Clark Terry in the P.M.  EmArcy Records EP  with the songs “Double Play”, “Chuckles”, and “Slow Boat”  Taken from Clark Terry’s first sessions as a leader in 1955 withClark Terry (tp), Jimmy Cleveland (tb), Cecil Payne (bs), Horace Silver (p), Oscar Pettiford (b, cello), Wendel Marshall (b), Art Blakey (ds).

(41 votes, average: 3.93 out of 5)

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Here’s something really cool from LP cover lover, Anthony Hulme:  Hi Matthew,  This is reportedly the earliest recording by the late Joe Cocker.  Joe came from Sheffield, England and Sheffield University produced this EP of local bands in 1967 during University Rag Week in order to raise funds for local charities.  The tracks on the EP were recorded at ‘The Mojo’ a Sheffield nightclub founded by Pete Stringfellow.  (He of ‘Stringfellows’, London fame). The rest is history.

(31 votes, average: 3.52 out of 5)

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The legendary Zeki Muren.  Turkey’s “Liberace”.  On Grafson Records.  Zeki was a huge star and the Zeki Müren Art Museum, established in Bodrum, where Müren used to live, has been visited by more than 500,000 people since its opening on June 8, 2000.

(35 votes, average: 3.29 out of 5)

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Peter Sellers “Songs for Swingin’ Sellers”  Four EPs; Nos. 1 – 4  Parlophone Records (UK)  1959  Produced by George Martin Listen to Sellers sing George Gershwin here.  

Songs For Swingin’ Sellers was Peter Sellers’ second album, released in 1959 a year after his debut The Best Of Sellers. Like its predecessor, and despite its title, Songs For Swingin’ Sellers does not actually contain many songs. It does though start with a very well delivered song, namely the velvety smooth You Keep Me Swingin’, credited on the album to a ‘Mr Fred Flange’. Flange was in fact Matt Monro, who with his career languishing in a fairly deep slump by the late 50s recorded the track for Sellers to imitate and practice singing to. So impressed was Sellers with the resultant effort though, the track stayed on the album as it was. The producer of the album, that jolly old knob twiddler man George Martin again, saw to it that Matt was signed immediately to his Parlophone label where he would go on to enjoy a much lauded career resurgence in the 60s.

Other songs do occasionally poke their tiny little heads up and muscle in on the action between the lengthier sketches. Sellers’ old music hall number My Old Dutch is given an outing, with Peter singing as a decrepit old codger in a style that is ridiculously overwrought and maudlin. The song’s denouement of an actual Dutch wife emerging from the kitchen to berate the singer is a wonderfully daft payoff that never fails to amuse me. I Haven’t Told Her, She Hasn’t Told Me (But We Know It Just The Same) sees Sellers revisit another old vaudeville favourite, this time with his trusty ukulele and without so much as a trace of a silly voice or daft punch line in evidence.

The sketches performed on the album are typical Sellers. Just as in many of his films, if there is limelight, then Peter Sellers needs to hog it. The only other artiste even so much as allowed to raise a whisper on the record is Irene Handl, famous for playing cuddly grandmas throughout much of her career and quite the most barmy comedienne of her generation. These two titans of British comedy are brought together most successfully for Shadows on the Grass,  a warm and comforting comic sketch written by Handl, which sees her batty old widower seduced by by Sellers adopting a French accent straight out of the comedy foreigners Christmas selection pack. Irene Handl, here playing an elderly temptress from Dalston (aka ‘the Frinton of E8’), has the best of the repartee and delivers some wonderful malapropisms. Given Sellers’ many later neuroses and megalomania, it’s a refreshing example of generosity on his part.

Other than The Critics, where Handl also appears reviewing books that neither she nor Sellers have managed to read, every other voice (male or female) is Sellers. In The Contemporary Scene 1 for instance the female interviewee Miss Lisbon and the bluff irascible Major Ralph she is sent to interview are both played by Sellers. As is the dim-witted pop star (Cyril Rumbold aka Twit Conway) that the Major appears to keep locked up in his house. Just the names of the equine stable of pop stars are a wonderful exercise in silliness from writers Ron Goodwin and Max Schreiner. Who can fail to want to hear the hits of acts revelling in names such as Lenny Bronze, Clint Thigh and Matt Lust, or not to watch the performances of such unlikely groups as The Fleshpots or The Muckrakers?

Other than Schreiner and Goodwin, Dennis Muir and Frank Norden handle much of the remaining writing duties, with the exception of the penultimate track We’ll Let You Know, which is written by Sellers himself. Here, Sellers plays both the forgetful old duffer of an actor single-handedly destroying Shakespeare’s reputation, as well as the disdainful wearied casting director more intent on gossiping in a muted whisper to his chums than listening to the act. The fact that the actor goes by the name ‘Warrington Minge’ should alone make this album an absolutely essential purchase for any lover of innuendo and comedy. Quite what contemporary audiences made of that ludicrous moniker back in the 1950s is anyone’s guess.

(34 votes, average: 4.18 out of 5)

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Compendium of Jazz #1  Verve Records  (1957)  A compilation of Verve jazz artists including Count Basie, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker and others.  (This guy is Freddy Morgan!)

(35 votes, average: 4.06 out of 5)

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“I Love Listening to Buddy Bregman”   (1957)  RCA Records (UK)  Verve Series (issued in the States as “Swinging Kicks”) Music composed by Bregman for the “B” movie “Wild Party,”  (Anthony Quinn as an over-the-hill football star that holds a thrill-seeking couple captive in a sleazy nightspot for a night of terror ),  A great example of West Coast Cool Jazz with an all-star session featuring the Buddy Bregman All-Star Big Band: Buddy Bregman (conductor, arranger); Herb Geller, Bud Shank (alto saxophone); Georgie Auld, Bob Cooper, Stan Getz, Ben Webster (tenor saxophone); Jimmy Giuffre (baritone saxophone); Conte Candoli, Pete Candoli, Maynard Ferguson, Conrad Gozzo, Ray Linn (trumpet); Milt Berhnart, Frank Rosolino, George Roberts, Lloyd Ulyate (trombone); Andre Previn, Paul Smith (piano); Al Hendrickson (guitar); Joe Mondragon (bass); Stan Levey, Alvin Stoller (drums).

(37 votes, average: 4.16 out of 5)

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