05-20-2020 FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 1959-1962

05-20-2020  FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 1959-1962  >>Herbie Mann, THE BEATLES, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Joe Meek & the Blue Men, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Bo Diddley, Lorez Alexandria, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, John Lee Hooker<<

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1959-1962

Prolific and widely known flutist, beloved in jazz circles, has covered many world music styles. Herbie Mann played a wide variety of music throughout his career. He became quite popular in the 1960s, but in the '70s became so immersed in pop and various types of world music that he seemed lost to jazz. However, Mann never lost his ability to improvise creatively as his later recordings attest.

Herbie Mann 

Old Honkie Tonk Piano Roll Blues 4:45
Minor Groove 7:36

from The Complete Recordings: 1958-1962

Starting his career as a practitioner of cool jazz and bop, Herbie Mann was one of the first musicians to embrace world influences into his sound. Incorporating the rhythms and melodies of Cuba, Africa, and South America, as well as the Middle and Far East, into his work, Mann was also known for his high-profile collaborations, appearing alongside the likes of Art Blakey, Chet Baker, Sarah Vaughan and numerous others...

...Hamburg was the Beatles' baptism by fire. Playing grueling sessions for hours on end in one of the most notorious red-light districts in the world, the group was forced to expand its repertoire, tighten up its chops, and invest its show with enough manic energy to keep the rowdy crowds satisfied. When they returned to Liverpool at the end of 1960, the band -- formerly also-rans on the exploding Liverpudlian "beat" scene -- were suddenly the most exciting act on the local circuit. They consolidated their following in 1961 with constant gigging in the Merseyside area, most often at the legendary Cavern Club, the incubator of the Merseybeat sound...

The Beatles

Ain't She Sweet [U.S. Version] 2:15

Cry for a Shadow (George Harrison / John Lennon) 2:23

from The Beatles with Tony Sheridan: First Recordings

The Beatles entered a recording studio for the first time 50 years ago, in 1961. It wasn’t actually the group’s gig, since they were essentially the backing band for singer Tony Sheridan, but the way recording was done at the session and at a second session in 1962, with instrumental parts laid down first and vocals added later, it’s possible to catch a faint, nascent glimpse of the international pop phenomenon the Beatles would become a couple years down the road. Orchestral big-band leader Bert Kaempfert had discovered the group playing in a German nightclub, signed them to a recording contract, paired them with Sheridan in the studio, and then released the songs through Polydor Records in Germany in 1961 and 1962. These early tracks have been released multiple times over the years in both mono and stereo mixes (with reverb added), and this set from Time Life Music includes both versions. Everything’s here, really, kind of frozen in time, since the original tapes were lost in a fire at Kaempfert's warehouse in the early '70s. Sheridan handles almost all of the vocals, and there are only two tracks without him, a version of John Lennon singing “Ain’t She Sweet” and an early George Harrison instrumental called “Cry for a Shadow,” both of which are featured here in mono, stereo, and medley versions.... Everything has a beginning. This two-disc set collects the earliest recordings of perhaps the most important recording act in pop music history. That’s the story, and the rest is history.

Rock & roll's prime innovator, thanks to his detailed songwriting, dazzling lyrics, and clear, economical guitar licks.

Chuck Berry 

I'm Talking About You (Chuck Berry) 1:48

Thirteen Question Method (Chuck Berry) 2:13

from New Juke Box Hits 1961

Chuck Berry's fifth Chess Records album, New Juke Box Hits, was recorded and released in the midst of the legal difficulties that would put him in jail the following year. That distraction seems to have kept him from composing top-flight material, while the attendant publicity adversely affected his record sales, such that the album contained no hits. The included single was "I'm Talking About You," later successfully recorded by the Rolling Stones, and the album also contained "The Thirteen Question Method" and "Don't You Lie to Me," worthy minor entries in the Berry canon. Elsewhere, Berry filled out the record covering others' hits -- Nat "King" Cole's "Route 66," B.B. King's "Sweet Sixteen," Little Richard's "Rip It Up." The result is a good rock & roll set, but not in the same league with Berry's earlier albums.

The best showman and one of the most influential singers of the 20th century, who transformed R&B into funk with his tight, driving style.

