Ain't that nice (The Dixie Cups) (LP 4661 - 4664)

Jimmy Smith  Midnight Special  (Vinyl, Blue Note Records, 1961, 2023 reissue) ****  

The Dixie Cups  Chapel of Love (Vinyl, Sun Records, 1964, 2023 reissue) *** 

Various  Hotel Jolie Dame (Vinyl, Jazz Dispensary Records, 2023) *** 

Various  Transmissions from Total Refreshment Centre (Vinyl, Blue Note Records, 2023) **** 

Genre: Jazz, sixties pop. 

Places I remember: JB Hi Fi

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Crescent (Jake Long on Transmissions...)

Gear costume: Chapel of Love (The Dixie Cups)

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7

Active compensatory factors: JB Hi Fi's sale bins, plus a King's Birthday 20% off deal proved too much of a temptation, recently.

The Jimmy Smith album was in the jazz section and when I did a quick search on AllMusic, I had to grab it. The lineup is great - Stanley Turrentine on sax and Kenny Burrell on guitar, and the album was part of the sessions for Back at the Chicken Shack (which I still need to buy). Both albums have Jimmy posing in the same clothes even!

This is my second Jimmy Smith album, Boss Man was the first - from my father's collection. For some reason that was the only Jimmy Smith album dad owned. Actually, now that I come to think of it, apart from Paul Desmond's work with Dave Brubeck, dad didn't seem to favour the sax sound. Trumpets? Big band horn sections? Pianos? Oh hell, yes. But not the sax as a lead instrument.

Anyway, Midnight Special is an excellent album as Turrentine and Burrell share the lead role with Jimmy. I think dad would have liked it too.

Chapel of Love was the debut album for The Dixie Cups in 1964. My attention was elsewhere at the time (I was 7) and later on with The Beatles' efforts from 1964. So, it's taken me a while to catch up (and a $9 price tag helped).

The singing threesome was made up of sisters Barbara and Rosa Hawkins and their cousin, Joan Johnson. The girls hit it big with their first single - Chapel of Love, written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector. 

The album is full of bright tunes/fun songs produced by the legendary team of Leiber and Stoller, but nothing could top that first song on side one.

The Hotel Jolie Dame compilation is a 2023 Record Store Day offering from The Jazz Dispensary label. A cunning way to present a selection from their jazzy roster. Their mission was to take listeners 'on a trip back to the summer of 1978, to an imaginary hotel deep in the heart of the French Riviera, for a day of love, abandonment, and a whole lot of psychedelia, soundtracked by sweet themes from Dizzy Gillespie, The Blackbyrds, Dorothy Ashby, and many more'.

It was a pressing limited to 5,000 copies worldwide on 'Psych-Sunset Orange Marble' vinyl. 

The music certainly lives up to their vision/hype (read more here), and is good value for $9.

Transmissions from Total Refreshment Centre is a compilation of jazz/ funk/ dub/ soul/ hip hop workouts from London's Total Refreshment Centre collective.

I'm not a hip hop fan so I tend to skip the first track from Soccer96 and, to a lesser extent, Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange - their music is a treat and the hip hop is a fitting accoutrement even if I'm not a hip hop fan, but the rest of the album is superb. Special mentions go to the lengthy jazz work outs by drummer Jake Long and lead off track on side 2 - Matters Unknown.

Given they are a collective, the music of the whole compilation hangs together well. The Blue Note album cover is also a thing of beauty. On the whole it's also well worth the $9 I paid for it. BTW - the Pitchfork review is recommended reading for its background information.

Where do they all belong? Obviously, JB Hi Fi bought a lot of stock during 2023, which is great for punters like me who are discovering new sounds via their discounted sales. Keep 'em coming JB!