bowling trophy

Stompin’ Tom Connors: Stompin’ Tom and The Hockey Song

The best game you can name is played, apparently, by teams and players you can’t name.

Boot Records logo

The Culling: The Next Day

The 10 records-a-day pace has slowed a bit while I’ve been busy with other stuff (like work). I’m in The Osmonds (2 double LPs in a row) with The Partridge Family coming up next. I just may slit my wrists.

No records this week.

In related news: I’ve decided to cull the herd.

I’m going to go through all the records on the shelves and try to “edit” my collection a little - enough to get all those records off the floor, I hope.

I’ve also decided to listen to all my records. I figure if I listen to 10 a day it shouldn’t take me more than a year and a half. After two days I’ve already fallen behind - I’ve only listened to 5 sides (out of 6) of Concert For Bangladesh.

The Records of John Aubin

The Jonah Jones Quartet: Swingin’ At The Cinema

Charlie Byrd: Brazilian Byrd

Stan Kenton: Kenton’s West Side Story

Peggy Lee: Jump For Joy

Quincy Jones: Big Band Bossa Nova

John had great taste in records - I just wish he wouldn’t write on the covers.

Les Classels: en spectacle

The 60s were a golden age of gimmicky bands in Québec: Les Classels dressed all in white (including their hair), César et les Romains wore togas and sandals, Les Excentriques wore metalic pink tuxedos. These groups mostly recorded French cover versions of American and British hits of the day. Les Classels also recorded some songs in English, as well as original songs (in French) by their guitar player Jean Clément Drouin and their manager Ben Kaye. Then the 70s came along and singer/songwriters like Robert Charlebois ruined everything.

Les Classels on YouTube:

While researching this post, I came across this:

René Angélil (on the left) in a band called Les Baronets. Just think: if they’d had the enduring success of The Beatles or the Stones, today Céline might be a lounge singer in Chicoutimi.

Ruth Wallis: Here’s Looking Up Your Hatch

Ruth Wallis was the queen of risqué novelty tunes in the 40s, 50s and 60s, selling hundreds of thousands of records without the benefit of radio play. She and her husband formed their own record label, Wallis Original Records, in 1952 because the major labels weren’t interested in artists who specialized in double entrendres. Wallis wrote all her own lyrics and music - more than 150 songs in total. In 1966 she started recording for King Records, who also purchased her back catalogue (King was also James Brown’s label). The songs on this record include The Admiral’s Daughter, De Gay Young Lad, Hawaiian Lei Song and Johnny Had A Yo Yo.

click to enlarge

I think Ruth’s records have aged better than similar “party” records because of their superior production values (she always hired excellent session players and arrangers), her talent and as a songwriter and singer, and her sense of fun, which is more impish than smutty.

The saucy chanteuse died shortly before Christmas last year.

Johnny Williams: Checkmate

The hand-altered cover reads in part “YAA! YAA! YAA! 1 2 3 CHA-CHA. Exiting? 1902.6 seconds of the greatest listening pleasure!” I haven’t checked the math but I agree with the conclusion. This is a great early 60s crime jazz score by John (Star Wars, Jaws, ET, etc.) Williams. Checkmate was a TV detective series starring Anthony George, Doug McClure and Sebastian Cabot that ran for two seasons. The record is a little the worse for wear and would sound so much better in stereo, but it’s still a great find.

Here’s another artfully altered record I saw at Goodwill, possibly from the hand of the same artist:

The same Goodwill store also had nearly a hundred RCA SelectaVision VideoDiscs:

Essentially movies on record, RCA released VideoDiscs from 1981 to 1986. They had many of the same limitations of vinyl records - skipping, short playback times (1 hour per side, so for a feature you’d have to flip the disc; movies longer than 2 hours were on multiple discs), and because the technology was analogue needle-in-groove, video and audio quality degraded as they wore out with repeating playing. The players never sold as well as RCA anticipated and medium went the way of the 8-track tape. I can’t recall ever seeing a player at a thrift store but I find the movies fairly often in the record section.

Wikipedia entry

VideoDisc FAQ

Liza Minnelli: Come Saturday Morning

A fresh-faced, 24 year old Liza stares out from the cover of her 1970 album. The repertoire includes songs by John Denver (Leavin’ On A Jet Plane), Nilsson (Wailing of the Willow), Gordon Lightfoot (Wherefore and Why), Randy Newman (Love Story), Liza’s then husband Peter Allen (Simon) and Jimmy Webb (MacArthur Park/Didn’t We).

Various: Porta

It’s been a few weeks. I’ve been much more selective about the thrift store records I buy. Every disc has to justify the space it takes up on my record shelves (or the floor, now that I’ve run out of shelf space). This week I found an intriguing collection of Czechoslovakian records at the Salvation Army - and I do mean Czechoslovakian (not Czech) as these records predate the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.

I picked up two records: Porta, a 1980 compilation of country and folk music that attracted me because of the cartoony cover and because it has a version of Gordon Lightfoot’s For Loving Me.

My googling tells me that Porta was a festival of folk, country and “tramp” music (a genre of music peculiar to Czechoslavkia, I take it), which would explain these cartoons.

Also, a rock compilation from 1985 called Rockovy Maratón, heavy on the cheesy synths and reggae beats.

Stanley Wilson: Pagan Love

Classic 1950’s exotica. Television and movie composer Stanley Wilson originally conceived the pieces on this album as the score for The Mating Urge, a 1958 documentary about “primitive” courting rituals in the south seas, Africa and Asia. The front cover reminds me of amateur Sasquatch footage (if the Sasquatch was a naked white woman with a Betty Page haircut). The back cover has some fun line art (click the image below to see it up close and read the informative liner notes).

Burl Ives: Favorites

These aren’t my favorite songs of his, but Burl’s avuncular face on a record cover is often all I need to convince me to buy it. And because it’s never too early to start planning your costume, I’ve turned this cover into a life-sized Halloween mask - just click on the thumbnail below.