James Brown and the Famous Flame

Think (Lowman Pauling) 2:48

Good Good Lovin' (James Brown / Albert Shubert) 2:19

Wonder When You're Coming Home (James Brown) 2:35

from Think! 1960

James' third album (his first for King) features 1960-era James Brown, moving from King's Federal subsidiary to the parent label with the hits "Bewildered," "If You Want Me," "You've Got the Power," "I'll Go Crazy," "Baby You're Right" (co-written with Joe Tex), and "I'll Never, Never Let You Go." Although Brown's albums would soon be interchangeable, the same cuts reappearing again and again, this is one of his better efforts as well as a pivotal point in his career.

Britain’s premier record producer of the early 1960s, renowned for his pioneering recording techniques using reverb and echo. A truly visionary figure within the recording industry, Joe Meek helped shape the sound of pop music in the '60s and for decades to come. A short list of the techniques he pioneered explains why he's considered one of the most influential engineers ever to work in a studio...

Joe Meek & the Blue Men 

I Hear a New World (Robert Duke / Joe Meek) 2:44

Dribcots Space Boat 2:15

Disc Dance of the Globbots 2:15

from I Hear a New World: An Outer Space Music Fantasy 1960

"Yes! This is a strange record, I meant it to be," Joe Meek wrote in his liner notes for I Hear a New World: An Outer Space Music Fantasy. As far as introductions to his 1960 cult classic album go, it's hard to top. Meek's musical trip to the moon was a singular album when he recorded it in his home studio with Rod Freeman and the Blue Men (aka the skiffle group Rod Freeman and the West Five); decades later, it's still a singular album. Its mix of exotica, surf, novelty pop, experimental electronics, and innovative production techniques -- which ranged from compression and reverb to sounds created from blowing bubbles with a straw -- doesn't sound like anything else, though it shaped music for years to come...

Possessor of a cutting and immediately identifiable tough tenor tone, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis could hold his own in a saxophone battle with anyone.

Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis
Intermission Riff (Ray Wetzel) 6:24
Foxy (Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis) 5:52
from Jaws in Orbit 1959
The group that Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis led with organist Shirley Scott during the latter half of the 1950s was quite accessible and did a great deal to popularize the organ band in jazz. This CD reissue features the duo joined by bassist George Duvivier, drummer Arthur Edgehill and the obscure trombonist Steve Pulliam for a typically swinging set of basic originals and standards...

Seminal R&B guitarist whose hypnotic rhythmic attack and declamatory, boasting vocals became one of the most overpowering sounds in rock & roll. He only had a few hits in the 1950s and early '60s, but as Bo Diddley sang, "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover." You can't judge an artist by his chart success, either, and Diddley produced greater and more influential music than all but a handful of the best early rockers.
Bo Diddley
I'm a Man (Ellas McDaniel) 3:02
Pretty Thing (Ellas McDaniel) 2:51
Diddy Wah Diddy (Ellas McDaniel) 2:31
I'm Bad (Ellas McDaniel) 3:18
from I'm a Man - Singles As & Bs, 1955 - 1959
With his patented shave-and-a-haircut rhythm (it even bears his name), Bo Diddley was one of the most important and influential artists during the early days of rock & roll. This set collects -- in the original mono versions -- both the A and B sides of his singles for Chess Records between 1955 and 1959. Not everything is here (“Road Runner,” for instance, one of his most enduring releases, is absent), but there’s enough to make this a pretty good set.

A solid singer who is superior at interpreting lyrics, gives a soulful feeling to each song, and improvises with subtlety, Lorez Alexandria was a popular attraction for several decades. She sang gospel music with her family at churches starting in the mid-'40s and worked in Chicago nightclubs in the 1950s...

Lorez Alexandria 

with The Ramsey Lewis Trio

Early in the Morning (Louis Jordan, Dallas Bartley, Leo Hickman) 2:58

Good Morning Heartache (Irene Higginbotham, Ervin Drake, Dan Fisher) 3:19

I'm Just a Lucky So-and-So (Ellington, Mack David) 2:56

from Early in the Morning 1960

Early in the Morning is an album by American jazz vocalist Lorez Alexandria featuring performances recorded in 1960 and released on the Argo label.

AllMusic reviewer Thom Jurek stated "Ultimately, Early in the Morning is the most sophisticated kind of blues recording. The musical arrangements are both groove-laden and wonderfully impressionistic, allowing Alexandria's unusual delivery line plenty of space to play".

