Media, Fort Edward, New York, July, 1979

William S. Burroughs
❉ from Nova Express: I was traveling with The Intolerable Kid on The Nova Lark

Translucent Boy, An Excellent Time, & For Neal Cassidy

Charlie Morrow
O Yeh–Don’t Die

Ted Berrigan
To Jack Kerouac

Charlotte Carter
Six Months in Brooklyn

Patti Smith
Parade

Cliff Fyman
Coffee

Robin Messing
3 Subway Poems from “Temporary Worker”

Paul Violi
Whalefeathers

Bob Holman
RAP IT UP

Allen Ginsberg
C.I.A. Dope Calypso, accompanied by Steven Taylor

Anne Waldman
Lady Tactics

John Ashbery
Litany

Beth Anderson
I Can’t Stand It

Rene Ricard
Rece Ricard Famous At 20

Barbara Barg
Chicks

Ned Sublette
Nice Young Mormons

Kathy Acker
I Was Walking Down The Street, one of the fairytales the whores of Montmartre tell each other to put each other to sleep after a hard night’s work in “The Adult Life of Tolouse Lautrec”

Eileen Myles
Lorna & Vicki

Barbara Barg
So Fine, with Chassler

Didi Susan Dubelyew
Who Needs Exercise

Rochelle Kraut
New Born Sleep

Gary Snyder
What You Should Know To Be A Poet

Daniela Gioseffi
Eggs

Regina Beck
Message From Confucius

Bernard Heidseick
Canal Street, No. 4

Charles Bernstein
Wall As

Steve McCaffery
Viking Log Part 2, with Ted Moses on sax

Ron Padgett
Zzzzz

At this point, with the war and the repression and everything, we thought this was a good way for the Movement to reach people.

John Giorno
THE DIAL-A-POEM POETS

1972
Giorno Poetry Systems Records
GPS – 001

❉ See below for poems included in this podcast.

DIAL-A-POEM HYPE:

One day a New York mother saw her 12-year old son with two friends listening to the telephone and giggling. She grabbed the phone from them and what she heard freaked her out. This was when Dial-A-Poem was at the Architectural League of New York with worldwide media coverage, and Junior Scholastic Magazine had just done an article and listening to Dial-A-Poem was homework in New York City Public Schools. It was also at a time when I was putting on a lot of erotic poetry, like Jim Carroll’s pornographic “Basketball Diaries,” so it became hip for the teenies to call. The mother and other reactionary members of the community started hassling us, and The Board of Education put pressure on The Telephone Company and there were hassles and more hassles and they cut us off. Ken Dewey and the New York State Council on The Arts were our champions, and the heavy lawyers threatened The Telephone Company with a lawsuit and we were instantly on again. Soon after our funds were cut, and we couldn’t pay the telephone bill so it ended.

Then we moved to The Museum of Modern Art, where one half the content of Dial-A-Poem was politically radical poetry. At the time, with the war and repression and everything, we thought this was a good way for the Movement to reach people. TIME magazine picked up on how you could call David and Nelson Rockefeller’s museum and learn how to build a bomb. This was when the Weathermen were bombing New York office buildings. TIME ran the piece on The Nation page, next to the photo of a dead cop shot talking on the telephone in Philadelphia (an unrelated story in the next column). However, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and The Black Panthers were well represented. This coupled with rag publicity really freaked the Trustees of the museum and members resigned and thousands complained and the FBI arrived one morning to investigate. The Museum Of Modern Art is a warehouse of the plunder and rip off for the Rockefeller family and they got upset at being in the situation of supporting a system that would self-destruct or self purify, so they ordered the system shut down. John Hightower, MOMA Director, was our champion with some heavy changes of conscience, and he wouldn’t let them silence us, for a short while. Then later John Hightower was fired from MOMA and Ken Dewey recently flying alone in a small plane crashed and died.

In the middle of the Dial-A-Poem experience was the giant self-consuming media machine choosing you as some of its food, which also lets you get your hands on the controls because you’ve made a new system of communication poetry. The newspaper, magazine, TC and radio coverage had the effect of making everyone want to call Dial-A-Poem. We got up to the maximum limit of the equipment and stayed there. 60,000 calls a week and it was totally great. The busiest time was 9 AM to 5 PM, so one figured that all those people sitting at desks in New York office buildings spend a lot of time on the telephone, then the second busiest time 8:30 PM to 11:30 PM was the after-dinner crowd, then the California calls and those tripping on acid or couldn’t sleep 2 AM to 6 AM. So using an existing communications system we established a new poet-audience relationship.

