Sir Charles Thompson ~ 98 ~ American Jazz pianist from the 1940's onwards w/Coleman Hawkins/Howard McGhee, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Lucky Millinder, Illinois Jacquet, Buck Clayton
COLEMAN HAWKINS w/ SIR CHARLES THOMPSON ~ "CENTERPIECE";
Don Francks ~ 84 ~ Canadian jazz vocalist w/Lenny Breau and actor ("La Femme Nikita", "Inspector Gadget", "I'm Not There")
TORONTO JAZZ;
Mike Pedicin ~ 98 ~ American Big Band Jazz bandleader from the 1940's on, had a hit with "Shake A Hand"
MIKE PEDICAN BAND ~ "SHAKE A HAND";
Gato Barbieri ~ 83 ~ Argentine Jazz Fusion saxophonist from the 1970's on
GATO BARBIERI ~ "EUROPA";
Buster Cooper ~ 87 ~ American trombonist at the Apollo Club & w/Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman & Duke Ellington
BUSTER COOPER & LIONEL HAMPTON;
BUSTER COOPER & LIONEL HAMPTON;
Hannes Bauer ~ 61 ~ German Free Jazz trumpet and trombone player w/Peter Brotzman
PETER BROTZMAN QUARTET;
PETER BROTZMAN QUARTET;
Victor Bailey ~ 56 ~ American Bassist w/Weather Report and Sonny Rollins, Pharaoh Sanders, Micheal Brecker, Miriam Makeba, LL Cool J, Sting
WEATHER REPORT ~ "VOLCANO FOR HIRE";
Alphonse Mouzon ~ 68 ~ American jazz drummer w/Weather Report, Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, Patrick Moraz, Betty Davis, Jaco Pastorius, Chubby Checker, Robert Plant and solo bandleader on Blue Note Records, later started his own Tenacious Records
ALPHONSE MOUZON & JACO PASTORIUS;
Paul Smoker ~ 75 ~ American jazz trumpeter w/Anthony Braxton
ANTHONY BRAXTON;
Fredrik Norén ~ 75 ~ Swedish jazz drummer w/Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon and many Scandinavian jazzmen from the 1960's on
FREDRICK NOREN ~ "DON'T DROP THE BOP";
Joe Temperley ~ 86 ~ Scottish Jazz saxophonist w/Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Joe Henderson, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orch and Clark Terry. Played on soundtracks for "Cotton Club", "Biloxi Blues", "Brighton Beach Memoirs", "When Harry Met Sally", and "Tune In Tomorrow"
JOE TEMPERELEY ~ "TRY A LITTLE TENDERENESS";
Bobby Hutcherson ~ 75 ~ American jazz vibe player from the 1960's on. Recorded with Blue Note, Landmark Atlantic and Verve Records, played with Joe Henderson, Lee Morgan, Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner, Joey Defrancesco, David Sanborn
BOBBY HUTCHERSON & HAROLD LAND HERZOG;
Bobby Wellins ~ 80 ~ Scottish Jazz saxophonist from the 1950's onward
BOBBY WELLINS ~ "MOON RAY";
King Bhumibol Adulyadej ~ King of Thailand from 1946 to his death in 2016, making him at the time the world longest serving monarch (Queen Elizabeth did not take the throne until 1952). The normally quiet and retiring King was a huge fan of Dixieland and Big Band Jazz and played the saxophone including sitting in with visiting players like Benny Goodman, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Stan Getz, Lionel Hampton, and Benny Carter. He also composed over 40 songs (not all of them Jazz) and did some recordings. Being a King probably helped but unlike some other royal musicians he was actually considered a good player and some of his compositions have been recorded by the likes of Claude Bolling, Les Brown and Preservation Hall Jazz Band. His brother and predecessor King Ananada also played the clarinet and the two did much to encourage a Jazz scene in Thailand which would also lead to a rock and soul scene in the late 60's which was second in Asia only to Japan's.
KING BHUMBIBOL ~ "HOW HIGH THE MOON";
Dance Macabre
Tuesday 17 May 2016
Wednesday 11 May 2016
THE SUPER, FANTASTIC, DYNAMITE, STORY OF K-TEL!!!
Any history of Rock & Roll will list the great record labels; Sun, Chess, Stax, Atlantic, Motown, Paramount, Black Patti, Factory. But the label with the highest visibility and biggest sales in the 1970's was a Canadian discount label with no artists of it's own run by a Winnipeg salesman with no music experience at all, Phil Kives who died last week at 87.