Chuck Berry remains an influential figure and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music who first began performing in 1953. Cub Koda wrote, "Of all the early breakthrough rock & roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers." John Lennon was more succinct: "If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."

Chuck Berry 

Bye Bye Johnny (Chuck Berry) 2:02

Worried Life Blues (Big Maceo Merriweather) 2:08

Down the Road a Piece (Don Raye) 2:10

from Rockin' at the Hops 1960

...Berry at his best wrote danceable little "vest-pocket" screenplays dealing with teen life, of which "Bye Bye Johnny"  was one of his best...  So get this record for everything else that's on it -- Rockin' at the Hops not only has no filler, but it's chock full of records that show off a bluesy side of Berry's output that was never fully appreciated at the time. His version of Big Maceo's "Worried Life Blues" shows how good a bluesman Berry might've been had he been more the Muddy Waters-type player and singer that Chess had been looking for... 

Elvis Presley may be the single most important figure in 20th-century popular music. Not necessarily the best, and certainly not the most consistent, but no one could argue with the fact that he was the musician most responsible for popularizing rock & roll on an international level. Viewed in cold sales figures, his impact was phenomenal. Dozens upon dozens of international smashes from the mid-'50s to the mid-'70s, as well as the steady sales of his catalog and reissues since his death in 1977, make him one of the highest-selling performers in history.

Elvis Presley 

Sentimental Me (Jimmy Cassin / Jim Morehead) 2:32

Starting Today (Don Robertson) 2:05

Gently (Edward Lisbona) 2:16

from Something for Everybody 1961

Elvis Presley's third non-soundtrack, post-Army album is, in many ways, his most interesting from those years, though nowhere near his best. Something for Everybody offers a tamer body of songs than Elvis Is Back!, but also shows the effect of Presley's maturation -- his voice is better than ever, and this is reflected in the arrangements, most of which are closer in spirit to the finely crafted pop symphonies of Roy Orbison than they are to any of Presley's earlier work. His ballad performances are impeccable, displaying a richness of intonation and delicacy of nuance that is downright seductive...

A giant figure of R&B and rock & roll, the New Orleans singer and pianist contributed scores of beloved classics to pop history. 

Fats Domino 

I Miss You So (Scott, Henderson, Robin) 2:19

Ain't That Just Like A Woman (Demetrius, Moore) 2:42

I Hear You Knocking (Bartholomew, Domino, King) 1:57

from I Miss You So 1961

The most popular exponent of the classic New Orleans R&B sound, Fats Domino sold more records than any other black rock & roll star of the 1950s. His relaxed, lolling boogie-woogie piano style and easygoing, warm vocals anchored a long series of national hits from the mid-'50s to the early '60s. Through it all, his basic approach rarely changed. He may not have been one of early rock's most charismatic, innovative, or threatening figures, but he was certainly one of its most consistent.

Domino's first single, "The Fat Man" (1949), is one of the dozens of tracks that have been consistently singled out as a candidate for the first rock & roll record. As far as Fats was concerned, he was just playing what he'd already been doing in New Orleans for years, and would continue to play and sing in pretty much the same fashion even after his music was dubbed "rock & roll."...

The most elemental of the electric blues giants, one of few to both inspire and draw from rock & roll idols. He was beloved worldwide as the king of the endless boogie, a genuine blues superstar whose droning, hypnotic one-chord grooves were at once both ultra-primitive and timeless. But John Lee Hooker recorded in a great many more styles than that over a career that stretched across more than half a century.

John Lee Hooker 

A New Leaf (David Arnold / John Lee Hooker) 2:30

Blues Before Sunrise (Leroy Carr / John Lee Hooker) 3:49

Let's Make It (John Lee Hooker) 2:27

from Burnin' 1962

From the vaults of Vee Jay Records comes an abundance of classic John Lee Hooker reissues, featuring original art work, running orders, and budget prices from the Collectables label. With the amount of Hooker material available on the market, some of it is of dubious quality, but you can't go wrong with these reissues. Burnin' was released in 1962 and combines 12 tracks of electric material performed by Hooker backed by a band... All of the Hooker Vee Jay reissues are recommended.