Dial-A-Poem began at The Architectural League of New York in January 1969 with 10 telephone lines and ran for 5 months, during which time 1,112,337 calls were received. It was at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago for 6 weeks in November 1969 and since then has cropped up everywhere. This was with equipment working at maximum capacity and somtimes jamming the entire exchange. At MOMA, the 12 lines were each connected to an automatics-answering set, which hold a pre-recorded message. Someone calling got randomly on of 12 different poems, which were changed daily. There were around 700 selections of 55 poets.

On this LP of Dial-A-Poem Poets are 27 poets. The records are a selection of highlights of poetry that spontaneously grew over 20 years from 1953 to 1972, mostly in American , representing many aspects and different approaches to dealing with words and sound. The poets are from the New York School, Bolinas and West Coast Schools, Concrete Poetry, beat Poetry, Black Poetry and Movement Poetry.

- John Giorno Aug 1972

THE POETRY:

[ ❉ = Included in this podcast. ]

❉ Allen Ginsberg – Vajra Mantra
(recorded Western Illinois University, April 15, 1972)

Diane Di Prima – Revolutionary Letters Nos. 7, 13, 16, 49
(recorded GPS, New York, March 21, 1969)

William Burroughs – excerpts from The Wild Boys
(recorded Duke Street, London, November 19, 1971)

Anne Waldman – Pressure, Holy City
(recorded GPS, New York, June 9, 1972))

John Giorno – Vajra Kisses
(recorded GPS, New York, August 9, 1972)

Emmett Williams – Duet
(recorded GPS, New York, December 1968)

Ed Sanders – Cemetery Hill
(recorded Berkeley Poetry Conference, California, July 19, 1965)

❉ Taylor Mead – Motorcycles
(recorded GPS, New York, January 1969)

Allen Ginsberg – Green Automobile 1953
(recorded Sacremento State College, April 23, 1971)

❉ Robert Creeley – The Messenger for Allen Ginsberg, I Know A Man
(recorded Bolinas, California, July 1971)

❉ Harris Schiff – Poems
(recorded 98 Greene Street Loft, New York, April 4, 1972)

Lenore Kandel – Kali
(recorded Berkeley Poetry Conference, California, July 19, 1965)

❉ Aram Saroyan – Not a Cricket
(recorded GPS, New York, November 15, 1971)

Philip Whalen – excerpts from Scenes Of Life At The Capitol
(recorded YMHA Poetry Center, New York, November 15, 1971)

Ted Berrigan – excerpts from The Sonnets
(recorded Berkeley Conference, California, July 19, 1965

Frank O’Hara – Ode to Joy, To Hell With It
(recorded New York, September 1963)

Joe Brainard – excerpt from I Remember
(recorded Calais, Vermont, July 1970)

Clark Coolidge – Small Inventions: Suite V (plurals) secanate, Suite IV
(recorded Mills College, California, January 1969)

Jim Carroll – excerpts from The Basketball Diaries
(recorded GPS, New York, March 1969)

John Cage – Mushroom Haiku
(recorded St. Mark’s Church, New York, April 1972)
excerpt from Silence
(recorded Carbondale, Indiana, March 1969)

Bernadette Mayer – These Stories About After The Revolution
(recorded New York, September 1970)

Michael Brownstein – Geography
(recorded GPS, New York, November 1970)

Brion Gysin – I Am That I Am
(recorded BBC, London, 1958)

John Sinclair – The Destruction of America
(recorded Berkeley Poetry Conference, California, July 19, 1965)

Anne Waldman – How The Sentina (Yawn) Works
(recorded GPS, New York, June 9, 1972)

Heathcote Williams – I Will Not Pay Taxes Until
(recorded GPS, New York, March 1969)

David Henderson - The Louisiana Weekly No. 1 Ruckus Poem Part 1
(recorded GPS, New York, december 1968)

Bobby Seale – excerpt from Fillmore East speech
(recorded New York, May 20, 1968)

Kathleen Cleaver – excerpt from Fillmore East speech
(recorded New York, May 20, 1968)

Allen Ginsberg – Blake Song: Merrily We Welcome In The Year
(recorded Corning Community College, New York, November 1971

The Beatles ‘Yesterday & Today’ LP – the infamous “butcher cover.”

The Beatles
Yesterday & Today

PEELED, (THIRD STATE)

CAPITOL ST 2553
1966 L.A. STEREO ISSUE

The Vintage Vinyl Revival butchers its way onto Ebay!

