Selected MP3s of guitar instrumentals, jazz, big band, and classic easy listening from the original vinyl.
Welcome to Guitars & All That Jazz
Welcome to Guitars & All That Jazz
Guitars & All That Jazz was a radio station that webcast via Live365 for 11 years, ending in June 2011. The playlist consisted of guitar instrumentals, jazz, big band, early rock 'n' roll, lounge music and classic easy listening.
I hope to share some of this music with you via this blog. Most of it will be taken from the original vinyl (LPs and 45s) , cassettes and the occasional commercially unavailable CD.
Here's hoping you'll find something to enjoy. Please note files are available only for a limited time.
I urge you to purchase the digital version of the albums featured, either on CD or via download, wherever possible.
Listen to the Music
There are now two music streams. Click the appropriate player to the right.
1. Guitars & All That Jazz:Five hours of the best in jazz, guitars and other instrumental gems. New songs are added weekly.
2. Tiki Shores: Music to sweep you away to a tropical isle, a South American dance floor or a bossa nova on the beach at Rio. About 4.5 hours of classic exotica music, Latin rhythms and bossa nova.
Most of guitarist David T. Walker's albums have been in the funk and soul jazz vein, including this 1970 release. Walker was previously spotlighted in this post and you can read more about him there.
Zea Records released Plum Happy in November of '70 and a single Love Vibrations/Doo Doo was issued to promote the album.
Doo Doo on the 45 was about a minute shorter than the album version, contrary to what was printed on the label.
Doo Doo (45 version)
Plum Happy is not available on CD or as a download. Fortunately David T. Walker himself has uploaded the "A" side of the single, Love Vibrations, to YouTube.
Guitarist Tony Mottola (1918-2004) is best known for his association with producer Enoch Light's Command and Project 3 labels in the 1960s and 70s. Mottola recorded dozens of albums for Light, both under his own name and that of the producer.
He and Al Caiola were the top session guitarists in New York, with Mottola also playing with Doc Severinsen's Tonight Show Orchestra and later in his career recording and touring with Frank Sinatra.
Light was a pioneer in the art of stereo recording and Mottola figured prominently in those groundbreaking sessions. The five-LP box set Romantic Guitars, issued by Longines Symphonette, probably in the early 70s, is a fine collection of Mottola's Command recordings. The recording quality is excellent as well -- very close to that of the original Command albums. Included is the Latin standard Vaya Con Dios, which first appeared on Mottola's 1966 LP Amor Mexico/S.A.
Vaya Con Dios
A number of Tony Mottola's recordings have been available on CD from time to time. Several are still in the active catalogue, although there have been quality complaints about a couple of recent Command reissues. They may have been sourced from vinyl. The best bet is probably a 2002 release, Heart and Soul Guitar, a compilation of Command selections issued by Varese Sarabande. In any case you can peruse what's available at Amazon.
The career of multi-talented Jerry Reed (1937-2008) ended much too soon when he died of emphysema at age 71. He had been largely inactive for much of the previous decade.
Reed was a star recording artist (Amos Moses, East Bound and Down), wrote songs that were hits for other people, including Elvis Presley (U.S. Male), Gene Vincent (Crazy Legs) and Brenda Lee (That's All You Got to Do), and starred in a number of hit movies, including the Smokey and the Bandit films.
As well, Reed was justifiably one of the most highly-regarded guitarists in Nashville. Just listen to the three albums he recorded with Chet Atkins to find out why.
The first of the Smokey and the Bandit trilogy appeared in 1977. The film's theme song, East Bound and Down, gave Reed a top country hit -- and of course RCA released an album as well. There was also a Smokey and the Bandit soundtrack album on MCA.
There's a crucial reason why you should be looking for the 1977 vinyl LP of Reed's RCA album rather than the 1992 CD reissue. Incredibly the CD did not include the hot guitar instrumentals Bake and Lightning Rod, neither of which has ever had a legal digital release. Bake, taken from the original LP, is available for your perusal below.
The East Bound and Down CD hasn't been in print for years and now demands inflated prices. The vinyl release also appears to command high prices, but you might be able to find a reasonably-priced copy in one of your local record outlets.
