A Record a Week: Duke Ellington (& Others) - Original Big Band Sounds

SIDE 1.
UPPER MANHATTAN MEDICAL GROUP (Duke Ellington)
BIG ROCK CANDY MOUTAIN (Johnny Long)
IN THE SHADE OF THE OLD APPLE TREE (Art Mooney)
ARKANSAS TRAVELER (Ray Block)
AUTUMN (Lionel Hampton)

SIDE 2.
UNBOOTED CHARACTER (Duke Ellington)
MEET ME TONIGHT IN DREAMLAND (Ray Block)
HAWAIIAN HOOPLA (Johnny Long)
SHINE ON HARVEST MOON (Art Mooney)
STARRY NIGHT (Lionel Hampton)

This record contains less of Duke Ellington's earlier career and more of his big band/bandleading days. I suppose, though that there are only 2 songs of his, so there is a much smaller sampling size. Also of note, Lionel Hampton seems to have gotten the shaft, being the only one who never gets a higher position than last on both sides.

The opening song has a Jazz club feel to it, though the rest sound like more typical big band shows. I really like the Ellington stuff and basically anything instrumental on the album. I don't have anything particularly bad to say about Hampton, so I'm not sure what made him get the short end of the song listing stick.

I've Never Been Very Good at Lying (or hiding the truth)

This week we received some mail from the John Labatt Centre that looked like tickets. The problem was that it was addressed not to us, but the former residents of the house. We always roll our eyes at the fact that they haven't changed their address on things, but usually it is the understandable flyers or other things you might 'conveniently' forget to report an address change to. Why you would order tickets to an event and not make sure they were to your current address is beyond me. Perhaps they have an account and haven't ordered anything from there since they moved. I would imagine you would double check, but what do I know.

Anyways, this brought up the moral dilemma of what to do about this? We don't know their new address or what the tickets are for or anything like that. We're sick of writing 'moved' on a piece of mail every other day. Also, we have a hint of feeling like it's their fault for not paying attention when they ordered. Plus, when you've never met someone (it's another story on how that came about) there is no personal feeling attached to the name you see. In this case, we decided to open the tickets so we'd have the reference number and any other information and call the place to report we had received them by error. I would say this decision was about 95% good nature and 5% fueled by the vision of appearing at the event and awkwardly encountering the people at their seats that they had re-acquired the tickets for; or more likely getting all ready for the event and being told at the door that the tickets were invalid, due to the people calling and wondering the whereabouts of the tickets and the ensuing ones making these null and void.

This all reminded me of another story from when I was younger (maybe 12? 13?), a story I had actually thought about randomly just recently.

I was always the first home when I got home after school, my parents both working and my sister usually doing things with friends or at school. As this was the case, I always took the mail inside and left it on the table. I was a bit nosy when it came to things that were not simple white envelopes, so it certainly piqued my interest when a larger package from National Geographic arrived one day. It was addressed to the previous house owner who hadn't lived there for at least 6 or 7 years and I couldn't even recall the last time they had received mail. In my head I thought that if they really cared about stuff like this, they would have put in their new address. Also, I thought it wouldn't be much of a harm to take a peek to see what it is, most likely it would be some sort of sales pitch.

To my surprise and giddy delight, there was a nice, shiny binder with animals on the cover and three laminate-style sheets inside with a different animal on each one and one card with a table of contents showing which cards made up the whole set. Each page contained a photo of the said animal, along with a whole bunch of information about their habitat, locale, diet, etc. I thought it was very interesting and again, since they had just sent it unprompted, it would be no harm to keep it. Packed in with the binder was an order card that said 'Would you like to order the next cards in the set?' Of course, I was thinking DEFINITELY!!!! Thinking that if it was a real issue, they would ask for money or not send the new ones, I sent the form back (no stamp was needed) and checked the box for wanting more.