The Beatles’ butcher cover is a perfect example of rare, collectible, vintage vinyl, and you can bet I’m proud to currently have it in my hands, and to offer it as my very first item for sale on Ebay. The Beatles are a genre of music and topic of study all their own. In fact, there are entire price guides dedicated not just to the Beatles, but to this album! See: rarebeatles.com

Normally I try to steer clear of anything too much in the mainstream, but this is a definite exception. Here’s one of the stand-out tracks on this album in my opinion [in YouTube form] – and what the heck is this – the Beatles performing a country western tune?!?!

Here’s the full scoop from Wikipedia:

In early 1966, photographer Robert Whitaker had The Beatles in the studio for a conceptual art piece entitled “A Somnambulant Adventure.” For the shoot, Whitaker took a series of pictures of the group dressed in butcher smocks and draped with pieces of meat and body parts from plastic baby dolls. The group played along as they were tired of the usual photo shoots and the concept was compatible with their own “black humour”. Although not originally intended as an album cover, The Beatles submitted photographs from the session for their promotional materials. In particular, John Lennon pushed to use it as an album cover. A photograph of the band smiling amid the mock carnage was used as promotional advertisements for the British release of the “Paperback Writer” single. Also, a similar photograph from this shoot was used for the cover of the 11 June 1966 edition of the British music magazine Disc.

In the United States, Capitol Records printed approximately 750,000 copies of Yesterday and Today with the same photograph as “Paperback Writer”. [...] A small fraction of the original covers were shipped to disc jockeys and store managers as advance copies. Reaction was immediate. The record was immediately recalled. All copies were ordered shipped back to the record label, leading to its collectability. It has been substantiated that the record was indeed for sale in some stores, including Wallich’s Music City in Hollywood and some Sears stores, in limited areas and probably for only one day.

Capitol initially ordered plant managers to destroy the covers, and the Jacksonville plant delivered most of its copies to an area landfill. However, faced with so many jackets already printed, Capitol quickly changed course and decided instead to paste a much more conventional cover over the old one. This new cover, showing the group posed around an open steamer trunk, had to be trimmed on the open end of the album jacket by about 1/8 inch to address problems where the new sheet, known as a “slick”, was not placed exactly “square” on top of the original cover. Tens of thousands of these so-called “Trunk” covers were sent out. As word of this manoeuvre made the rounds, people attempted, usually unsuccessfully, to peel off the pasted-over cover of their copy of the album, hoping to reveal the original image hidden below. Eventually, the soaring prices of Butcher covers spurred the development of intricate and complex techniques for peeling the Trunk cover off in such a way that only faint horizontal glue lines remained on the butcher cover beneath.

Copies that have never had the white cover pasted onto them, known as “first state” covers, are very rare and command the highest prices. Copies with the pasted-on cover intact above the butcher image are known as “second state” or “pasteovers”; today, pasteover covers that have remained unpeeled are also becoming increasingly rare and valuable. Covers that have had the Trunk cover steamed or peeled off to reveal the underlying butcher image are known as “third state” covers; these are now the most common (and least valuable, although their value varies depending on how well the cover is removed) as people continue to peel second state covers to reveal the butcher image underneath. The most valuable and highly prized First and Second State Butcher Covers are those that were never opened and remain still sealed in their original shrink wrap. In December 2005 a “first state” copy of the album was sold for $10,500.

In 1987, then-president of Capitol Records, Alan Livingston released for sale twenty-four “first state” butcher covers from his private collection. When the original cover was scrapped in June 1966, Livingston took a case of already-sealed “Butcher” albums from the warehouse before they were to be pasted over with the new covers, and kept them in a closet at his home. These albums were first offered for sale at a Beatles convention at the Marriott Hotel near LAX on Thanksgiving weekend 1987 by Livingston’s son Peter. These still-sealed pristine items, which included nineteen mono and five stereo versions, are the very rarest “pedigree” specimen “Butcher Covers” in existence. These so-called “Livingston Butchers” today command prices of $40,000 and up among collectors, the five stereo versions being the most rare and valuable of these.

Album cover photo, Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood sings Cowboy Favorites

Here’s a recent set I mixed on the airwaves of KBGA. I was recently listening to this first track, Tall Dark Stranger, as I rolled through a spooky old town in the boonies, real slow like, admiring an old saloon and some other pleasantly dilapidated scenery. It was a perfect soundtrack, as I could sense the local eyes upon me, wary of the tall dark stranger I was, riding into their territory.

