El Gran Combo on Gema.

(20 votes, average: 3.20 out of 5)

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“The Wild Sound of New Orleans.” The 1958 debut record of the legendary New Orleans R&B songwriter, producer and musician Allen Toussaint!

(13 votes, average: 3.77 out of 5)

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Dobie Gray “Sings For “In” Crowders that ‘Go Go'”

(23 votes, average: 4.26 out of 5)

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“War Between Fats and Thins” Harvey Matusow’s Jews Harp Band (1969)

“I’m a French lover of lp covers and I like very much your website. I want to contribute original psychà ©dà ©lic LP cover. Psychà ©dà ©lic music is my great passion of my life. I propose this very strange cover of a psychà ©dà ©lic group : HARVEY MATUSOW’S BAND – Friendly yours,” Henri DEFFONTAINE

Thanks Henri, I have this cover but never knew anything about it. Check out this incredible story (and MP3’s from the album) courtesy of WFMU:

“A psychedelic Jews Harp record! As unusual as this LP is, it pales in comparison to Marshall “Harvey” Matusow’s life, which intersected every major artery of post-war America. Born in the Bronx in 1926, Matusow was a Jewish street hustler who was picking pockets by age ten, and went on to work throughout his life as a Spy, DJ, Thief, Broadway Agent, Gambler, Stand Up Comic, Actor, Author, Musician, Professional Red Baiter, Filmmaker, Impresario, TV Clown and Social Activist. He was married twelve times, and palled around with Billie Holiday, Norman Mailer, Jason Robards, Steve McQueen, Emile de Antonio, Yoko Ono, Art Carney and Genovese mob boss Frank Costello. Ladybird Johnson invited him to the White House, and he invented the myth that smoking banana peels would get you high (as an ill conceived plot to extract geopolitical revenge on the United Fruit Company, aka Chiquita Banana).

In his later days he replaced LSD with LDS, converting to Mormonism and rechristening himself as Job Matusow. In his final years, he worked as a tireless advocate for the homeless, runaway teenagers and prostitutes while he made ends meet by establishing a successful children’s theater / TV show starring himself as Cockyboo the Clown He tried his whole life to live down his reputation as the most hated man in America for his work with Joseph McCarthy and the House Unamerican Affairs Committee (HUAC), fleeing to self-imposed exile in England in the Sixties, where he immersed himself in the worlds of avant garde art, music and film. While in Britain, he produced the largest festival of avant garde music ever, the ICES 72 concert. He invited his pal Yoko Ono and her husband to London for the gallery show where Yoko met John, making him partially responsible for breaking up The Beatles. (He was fully responsible for breaking up The Weavers, accusing Pete Seeger and other band members of being communists.) And of course, while in the UK, he took lots of acid and recorded his Jews Harp record.

Matusow enlisted in the US Army in 1943 in order to secure a high school diploma he never otherwise would’ve received. Back in New York after the war, he worked various jobs (including as an agent for Dean Martin) while he drifted towards Greenwich Village hootenannies, the folk music revival and the American Communist Party. He set a party record (and won a trip to Puerto Rico) for selling subscriptions to their newspaper, The Daily Worker. But by 1950, he either sensed an opportunity for money and fame, or (according to him) needed to protect his own ass, so he contacted the FBI and began his four year long career as a paid informer for anyone in need of an anti-Communist accuser with bona fide red street cred.

He approached this endeavor with the same gusto he had shown months earlier selling subscriptions to The Daily Worker, and ultimately destroyed the lives of hundreds of innocent Americans, communists and non-communists alike. In 1952 he went to work for Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn who put him on their payroll and encouraged his tendency to create lists of communists out of thin air. Among Matusow’s targets during this period of time were The New York Times and The Girl Scouts. He even went so far as to seduce and marry (twice!) McCarthy’s wealthiest backer, Arvilla Peterson Bentley, moving into her Washington DC mansion (now the German Embassy). Matusow, a high school dropout, had been running a floating craps game a few years earlier, and now he was the darling of the national anti-communist community and living in a mansion with butlers and servants at his beck and call.

In 1954, either because he felt remorse over the destruction he caused, or because he sensed another quick buck, he came clean on his years of lying and perjury with his book False Witness. In it, he truthfully accused Cohn and McCarthy of keeping him on the payroll as a paid witness and a professional liar. For once, Matusow was telling the truth, but Roy Cohn didn’t see it that way. Cohn accused him of lying in the book, and in the ensuing trial, Matusow was convicted of perjury and sentenced to five years in prison. As a professional liar, Matusow had been the toast of the town, but for finally telling the truth, he was imprisoned. It was then that he was dubbed “The Most Hated Man in America” by The National Enquirer, The Baltimore Sun and other papers. Billie Holiday threw him a going-to-jail party, and once in the slammer, he had the cell next to Wilhelm Reich, who died with Matusow just a few feet away.

Released from prison in 1960, Matusow dived into the worlds of art and publishing, but found himself unable to live down his years of redbaiting, an invitation to the White House from Ladybird Johnson notwithstanding (she enjoyed his “Art Collector’s Almanac” He helped found the underground newspaper “The East Village Other” met Timothy Leary, tripped a lot, helped runaway hippies in New York, did lots of standup comedy, pulled off phone pranks with Andy Warhol, and helped organize Norman Mailer’s mayoral run, even getting Christine Keeler to auction off her bra for the cause. Yet there were always people around who detested him for his 1950’s resume, and at a 1966 fundraiser (where he apologized to Pete Seeger for having him blacklisted), he was so vilified by the crowd that he decided to quit the US for England. Once in the UK, he married experimetal musician Anna Lockwood and recovered within London’s vibrant counterculture.

