Singers

“Way Out…Far”  The Lewis Sisters  Liberty Records. (1960)  Helen and Kaye went on to record as “the Singing School Teachers” and recorded and wrote for Motown Records!  Equally odd is this cover which is dark and creepy (in a peeping tom kinda way) on one hand and squeeky clean on the other.

The Hi-Lo’s “On Hand”  Starlite Records.  Cover by Frank Werber.

Louis Prima’s “Just a Gigolo” on his own Prima One label.   Of course with Sam Butera and the Witnesses.  This one’s from the early Seventies I’m sure.  Here’s a great clip of the song with Louis, his wife Keely Smith and the boys back in the late Fifties.

Storyville presents Jackie and Roy. Burt Goldblatt design. (1955)

It’s hard to go wrong with the jazz vocals of husband and wife team Jackie & Roy. After joining forces in 1946, they joined Charlie Ventura a couple years later. Shortly after leaving Ventura in June 1949, they were married and worked together on a regular basis for the next fifty years. Jackie and Roy had their own television show in Chicago in the fifties, worked in Las Vegas during 1957-1960, and settled in New York in 1963. Working in a mode that was deeply informed by bop, Jackie and Roy hit vocal lines that only the hippest of the fifties singers could match. Some cuts on this Storyville 10″ feature scatting, others vocalese, and still others just great straight-up readings of the lyrics. The small combo features Roy on piano, Barry Galbraith on guitar, Bill Crow on bass, and Joe Morello on drums. Titles include “Slowly”, “Thou Swell”, “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was”, “Cheerful Little Earful”, “Hook Line & Sinker”, and “Yesterdays”.

Having raided and fully absorbed my step-father’s one cabinet of records as a kid, I was familiar with a couple Jackie and Roy records growing up. Listening to songs like “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” “Let’s Take a Walk Around the Block” and “You Smell So Good” didn’t win me any friends and fewer dates.

French Canadian transvestite Guilda - “Une femme pas comme les autres…?”

The Original Blind Boys of Alabama on Savoy Records. (1961)

Jennell Hawkins “Moments to Remember” On Amazon Records.

Sonny King.  “For Losers Only”  Colpix.

Stubby Kaye. “Music for Chubby Lovers” Seeco. Occasionally you’ll see — as I do now pulling records off the shelf to post here — how I used to insert myself into various cover scenes. This was pre-photoshop obviously.

Johnny Ray “A Sinner Am I” with Jack Parnell and his Orchestra.  This is on the Australian Philips Label.  (Perhaps not by chance my reflection is in the glass of this one.)

“We Like Johnny”  Johnny Dorelli that is.  Italian Crepax label from the Sixties.

Vi Redd “Bird Call”  Vi Redd is a passionate bop-based altoist and an exciting singer. She made this album for United Artists (1962) and another for Atco (1962-63).

Freedom Now Suite on Candid. Recorded in 1960.

Track listing: Driva’ Man; Freedom Day; Triptych (Prayer, Protest, Peace); All Africa; Tears For Johannesburg.

Personnel: Max Roach: drums; Booker Little: trumpet; Julian Priester: trombone; Coleman Hawkins: tenor saxophone (1); Walter Benton: tenor saxophone; James Schenck: bass; Michael Olatunji: congas; Ray Mantilla: percussion; Tomas DuVall: percussion; Abbey Lincoln: vocals.

This incredible, essential Sinatra Capitol 10″ includes “Violets for Your Furs,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” “I Get a Kick Out of Your” and other “Songs For Lovers” that set the standard for standards and provided the make-out soundtrack for a generation of bobby-sockers in the fifties. Nelson Riddle conducts! This one’s for Jerry who told me about Tom Waits on stage with a mini light post.

ELVIS - NBC - TV SPECIAL (LP) (US) RCA LPM 4088 Released: December 1968

Have you met Miss Jones?  This is “the great” Grace Bumbry from Kerstan in Germany.

Before parts in “The King of Marvin Gardens,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” and “The Shining” with Jack Nicholson and supporting roles in 1960’s and 70’s TV shows and blaxploitation movies, Benjamin “Scatman” Crothers sang and danced and wrote jazz and early R&B and Rock ‘n Roll.  Here’s a cool low budget lp of his.  Find a copy of his song “Keep That Coffee Hot” too!

Beautiful.  Like a German expressionist painting.   Lotte Lenya was married to Kurt Weill who wrote “Three Penny Opera” with Bertolt Brecht.  Lotte played the main role of Jenny in the original staging.  Fyi, she was also in the movie “From Russia With Love”.  Thanks again to Kerstan for sending this in.

I was charmed by your lp cover log that I ran into over the weekend.

Most of my unusual covers were picked up in the early 90s when I could go to places like the local “Off Broadway Flea Market” and pick up my favorite jazz stars for around a dollar. I kept running into these odd covers that reminded me of when this kind of thing looked normal. Frankly it seems to me like it was more fun when wacky covers were a normal part of marketing these things. I hope some of these covers might find a place on your log.  — Steve Talley, Muncie, In

Georgie Gibbs on Halo Records.