So, the pages kept coming. I would get the three new cards every month or so in the mail and check off the box saying I wanted the next ones in the set and send the card back in the mail. I was almost always the one checking the mail, so I always opened up the cards on my own, nobody else ever even seeing these packages to think anything of it. Over time, I had not even thought about it being wrong anymore, since they just kept sending them. It wasn't even as if I was hiding the cards, it was just a coincidence that I was the first one home to retrieve the mail and would then put the cards neatly away in their binder (which again, was stored on a shelf in my room, not something that would necessarily flag anyone's attention). I suppose one might wonder why I never mentioned the binder to my parents if I was so excited and thought nothing was wrong? I suppose, subconsciously, I did know and that part of my brain controlled the part of me that would run to them telling them I was excited about getting a new piece of a cool book that National Geographic was mysteriously sending me without ever receiving any money for it.

Then one day a letter came from them that I either didn't notice, or I wasn't the one to get it. I can't say which it was, because frankly I don't remember. What I do remember was my mother asking me 'What do you know about information card orders from National Geographic?' At which point my face when blank and unmoving, my eyes likely opening widely and my pupils dilating, possibly with the addition of an open mouth waiting for the words to arrive at my lips. Those words never arrive, and that day was no exception. I always panic when caught in a lie and can never come up with the thing to say to cover my ass before my face gives me away.

After that, all I really remember is that my mom was very upset with me. What happened to the book I can't be sure. Some time not long after that, my house burned down and the book was gone for good, if it was even there at that point. She might have sent it back, but knowing my mom she probably paid for it and apologized to the people, simultaneously being mad at me for a while. Also, if I had to guess, I lost interest in the book, having read all of the cards enough and the whole experience lost the excitement of danger.

I don't know what made me remember that story, but it was very amusing that I was thinking of it days before reliving it as an adult (though in a much lesser scale, in which we played both the children and the adults).

A Record a Week: The Best of Duke Ellington and his Orchestra

SIDE 1.
WARM VALLEY
ROCKIN' IN RHYTHM
PRELUDE TO A KISS
SATIN DOLL
CARAVAN

SIDE 2.
FLAMINGO
IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD
BLACK AND TAN FANTASY
PASSION FLOWER
BAKIFF

Duke Ellington was an incredible jazz piano player, jazz pioneer and band leader. He was innovative and ground-breaking, an important part of the foundation of African-American music movement of the early 1900's.

His style covered many grounds, as this album proves. He has that soft jazz style that was famous in the early days of jazz as well as some more intricate pieces, different time signatures and different groupings of instruments. I thought for the first few songs that it was going to be that slower sound of many jazz records I have listened to over the past year or so that don't really have the punch and swing of the jazz form later time periods. I forgot, however, that this was encompassing his entire career, or at least more that the early 20's.

Both Satin Doll and Caravan are my two favourites on the album, though it is a solid listen in its entirety. I imagine those songs may pop up again, as looking forward, it would appear I have at least a couple of weeks more of Duke Ellington ahead. Thank goodness he is so talented.

A Record a Week: The Best of Duane Eddy

SIDE 1.
YOUR BABY'S GONE SURFIN'
REBEL ROUSER
BOSS GUITAR
MY BABY PLAYS THE SAME OLD SONG ON HIS GUITAR ALL NIGHT LONG
FIREBALL MAIL
HIGH NOON

SIDE 2.
(DANCE WITH THE) GUITAR MAN
THE BALLAD OF PALLADIN
DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS
LONELY BOY, LONELY GUITAR
LIMBO ROCK
WILDWOOD FLOWER

This album has a classic surf rock feel to it. That twangy-reverb sound is one that Eddy adopted and set out for other rock and surf rock bands for years to come, including the Beach Boys.

Long before the reverb and delay pedals that are out today, Eddy used a variety of techniques to achieve the surf and spacey sounds he is known for. This includes, apparently, bringing in a large water tank to use as an echo chamber in a studio that was not equipped with one. The tone of the music is not unlike the opening theme for 3rd Rock From the Sun mixed with the style of play from any beach cafe jukebox from the 1950's (many of which probably included a few of Eddy's numerous hits).

This album is a good look, as many of the ones I explore seem to be, at the beginning of a certain style of music. You can really hear the experimental sounds of rock and surf littered throughout this record and I like the raw feeling of his earlier stuff mixed in with the developed sound of a bit later in his career.