I can't tell you much about this tasty slice of organ funk except that it came out of New York in the mid- to late1960s. Organist Ross Carnegie was mentioned several times in the society pages of New York magazines during the 60s and 70s so one would presume he lived there.
Cool Dad (b/w Win, Lose or Draw) on the El-Con label has turned into quite a collectible disc on the northern soul market.
Cool Dad has been anthologized at least twice in the CD age, first on the 1999 release Vital Organs, which apparently is still available here.
Cool Dad was also included in the 2006 compilation, Absolute Funk, Vol. 3, on the Body and Soul label.
You'll pay at least $35-40 for a copy of this out-of-print CD. Fortunately, it's available as a download.
YouTube has a video showing Ross Carnegie performing recently in Dallas, but the audio and picture quality is so awful I won't link to it here.
However, this YouTube selection starts off with Win, Lose or Draw, the "B" side of the Cool Dad single.
Actress and pop singer Gale Storm (1922-2009) is little remembered today, either for her movie and TV work or her hit recordings in the 1950s.
In the '50s Storm was a TV star with her series My Little Margie and later The Gale Storm Show. Her singing appearance on something called the Comedy Hour Show caught the attention of Randy Wood, the head of Dot Records and he signed her to the label.
Like Pat Boone, her label mate at Dot, much of Storm's early recording success was based on her covers of rhythm-and-blues hits. Her first, and biggest, hit was a version of I Hear You Knocking, which Smiley Lewis took into the R-and-B charts in the summer of 1955. Storm's recording, released in the fall of that year, reached No. 2 on Billboard's pop singles chart.
Gale Storm's success on the pop charts was brief. Her last hit, Dark Moon, came less than two years after I Hear You Knocking.
Storm's hits were gathered on a 1995 CD from Varese Sarabande, Dark Moon: The Best of Gale Storm.
This out-of-print release commands premier prices. The cheapest I've seem recently was $22 -- for a used copy! There are other options, however.
British producer and orchestra leader Charles Blackwell began his career with legendary producer Joe Meek (Tornados, Telstar) in the early 1960s. In fact Blackwell recorded an entire album that was supposed to come out on Meek's Triumph label, but the label folded before the record could be released.
One of the songs on Those Plucking Strings was the folk standard Freight Train. Blackwell would tackle this tune again on a 1962 single for Columbia in the U.K. On the flip side was the wonderful western-themed Death Valley, written by another great British orchestra leader and arranger, Norrie Paramor.
Neither side of this single appears to have made it to the digital age nor onto an LP.
Here, from YouTube, is the "A" side of the Columbia single.
Charles Blackwell's career stretched into the disco era, when he put out the best-selling Boogie Down album under the single moniker of Blackwell. He later launched a failed attempt to make a pop star out of TV hunk David Hasselhoff.
This David Palmer is not, as claimed by the All Music Guide (whose material is used by iTunes), the David Palmer who was a member of Jethro Tull. This David Palmer plays in an easy rock style favoured by European groups like the Shadows (U.K.) and the Spotnicks (Sweden) as well as German guitarist Ricky King.
The CD came out of Switzerland in 1986 on the Bridge label, produced by Peter Wiberg, who played keyboards and produced several albums for the Spotnicks. And on a posting on a Swedish blog in 2010 former Spotnick guitarist Juri Wiick revealed that he was the lead guitarist on these sessions.
The Spotnicks had a big European hit in the 1960s with Amapola. Their gimmick, at least in those early days, was to dress up in space suits on stage.
In any case here's Juri Wiik (alias David Palmer) playing Verde, popularized by Ricky King and since played by just about every European guitar group.
Magic Guitar Sound hasn't been available on CD for some time and isn't available as a download. There is a Magic Guitar Sound album credited to David Palmer on iTunes, but the track listing is different. The only track common to both versions is Jeux Interdits (Forbidden Games), so whether the download is from the same Swedish sessions is open to question. Certainly, no other guitar CD was issued under the David Palmer name.
From YouTube here's another sample from the CD.
And for comparison with the David Palmer version here's Ricky King's hit recording of Verde.
David Carroll isn't as well known as his contemporary Enoch Light, but both deserve to be remembered as pioneers of stereo recording. While Light and others concentrated on the effects of ping-pong percussion in their early stereo efforts, Carroll used the full orchestra in his stereo palette.