If you grew up in the 1970's and early-to-mid 80's it's a pretty sure bet your first album (aside from Disney stories and nursery rhymes) was from K-Tell records. Oh; You can deny it and claim your first record was something objectively cool like the Velvet Underground, Black Sabbath, Gene Vincent or Hank Williams but you know you're lying.
K-Tel was as efficient as it was unavoidable, kind of like the Borg. Their jam-packed compilation albums with their tacky multi-coloured covers were jam-packed with randomly assembled top forty hits and given subtle titles like "22 Fantastic Hits!", "20 Dynamite Explosive Hits!" or "20 Super-Duper Show-Stopping Hits!". What really made them standout was the was the saturation coverage given via their trade-mark TV and radio ads with their rapid-fire announcers.
Compilation albums were nothing new of course, in the late sixties oldies collections of first era Rock & Roll, Doo-Wop, Rockabilly, Surf and Country helped kickstart the Rock & Roll revival of the 1970's. But K-Tel was different in focusing not on oldies but instead on artists and hits which had been recently on the charts and compiling them in bulk, usually twenty songs or so an album. K-Tel was also unique in mixing completely different genres of music regardless of jaw-droppingly unsuited they might be to each other. Thus it was quite possible to find Kiss, Grand Funk or Rush and a few mainstream New Wavers such as Blondie, The Cars or The Knack alongside disco hits, drippy ballads, cheesy bubblegum and and the most cloying over-wrought shmaltz from Neil Diamond, Vikki Lawrence, Cher or Barbara Streisand. Therefore it was usually possible for pretty much anybody to find something acceptable. No serious music fan would waste their time with K-Tel of course but for kids too young too have enough spending money to do any shopping, or those living too far out in the suburbs or in small towns to away from cool record stores they were like a cheap starter's kit.
Besides the high profile collections of random Rock, Pop and Disco, K-Tel also specialized in specific Country & Western collections which often had some legitimately great songs from the likes of Johnny Cash or Johnny Horton along with older, lesser known honky-tonkers like Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins. K-Tel also put out some good comps focused on Surf and other instrumentals which would have been largely out of print.
Perhaps K-Tel's best loved comps, and the ones most likely to still show up in used vinyl stores, were their collections of Rock, Pop and Country novelty hits with ever-subtle titles like "Goofy Greats", "Wacky Hits" and "Kooky Kountry". Most of these songs were one-hit-wonders or non-album tracks which were long out of print. These songs were dismissed by rock journalists as trash and forgotten by radio but most of these songs are still good fun and some are actually pretty good.
K-Tel never became respected label but it was a massively successful one. And it was a Canadian one. Founder Phil Kives was a Winnipeg based businessman who specialized in cheaply made qimicky home products like the "Veg-O-Matic" or the "Pocket Fisherman". Kives sold these products by using in-your-face, low-budget TV and radio ads with blaring announcers that have since become a common plague on TV but were brash and new at the time. In 1965 Kives decided to adapt those proven marketing tactics to the music business. He wasn't the first businessman to jump into music with no prior experience. The classic blues label Paramount Records was started by a Wisconsin furniture company which made gramophones who decided they might as well make records to go with them. Phil and Leonard Chess had been bar owners while Dot Records Randy Wood owned a furniture and appliance store, King Record's Syd Nathan was a xxx and Roulette Records Morris Levy ran a number of businesses with mob connections. Where K-Tel differed was in not having and actual artists of their own, instead Kives kept his overhead low by simply using licensed previously released material and spending money on saturation ad coverage. K-Tel crammed their albums with as many tracks as they could fit on an album which did not help their sound quality but they were sold at a budget price so they were still a good bargain. Eventually K-Tel actually recorded some of their own artists including the successful "Hooked On Classics" and "Mini Pops" series.
Besides records and tapes K-Tel came up with some odd record related gimmicks which became briefly popular like automatic record filer which flipped each album in sequence. I had one and we all thought it was pretty cool, at least at until it kept breaking. Besides it actually took up more space than simply filing the albums the old fashioned way and it wouldn't take double albums, let alone gate-folds. There was also a version for 8-Tracks because why not? Less successful were the automatic record cleaners which we we fondly referred to as the "record eater".
Although K-Tel is firmly associated with the 1970's and early 80's they have actually continued on till the present day focusing on licensing their library of oldies for use in soundtracks and commercials. While T-Tel went international the company still kept offices in Winnipeg. Phil Kives died last week at age 87.
