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!

Fingers (Jimmy Smith) (LP 2132)

Jimmy Smith   The Boss (Vinyl, Verve Records, 1968) ***   

Genre: Jazz 

Places I remember: Inherited from my dad's collection.

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: The Boss

Gear costume: This Guy's In Love With You 

Active compensatory factors: Because it was in dad's pile of records, I have been aware of this album forever.

Growing up as a Beatle nut, the soul jazz organ stylings of Jimmy Smith always seemed part of an older generation. Funny that this came out in the same year as the White Album!

Back then, I used to gaze at the cover, more that listen to the music. When I did listen to it, I liked the Hammond B3 organ sound.

Weirdly, there's something quite human about the sound. And it's cool too.

George Benson adds the tasteful guitar lines that go so well with that organ sound.

I can appreciate this album a lot more these days!

Where do they all belong? He was extremely prolific, but this live album was the only one dad owned. I'd love to know his reasons for acquiring it.

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).