Next in this set is a prideful local tune by LeGrande Harvey, which is the Montana State ballad apparently. I love coming across these old local musicians like this, and the relatively obscure productions they’ve left behind. Such is really the case with this small production album from Rojay North. It’s sad to think it was probably never widely appreciated in its time, except by a few country boys up in the Panhandle of Idaho, but I’d say the songs on this album are some of the most authentic straight-from-the-heart country songs of the early 80’s. Wherever you are now Rojay, you’ve been rediscovered here, and what can I say? Right on man, right on.

Then I managed to fit in some Dave Van Ronk, of whom I haven’t been able to get too much of lately, but interestingly can’t fit into any one genre. That I stuck him right into the middle of a western honky-tonk set says something of his versatility.

Next is a quirky number from Ferlin Husky that fulfills both my craving for novelty, and expresses my sentiments for hillbilly western music. Then we have Louisiana’s Vin Bruce, who I don’t fully understand (in more ways than one), but was apparently the first to record Cajun music in Nashville. Then, if things weren’t novel enough, what says classic cowboy better than Clint Eastwood himself, and singing no less?! We finish this set off here with a great live recording of the early seventies from the Kerrville Folk Festival in the heart of Texas.

I hope this is all country enough for all you good ol’ boys.
Keep the greenhorns out of the country, and don’t fence me in!

Set List:

Tony Treece
Tall Dark Stranger
The Nashville Scene
Tall Dark Stranger and other Country and Western Favorites
12″ 33rpm Album (Crown) CST 599

LeGrande Harvey
Montana Melody
7″ 45rpm Single
(Stark Mountain Music / Bear Paw Records) BP 001 Missoula, MT
[Special Thanks to: Marietta and Bob Pfister and the Bonner School Singers, Shirley Hager, Dean Williams, Art Lindstrom, and Clay Lewis.]

Rojay North
Prichard Idaho
Keep on Singing (and other thoughts)
12″ 33rpm Album
1981, Cherry Pie Records (Div. of Rojay North Enterprises)

Dave Van Ronk
Random Canyon
Van Ronk
12″ 33rpm Album (Polydor) 24-4052

Ferlin Husky
Good Ole Country Music is Here to Stay
Mem’ries
12″ 33rpm Album (Phonorama) PR 5558

Louisiana’s Vin Bruce
I’m a Poor Hobo
Louisiana Cajun Songs
12″ 33rpm Album (Swallow) LP-6006

Clint Eastwood
Don’t Fence Me In
Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites
12″ 33rpm Album (Cameo) C-1056

Ray Wiley Hubbard with The Cowboy Twinkies
Terry Joe Ware, guitar; Clovis Roblane, mellotron; Jim Herbst, drums
West Texas Country Western Dance Band
Rod Kennedy Presents Kerrville Folk Festival
12″ 33rpm Album / PSG No. 53
1974 Highlights Recorded “Live” at Kerrville, Texas
Special Limited Edition Recording Sponsored by Chas. Schreiner Bank

Pete Seeger, Traditional Christmas Carols LP album art.

In the spirit of our economic plight this holiday season, I’ve got some good ol’ folk music and throwback dust-bowl tunes for your listening pleasure.

I recently watched PBS’s American Masters on Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, and have been meaning to play more of his music on the radio. In this set he sings a peaceful Christmas carol – not what you might expect from a so-called anti-capitalism freedom-hating commie. I’ve got quite a few records from the folk-revival era (on top of many original folk, before folk, albums), and it’s interesting to see how inter-influential a lot of these old folk balladeers were. In this here set, arising even out of the spontaneous format of a live broadcast, I happened to piece together a number of artists paying tribute to each other.

Let’s see, what have we got here… These first two albums are total gems. People like “Tex” Carmen, and Alberta Slim, are in a way more folk than folk; you never hear of them, yet there they were, crooning and strumming their western style as well as anybody ever to follow – in fact better, as their authenticity can’t be replicated (yeah, yeah, you can argue that none of those singing cowboys were actual bronc busters, but I’m talking about musical authenticity).

Next, we’ve got the grand-daddy of yodeling cowboys, Jimmie Rodgers, and another Jimmie paying tribute to him directly after. We’ve got Ed McCurdy singing an arguably anonymous number, Blood on the Saddle, though I believe Tex Ritter and Marty Robbins both popularized it. The man, Alan Lomax himself (yes the man responsible for digging up and recording numerous would-have-been unknown musicians) strums his own guitar and sings us a bluesy little folk song. Tom Paxton (another one at the core of folk-revival) pays direct tribute to the original ramblin’ man Cisco Houston, who in turn tips his hat to Woody Guthrie; Woody follows it up with the original of the same. Ramblin’ Jack Elliot gives us another Guthrie tune, 1913 Massacre, which is the beginning of an unassuming dose of Christmas music here. Seeger adds to the holiday cheer, and revolutionary Malvina Reynolds (who apparently wrote Little Boxes) tops it all off with an oddly cute religious carol, while representing the “children-song” factor of folk music.