Matusow returned to the US in 1973 and spent the last 30 years of his life living on communes, helping the homeless, pursuing Mormonism and making ends meet by bumming money from old friends and working with his Magic Mouse Theater Troupe and TV show. He died in 2002 as he was working on his autobiography, Stringless Yo Yo.”

(41 votes, average: 3.73 out of 5)

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I first heard the Barbarians and their song “Moulty” in college when I picked up a copy of “Nuggets,” the double-record, sixties garage band compilation by Lenny Kaye. I bought that in Kenmore Square at a used record store called…Nuggets. The song tells the dramatic story of how the band’s drummer, Victor “Moulty” Moulton, lost his left hand in an accident. That song is not on this lp, but is on the CD reissue as a bonus track. Here’s a story of how The Band, (the Hawks in 1966), ended up playing on “Moulty”. The “hit” here is “Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl” (another track from the Nuggets set).

(18 votes, average: 2.56 out of 5)

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The Rocky Fellers were a quintet of four Filipino brothers and their father, discovered by producer Stanley Kahn and signed to Scepter Records in early 1963. They had one hit, “Killer Joe, ” which got to No. 16 in the spring of 1963, big enough to get them a chance to record a complete LP for the label. They were more of a novelty act than anything else, and faded away with the arrival of the British invasion, disappearing from view after the mid-1960’s. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

(22 votes, average: 3.41 out of 5)

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The Crystals “Twist Uptown” Philly Records. Produced by Phil Spector. (1962)

In early 1962, the Crystals recorded a Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil song called “Uptown.” Barbara Alston’s strong-yet-sensuous vocals enunciated lyrics that were as steeped in topical subject matter, especially about the frustrations of life in the ghetto, as they were in romance. This gave “Uptown” a subtly two-pronged appeal; it was a gorgeous pop record, but also a new kind of pop record, eminently listenable yet serious in its subtext. No, it wasn’t “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but it seemed to evoke a social realism that heretofore eluded the pop charts. “Uptown” reached number 13 nationally. Its production marked a major step forward in the making of rock & roll singles in its production, and heralded a newer, bolder era in pop music and R&B, very much of a piece with such hits as The Drifters’ “Up On the Roof,” but with an undercurrent of frustration that the latter song lacked; it all pointed the way toward the more sophisticated and socially conscious kind of songs that Sam Cooke would soon be generating.

The following month, Spector was back in the studio running another Crystals session, except that this time it wasn’t really the Crystals that he was recording, but Darlene Love. As the owner of the Crystals’ name and, as their producer, possessing the right to record anyone he wanted (or anything he wanted) and label it as being from “the Crystals,” he decided to forego forego using the group entirely for “He’s a Rebel.” A celebration of street-level machismo like no other, it was an upbeat number with gorgeous hooks and became a number one hit, as well as engraining itself in pop culture history as a quintessential girl group classic. Darlene Love was the lead singer on the next hit by “the Crystals,” “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” as well.

It wasn’t until early 1963 that the group again sang on one of their own records, “Da Doo Ron Ron.” That record rose to number three in America and became their second biggest British hit, reaching the number five spot in the U.K. That placement, along with the U.K. number two position for “Then He Kissed Me” (which also got to number six in America), was very important, because at the time a lot of major British bands were about to break onto the charts at home, before coming to dominate American music a year later. “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Then He Kissed Me” became among the most popular American rock & roll songs of the period in England, covered by all manner of acts on-stage and on-record.

The group had released two LPs hooked around their major hits, “Twist Uptown” and “He’s A Rebel” in 1962 and 1963, respectively. — The All Music Guide

(20 votes, average: 4.05 out of 5)

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The Lat-teens “Buena Gente” on Cotique. This is a killer boogaloo record from 1968. All the songs are great, but my favorite is one called “Smoke Shop”. Produced by George Goldner.

The Lat-Teen’s were a New York City Latin soul group that made three Cotique LPs, this is their second. ‘The Lat-Teens’, which contained the popular ‘Mary-Wanna’ as well as ‘El Shingaling’ and their version of ‘Louie Louie’ was their first and then later, in 1969, they released “Fuego a la Lata” Their post Cotique material moved away from Latin Soul into a straight salsa bag. Formed by Nestor Colon, the Lat-Teens included Hector Castro at the piano and Rey Davila on voices, plus trumpets, conga drums, timbales, bongos with Carlos Pabon on writing and arrangements,

(18 votes, average: 2.89 out of 5)

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The Turtles! Golden Hits. White Whale Records. This one was in heavy rotation in my room circa 1970. Perfect AM radio pop that, when I hear it today, still brings back those feelings of buying and playing my first records. Lead singers, Flo and Eddie, (named after a stint with Frank Zappa and the Mothers), went on to record together and sing back-up throughout the seventies and eighties. They also hosted a KROQ radio program in LA in the nineties.

(15 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5)

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