Looking at the sepia toned cover photo, listening to the Civil War era Americana-themed lyrics and unraveling the thick, dark, tuba-tinged instrumental atmospherics, you might easily imagine the recording venue to have been a log cabin in the woods.



Instead, the group set up shop in sun-splashed Los Angeles, more specifically at 8850 Evanview Drive just off of Sunset Plaza, in Sammy Davis Junior’s pool cabana. There’s a Rhino-released, BBC produced DVD on the making of the album that hardcore fans will find worth watching.

To really appreciate the magnitude of Nat ‘King’ Cole’s genius, imagine only the backing instruments without Nat’s piano. Consider the familiar melodies and then listen to what Nat does with them. Then imagine inventing and filling in the spaces yourself!

Of course, that’s not exactly fair, but neither is dismissing these dated recordings as cocktail music, or easy listening as I suspect some might, especially given the album title and the “formal wear” cover art.

Elvis Costello “borrowed” the cover of this album for his Almost Blue (F-Beat XXLP13) but there the resemblance ends, not only between Costello’s countrified Nashville tribute and this one, but between this one and the usual Blue Note fare.

Burrell’s Midnight Blue is a cool, introspective, urban blues set that sounds like a late evening, informal, intimate after-hours jam session performed for the pleasures of the players.

You can bet this blistering, groundbreaking jazz-rock fusion album from 1971 spun Jeff Beck’s head around big time, turning him from heavy metalist-rocker (his version of The Yardbirds’ “Shape of the Things to Come” on the Jeff Beck Group’s album Truth is arguably the first “heavy metal” rock arrangement) to the jazz-fusionist he became on Blow By Blow. Others followed too, of course.

Note: After this the posting of this review, Sundazed's Bob Irwin sent a correction. I've chose to leave the original review intact, prefaced by Irwin's comment:

Before there was an Internet, before cell-phones but after smoke signals, news of this remarkable Leo Kottke album with the black and white armadillo cover spread throughout the “underground” almost immediately upon its release in 1969 on John Fahey’s Takoma Records label.

Acoustic guitar fans were already steeped in Fahey’s own fingerpicking recordings and those of UK Transatlantic stars Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, but this Kottke album punched through to the kids worshiping electric guitar gods and it hasn’t stopped making new fans.

Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes makes Freddie Mercury, Prince and David Bowie sound positively macho. His whiney vocalizing and gay shrieking makes glam-rock sound like Led Zeppelin. And while a Mercury song like “We Are the Champions” has become a ball game anthem, nothing in the Barnes oeuvre could possibly crossover—unless a day comes when what sound like gay diary entries become the favorite half-time sing alongs.

Like Richard X. Heyman, Matthew Sweet, Jason Falkner, Owsley, Myracle Brah (to a lesser degree), a guy named William Wisely, Jr. (whose record from last April I should have already reviewed but promise to right after this) and some others, Jim Boggia is a true keeper of the pop music flame lit by the early Beatles, Kinks, fellow Philadelphian Todd Rundgren and the others ‘60s icons— not to mention second gen acts like Badfinger.

The contrast between this Sam Cooke playing a tiny Miami stop on the Chitlin circuit and the one who showed up at New York's Copacabana the next year couldn't put the singer's flip sides into greater relief.

Sophisticated, facile and somewhat aloof and almost condescending in New York, Cooke is raw and gritty in front of the Harlem Square Club crowd. He keeps his cool side in check.

The big problem with vinyl 'greatest hits' compilations is that they are, of necessity, at least a generation down from the master tape. That's because assembling the actual masters into a cutting reel usually isn't allowed and even were a record label to allow it, levels, equalization and tape head azimuth issues make in nearly impossible to adjust between tracks as the tape reel rolls and the lacquer gets cut.