I hope it’s all a pleasing soundtrack for your holiday. A merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours. May you have plenty of food upon your table in 2009… and the cupboards well-stocked for 2012.

Set List:

“Tex” Carmen
Get Along Pony
12″ 33rpm Album (Crown)

Alberta Slim with the Bar X Ranch Boys
Little Tin Cowboy
12″ 33rpm Album (RCA Camden)

Jimmie Rodgers
Rough and Rowdy Ways
The Legendary Jimmie Rodgers Vol. 1
12″ 33rpm Album (Country Music Magazine)

Jimmie Skinner
Never No Mo’ Blues
Jimmie Skinner Sings Jimmie Rodgers
12″ 33rpm Album (Mercury)

Ed McCurdy
Blood on the Saddle
Songs of a Bold Balladeer
12″ 33rpm Album (Riverside)

Alan Lomax
Godamighty Drag
Texas Folk Songs
12″ 33rpm Album (Tradition Records)

Tom Paxton
Fare Thee Well, Cisco
Ramblin’ Boy
12″ 33rpm Album (Elektra)

Cisco Houston
Blowin’ Down the Road (I Ain’t Going to be Treated This Way)
Cisco Houston Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie
12″ 33rpm Album (Vanguard)

Woody Guthrie
Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way
The Legendary Woody Guthrie in Memoriam
12″ 33rpm Album (Tradition)

Rambling Jack Elliot
1913 Massacre
12″ 33rpm Album (Vanguard)

Pete Seeger
Glory to That New Born King
Traditional Christmas Carols
12″ 33rpm Album (Folkways Records)

Malvina Reynolds
In Bethleham
Artichokes, Griddle Cakes and Other Good Things
12″ 33rpm Album (Pacific Cascade Records)

Nik Pascal [aka aka]
Zero Gravity LP album

Electronic Music
Narco Records and Tapes
NR 123 Stereo

© 1975 Nick Raecevic

Zero Gravity (22:50)

Robot Rock (4:30)
Sounds From The Blue Planet (4:01)
I Q + U = ? (4:03)
Alpha Wave Diffusion (4:09)

Composer and Producer: Nik Raicevic
Cover Design and Photography: Nik Raicevic
Moog Synthesizer Programming: Nik Pascal
ARP 2600 Synthesizer Programming: Nik Pascal
Special Effects: Gypsy Flemming
Engineer: William Elder

Recorded in Hollywood, Calif.
All Compositions Publish by
“Art in Space Music” BMI

8-Track Tapes and Cassettes of this album are available exclusively on Narco Records and Tapes.

This record is incredibly rare, and highly desired by those who know of it.

I held this album in hand, playing it just once for Missoula on last week’s radio broadcast, but I heart-wrenchingly had to part with it, shipping it out to some lucky bastard, rather than keeping it for myself. Shows you the strength of my moral fiber. Now the only available copy of it to be found at the moment is in Sweden, in the Rune Cosmic collection on GEMM, and it’s only €135, which I’m assuming is a lot of $dollars.

There’s not much to be found on this mysterious composer, aside from what a few collectors of obscuro records are saying about him:

Proghead72:

-completely obscure electronic music, from a guy from Los Angeles who went by several names (Nik Raicevic, Nik Pascal, Pascal, Nik Pascal Raicevic, Gypsy Flemming) and even appeared on a Rolling Stones album (Goats Head Soup).
[...] loaded with lots of trippy sound effects, use of ring modulation, LFOs, and so much more, sounding like it came off a low-budget sci-fi film. And you can’t argue with an album that had a warning on the shrink wrap that read: “Do not listen to this album if you are stoned”!

Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide:

He made one of his earliest albums on the Buddah label as simply Head, attempting to cash in on the psychedelic drug culture by naming his extended synthesizer noodlings after illegal drugs such as “Cannabis Sativa” — worth a 17-minute album track, no less.

Raicevic eventually put out five albums on his own Narco label after being dumped from Buddah for being too influenced by drugs.

Mimaroglu Music Sales, apparently has the complete Narco recordings (1971 – 1975), on CD, and this to add:

“finally, after a year off, nik drops his last album, “zero gravity,” the side-long title-track working a harmonic-series patch with drizzles of space-dusted echo & miniature alien-tongued white-noise licks”

I’d just say, “Well, I’ll be damned.”