If you grew up in the 1970's and early-to-mid 80's it's a pretty sure bet your first album (aside from Disney stories and nursery rhymes) was from K-Tell records. Oh; You can deny it and claim your first record was something objectively cool like the Velvet Underground, Black Sabbath, Gene Vincent or Hank Williams but you know you're lying.
K-Tel was as efficient as it was unavoidable, kind of like the Borg. Their jam-packed compilation albums with their tacky multi-coloured covers were jam-packed with randomly assembled top forty hits and given subtle titles like "22 Fantastic Hits!", "20 Dynamite Explosive Hits!" or "20 Super-Duper Show-Stopping Hits!". What really made them standout was the was the saturation coverage given via their trade-mark TV and radio ads with their rapid-fire announcers.
Compilation albums were nothing new of course, in the late sixties oldies collections of first era Rock & Roll, Doo-Wop, Rockabilly, Surf and Country helped kickstart the Rock & Roll revival of the 1970's. But K-Tel was different in focusing not on oldies but instead on artists and hits which had been recently on the charts and compiling them in bulk, usually twenty songs or so an album. K-Tel was also unique in mixing completely different genres of music regardless of jaw-droppingly unsuited they might be to each other. Thus it was quite possible to find Kiss, Grand Funk or Rush and a few mainstream New Wavers such as Blondie, The Cars or The Knack alongside disco hits, drippy ballads, cheesy bubblegum and and the most cloying over-wrought shmaltz from Neil Diamond, Vikki Lawrence, Cher or Barbara Streisand. Therefore it was usually possible for pretty much anybody to find something acceptable. No serious music fan would waste their time with K-Tel of course but for kids too young too have enough spending money to do any shopping, or those living too far out in the suburbs or in small towns to away from cool record stores they were like a cheap starter's kit.
Besides the high profile collections of random Rock, Pop and Disco, K-Tel also specialized in specific Country & Western collections which often had some legitimately great songs from the likes of Johnny Cash or Johnny Horton along with older, lesser known honky-tonkers like Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins. K-Tel also put out some good comps focused on Surf and other instrumentals which would have been largely out of print.
Perhaps K-Tel's best loved comps, and the ones most likely to still show up in used vinyl stores, were their collections of Rock, Pop and Country novelty hits with ever-subtle titles like "Goofy Greats", "Wacky Hits" and "Kooky Kountry". Most of these songs were one-hit-wonders or non-album tracks which were long out of print. These songs were dismissed by rock journalists as trash and forgotten by radio but most of these songs are still good fun and some are actually pretty good.
K-Tel never became respected label but it was a massively successful one. And it was a Canadian one. Founder Phil Kives was a Winnipeg based businessman who specialized in cheaply made qimicky home products like the "Veg-O-Matic" or the "Pocket Fisherman". Kives sold these products by using in-your-face, low-budget TV and radio ads with blaring announcers that have since become a common plague on TV but were brash and new at the time. In 1965 Kives decided to adapt those proven marketing tactics to the music business. He wasn't the first businessman to jump into music with no prior experience. The classic blues label Paramount Records was started by a Wisconsin furniture company which made gramophones who decided they might as well make records to go with them. Phil and Leonard Chess had been bar owners while Dot Records Randy Wood owned a furniture and appliance store, King Record's Syd Nathan was a xxx and Roulette Records Morris Levy ran a number of businesses with mob connections. Where K-Tel differed was in not having and actual artists of their own, instead Kives kept his overhead low by simply using licensed previously released material and spending money on saturation ad coverage. K-Tel crammed their albums with as many tracks as they could fit on an album which did not help their sound quality but they were sold at a budget price so they were still a good bargain. Eventually K-Tel actually recorded some of their own artists including the successful "Hooked On Classics" and "Mini Pops" series.
Besides records and tapes K-Tel came up with some odd record related gimmicks which became briefly popular like automatic record filer which flipped each album in sequence. I had one and we all thought it was pretty cool, at least at until it kept breaking. Besides it actually took up more space than simply filing the albums the old fashioned way and it wouldn't take double albums, let alone gate-folds. There was also a version for 8-Tracks because why not? Less successful were the automatic record cleaners which we we fondly referred to as the "record eater".
Although K-Tel is firmly associated with the 1970's and early 80's they have actually continued on till the present day focusing on licensing their library of oldies for use in soundtracks and commercials. While T-Tel went international the company still kept offices in Winnipeg. Phil Kives died last week at age 87.
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