Nice work if you can get it (George and Ira Gershwin) (LP 793 - 794)

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie and His Orchestra  Sinatra-Basie (CD, Reprise Records, 1962) **

Frank Sinatra Sinatra at The Sands with Count Basie and The Orchestra (CD, Reprise Records, 1966) **

Genre: Jazz vocals 

Places I remember: Kings Recording (Abu Dhabi)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Fly Me To The Moon (in other words) (Sinatra At The Sands)

Gear costume: I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter (Sinatra-Basie)

Active compensatory factors: I picked these CDs up in the Middle East and I'm not exactly sure why now. I'm not a fan of Basie's Big Band approach - my dad was. And he didn't like Sinatra, my mother did when she was young.

I think there was a degree of obligation - Sinatra live At The Sands sounded like a good idea but its comedy routines haven't aged well. As a product of its time, the booze culture has time capsule interest I guess, but it makes for uneasy listening.

Sinatra-Basie is also firmly rooted in the swing era. All up - not really my cup of tea.

Where do they all belong? As they say - one for the fans.

Get happy (Frank Sinatra) (LP 346 - 347)

Frank Sinatra Swing Easy! (Vinyl, World Record Club, 1954) ****
Frank Sinatra In The Wee Small Hours (Vinyl, Capitol Records, 1955) **

Genre: Jazz Vocal

Places I remember: Swing Easy! comes from my parents' record collection - mum was the Sinatra fan. Small Hours was found in a charity shop in Caterham during our recent stay in the UK. It's in excellent condition too, given it's probably been in someone's possession since 1955!!!

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Get Happy




Gear costume:  I Get A Kick Out of You, A Foggy Day

Active compensatory factors:  These are both in weird formats. Bear with me.

Swing Easy! was originally released as a 10 inch, eight song 'album'. My copy is the extended 12 inch LP version which adds the eight songs from the 10 inch 'album' Songs for Young Lovers, featuring (as above) the Swing Easy! cover but including a miniature inset of the Songs for Young Lovers cover. It's ugly but it gets the point across.

Mum and dad belonged to the World Record Club and obviously bought this through the mail. The label is therefore cheesily stylised as the 'Light Music Club'.

In The Wee Small Hours was originally released as two 10 inch 'albums'. I have part 1, so side 1 and side 2. Which is fine, as the lonely early morning mood conjured up by the songs, the cover picture, and Frank's delivery doesn't move me especially.

Much better is the 12 inch long player of Swing Easy! released a year earlier - Swing Easy! is a spot on title by the way. Frank sashayes his way through the material and Nelson Riddle's arrangements and orchestration are justifiably lauded.


Where do they all belong? I stretch to a Greatest Hits CD and tha tha that's all folks.

Fate seems to give my heart a twist (Frank and George and many others)

I seem to be on a 1930s kick at the moment. Maybe it's the Jeeves and Bertie Wooster novel I'm reading and I mentioned Macca's new album in a previous post. He's trotting out his versions of songs by great American songwriters.

I recently picked up a bargain - a double CD collection in the Simply Great... budget series. This one has a collection of songs like Cheek to Cheek, Puttin' On The Ritz, Jeepers Creepers etc.

The one that I immediately knew well was Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea, mainly because of the George Harrison version.

Check these out - starting with a blowing Duke Ellington version (in colour!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKb5k3g71YU

Can you hear us pumping on your stereo? (Supergrass)

This is my 100th post on this blog. That's fairly significant I think. 100 rants about music.

What should I do to celebrate? Maybe a list of 100 somethings? Mmm no - that might be a bit of a bridge too far.

Maybe I could do a greatest hits type post of my favourite posts so far. Mmmm no again - they're all there if you want to dip into my back pages.

Instead I'd like to return to the beginning of it all and that was a post on April 13 in 2009 - just over two years ago.

Here's what I wrote:

So we (Jacky me and Samantha) were sitting in our favourite lunch place - Lush in New Plymouth's centre city - and Samantha was asking about my blogging for family/friends and why I didn't put more music posts on it and I said because a lot of wozza's place people don't read that stuff so I was limiting that from now on and Jacky (God bless her) said, "Why don't you just do a music blog and..." (I had drifted off into a distant realm). I think I said in a dreamy far away voice, "Of course - a blog just for my rants on music. But where do I start". Samantha helpfully suggested I start from the beginning!


The beginning - The beginning for me is watching the Ed Sullivan Show on New Zealand TV in maybe 1965 or 1966 (whenever NZBC got around to showing it. I was about 8 or 9) and wozza's place readers will know what effect that had on me. No surprise then that this blog is named after Lennon's walrus sound. The hooks were sharp and deep!

Actually - that wasn't, strictly speaking, the real beginning, now I come to think of it.

The real start of my musical adventures would involve my parents and their love of piano jazz and swing music. I would hear their choices around the house and gaze at the covers of the albums they owned long before The Beatles crashed my consciousness.

These would include albums by Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Smith, Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, and Frank Sinatra (my mother's favourite).

I guess what I meant, in that first post, was that the first music that was mine was the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

In that first post I also did my own responses to the regular 'All Back To Mine' quiz in Mojo magazine. Seems timely that I do an update.
What music are you currently grooving to?
I'm still constantly buying and listening to music - right now I'm listening to my latest purchases, all of which I've picked up cheaply in the local Al Ain supermarkets: The Crowded  House waifs and strays compilation Afterglow which is excellent - their cast offs are better than some band's whole careers; A compilation entitled Saturday Night Divas (Tina Turner's Steamy Windows and Lene Marlin are on there so it's pretty fine); another compilation called Metal For The Masses (Lacuna Coil, Strapping Young Lad keep Deep Purple and Scorpions company); and a Supergrass compilation of hits - Supergrass is 10. I love their chirpy Britpop fun songs.
What, if push came to shove, is your all-time favourite album?
In all my various best of lists two albums have always vied for best ever - The Beatles white album (really called 'the Beatles'), and John Lennon's 1970 solo album - 'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'. The shock of the invention and honesty in each makes them my favs by some distance.


What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?
I've an unreliable memory on this. I've always thought it was The Hollies single 'Hey Willie' that I bought from the record bar in 246 (a large mall in Queen St, Auckland). However this was in 1971 and I'd already got some albums before that for Christmas 1970 The Beatles 'Hey Jude' - from a record shop in Otahuhu and I also had a clutch of albums including a best of The Cowsills, a Monkees album and a Hollies album around this same time.


Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be?
The Mojo questions are often given to musicians of course and I'm not one. However for a while there after seeing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee in concert (I was about 10 feet away at Nambassa) I bought a blues harp and wailled along with Sonny - desperate to be as cool as he was.


What do you sing in the shower?
I wish I could sing, but a man's gotta know his limitations.


What is your favourite Saturday night song?
Let's have a Party by Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs is the finest thing to twitch around to that I know. Don't Let Go redone by Cold Chisel on their live album is also damn good.


And your Sunday morning record?
Currently it's a good time for some Jazz (Dexter Gordon), Buddha Lounge chill music or Rumer's excellent Seasons of My Soul album (makes me long to be in England too).