Miscommunication With my Mother

I got to thinking about my mom the other day and all of the wonderful times from over the years. There is no way I could ever tell all of the stories I think about so frequently, but I will relive them as they come to mind.

There are many stories that I will retell so many times that if you spend enough time with me, you could probably tell them yourself or may notice when I miss a detail or tell it differently. However, the story that came to mind recently is one that I don't think of as often and probably tell even less.

I must have been 14, maybe 15 years old; certainly not old enough to drive or this situation never would have come up in the first place. There were some musicians who lived on the other end of town that I thought were pretty cool, and wanted to become better friends with. They had all been in bands for much longer than I had and they were all achieving some level of local success. Anyhow, one of their friends who had transferred to my school became a good friend of mine over time, so he told me to meet them out at the Tim Horton's/Wendy's plaza on their end of town. I was totally broke, save for the $2 I had for coffee and $1.50 or so in my bank account that I hadn't spent on CDs or cigarettes the day I got paid from my paper route. My mother agreed to drive me out and pick me up later on in the evening.

We were having a great time buying one coffee and sipping it slowly while having cigarette after cigarette (when you could smoke indoors). The time came when everyone was heading home and it was about 10-15 minutes before I was to meet my mother. I said bye to everyone and headed over to the gas station on the corner and waited (probably smoking another several cigarettes, which seems absolutely foreign to me these days). Twenty minutes went by and she hadn't shown up. I didn't think anything of it because, really, what is 5-10 minutes late? No big deal. Then another 20 minutes went by and I started to get a bit antsy. I had no money left in my pocket and my stomach was grumbling. Some time later, I walked into the gas station and sheepishly asked 'do you accept debit under five dollars?'

So I purchased myself a chocolate bar on debit and ate it in no time. Eventually, I had to figure something out. It was fairly clear that she wasn't coming and it was a long walk home if I was to go that way. I went to the pay phone and called her collect. Because I was aware that collect calls cost more money than the 25 cents that calling out regularly does, when the phone asked me to say my name I said as quickly as possible 'please come pick me up I'm at the Petro Canada'. She accepted the call anyways and apologized. I could hear some of her friends in the background and realized that they had probably just gotten into a few drinks and some good conversation (a non-stop thing between these particular friends, if I recall).

She came to pick me up post-haste and quite apologetically. Also, if I remember correctly, I got a some fries out of the deal or something like that.

I remember this not as a negative memory at all, but as one that reminds me of my mother having a good time. I didn't suffer any for the experience and knowing that my mother had friends in town, probably should have made a better plan for getting home another way.

A Record a Week: Donovan - World of Donovan

(Record 1: The Physical)
SIDE 1. (The Body)
BARBAJAGAL
THE FAT ANGEL
RIKI TIKI TAVI
MAD JOHN'S ESCAPE
SUNSHINE SUPERMAN

SIDE 2. (The Senses)
SUN
ISLE OF ISLAY
THE SONG OF THE WANDERING AENGUS
SAND AND FOAM
CEILA OF THE SEALS

(Record 2: The Spiritual)
SIDE 3. (The Heart)
CELESTE
TO SUSAN ON THE WEST COAST WAITING
GUINEVERE
HI IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME
LALENA

SIDE 4. (The Soul)
WEAR YOUR LOVE LIKE HEAVEN
THE MANDOLIN MAN AND HIS SECRET
CHANGES
HURDY GURDY MAN
ATLANTIS

As noted in the parentheses, this album is broken up by record into the physical and spiritual records; as well as by side, into more specific points.

Much of the album has a typical, yet tuneful singer-songwriter feel to it. You could imagine that it was any of Harry Chapin, Neil Diamond, Simon & Garfunkel, etc. That is until you hear the hit track Sunshine Superman, which if you are like me, is a song you have heard a hundred times and can at least hum, if not sing along to without ever knowing the name or artist.

I am glad that with the process of breaking the album down into four different themes, that each grouping of song has a different feeling to them. The Body side is more upbeat, whereas the Senses side seems to be mostly written in a minor key. The second record follows a similar pattern, with more of a traditional Scottish sound on some songs.

All in all, a good listen and always a nice surprise to find a recognizable song on a record you don't know.