Mazzucca’s “Dry Martini & Outros ‘Drinques’”  Columbia Records EP

“Tequila”  Carlos Campos  RCA

Reverend and Doctor James Wade recorded live giving his “soul stirring” sermon – “THE WHOLE CHURCH SHOULD GET DRUNK”  (on Savoy records)

Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. Proverbs 31: 6/7

Hammish Imlach sings “Ballads of Booze”

Graphic designer, musician and lp cover lover Mika of Finland writes us:  Hi There!  The LP Cover Lover site is fabulous! I decided to send you some record covers, mostly for their nice graphics. CHUBBY JACKSON – LEMON DROP  Rainbow Records.  Cover Design: Leonard Besser

Try a Lemon Drop tonight!

Mrs. Shufflewick  “A Drop of the Hard Shuff…”  “Live at the New Black  Cap”  For Adults Only  Decca Records UK

Notes by Molly Parkin:

‘Mrs Shufflewick is a dirty old woman. She is 60, maybe 70, weak-willed and easily led. She has usually just had a few, you can tell by her big red conk and boss-eyed way of walking. She loves a gossip but can never stop long in case her next gin gets cold on the counter. Everybody laughs at her. They call her ‘Shuff’, they whistle and poke fun and cheer when she hoicks up her skirts. They always shout for more, though she doesn’t need encouraging. She is a terrible show-off, whether she is tiddly or not. There is no holding her when there are sailors around: she has a weakness for the Navy. The last sailor she met was French, he kissed her on both cheeks. She was doing up her laces at the time.

She calls herself Missus but has never been married. She tells terrible stories of what she gets up to – she has been telling them for the last 20 years, all over the place, at the Windmill, music halls, working-men’s clubs, Mecca bingo halls – she has even told them on telly, but had to clean them up a bit.

One Monday she appeared at the Mecca Dominion, Walthamstow, the same night as Miss World. They both went to entertain the bingo-players. Shuff got the most laughs, mainly from madams who looked just like her. She had thought of hiring a bathing costume and going on as Miss Courage, riding 14 white horses from Whitbreads, not to be outdone.

She won’t even be outdone at Christmas. She has written her own panto – a skit on Cinderella. She plays Cinders, or course. (She is still trying to decide whether to make Cinderella’s slipper into a bovver boot or a pair of panties).

Mrs Shufflewick is very familiar with the Cinderella story. It happens to her every night. After the last laugh and when the clapping dies, she disappears too, into an old brown leather suitcase. And where she stood stands Rex Jameson. He is an elf. A five-foot, 40-year old with a face like Buster Keaton. And a little green cap on his head and a coat that is a bit too big.

He gives the feeling of being a foundling, which he was. He was dumped when two weeks old on the doorstep of Trinity College Hospital and spent his childhood in Southend with a foster mother. He is a classic clown and as different from his creation, Mrs Shufflewick, as it is possible to be. Small and shy and painfully unsure, he is lonely in love and agonisingly unlucky with his choices. He is protected in his bad patches by the loyalty of his friends and sustained by them, too, through his bouts of insecurity and deep depression.

He is shockingly difficult to manage, like a Hancock or Keaton or W.C. Fields. It is a full-time job. But then Mrs Shufflewick knows she has the audience before she even starts.

It is as painful and personal as laughing at your mother when she has had one too many. And, of course, as far as Rex Jameson is concerned, his mother might be in the audience laughing unknowingly at her son.

Don Mario Suarez  Discolando Records Venezuela

“Cocktail Swing”  Jack Sterling and his Quintet  Columbia Harmony Records

“Idol Worship of the Worshipped Idols” a piece of original art by John Purlia.

A solo exhibit of John Purlia’s Lp cover-inspired art is coming to Distinction Gallery in Escondido, California.  The show is titled “Plastic Prophets of Vinyl Redemption” and will run from February 14-March 7.  Check it out!

“It’s Party Time”  Featuring Jim Watson with Guest Star Joel Cowan.  Spicy Records.  Here’s a gem of a cover.  Looks like something Crumb might have seen (He did a series of similar illustrations and covers depicting great jazz and blues musicians for Yazoo! Records, etc.)

Osvaldo Oliveira “Paixao Descontrolada”  CBS