His 1958 Mercury LP Let's Dance and the followup, Let's Dance Again (1959), were considered ground-breaking in their day. Although the stereo quality and crispness of the recording are still remarkable the actual music hasn't aged particularly well. Let's Dance is closer to Guy Lombardo than to Benny Goodman.
Below is the title tune for you to sample.
David Carroll recorded more than two dozen albums for Mercury during the 1950s and '60s, as well as serving as A&R director for the label. He produced such artists as the Diamonds, Sarah Vaughan and Vic Damone.
Both Let's Dance and its followup were released on CD in 2005 by the first-rate Collector's Choice label. Both are now out of print, but copies are still available on Amazon. Only the first volume, however, has a reasonable price tag.
Let's Dance is available on iTunes and other download sites, but most likely has been sourced from a vinyl LP.
Here's another sample of Let's Dance from YouTube.
French-born guitarist Claude Ciari had a hit in more than 40 countries with his 1964 recording of the Latin-flavoured La Playa. The song has since become a standard for easy listening guitarists, particularly those from Europe and Asia.
Ciari has lived in Japan since the 1970s. He married a Japanese woman and became a Japanese citizen. Ciari even ran (unsuccessfully) for a seat in the upper house of Japan's parliament. He has not performed in France for more than 30 years. For a more detailed biography of Ciari, visit the Allmusic Guide.
Ciari's albums were widely popular in Europe in the 1960s and some of them were issued by Capitol Records in Canada. A couple were also released on Musicor in the U.S. His more recent recordings have all come on Japanese CDs, so naturally they are quite pricey.
La Premier Pas (The First Step) is taken from a 2005 Japanese compilation, Best Collection. It's a cover of a 1974 hit by French singer and composer Claude-Michel Schonberg. Grab the song below.
By now you've probably realized my fascination with those cheap CDs marketed under such names as the London Studio Orchestra, the London Festival Orchestra and in this case the Studio Sound Orchestra. Almost all of these originate in Europe and vary widely in quality. In other words, most aren't worth the dollar or two you'd pay for them.
20 Melodies from Paradise, released on a label from the Netherlands in 1989, is one of the better ones and was previously sampled in this post. Almost all of the information in the previous post is still relevant and you won't feel cheated if you shell out a couple of bucks -- provided you like Hawaiian music of course.
Hilo March was composed in 1881 by Henri Berger, a Prussian-born musician who became leader of the Royal Hawaiian Band in 1877. The band is still in existence and is the oldest municipal band in the United States. The version of Hilo March by the Studio Sound Orchestra is available below.
Hilo March
Here's a video of a wonderful steel guitar version of Hilo March.
Tough-toned tenor saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis spent several periods with the Count Basie Orchestra, including 1964-1973. He continued to record under his own name during this time, including several releases for RCA Victor. Lock the Fox, a small group effort, came out in 1966 and was followed in '67 by The Fox and the Hounds, a big band recording.
On Lock the Fox, Davis is accompanied by guitarist Les Spann, pianist Russ Tompkins, Ray Barretto on conga, bassist Russell George and drummer Chuck Lampkin. All of the tunes are relatively short (designed for radio airplay presumably) and dominated by Davis. Although the version of Henry Mancini's Days of Wine and Roses ran only 3:21 on the LP, incredibly the tune was shortened by a further 25 seconds when it was issued on a 45 (backed with Speak Low) for DJ use.
To give you a taste of what's on the album the 45 edit is available from the link below.
Trombonist Russ Morgan led a very successful sweet dance band from the 1930s through the 50s. Morgan's tag line was "Music in the Morgan Manner" and that music appealed to the same audience who thought the output of bands led by the likes of Guy Lombardo and Freddy Martin was just peachy.
Personally, I think a little of this kind of stuff goes a long way and Morgan's take on the standard Wabash Blues is one of the few tracks I find listenable on this 1960 release on the Everest label. Morgan's peak of popularity had long since passed by the time this LP came out, although he continued to play dates in Las Vegas and other similar venues.
In any case you can grab Wabash Blues from the link below. The MP3 is taken from the original LP.
Dance Along with Russ Morgan is available as both a manufactured to order CD-R and as a download, but this is another case of buyer beware. The source for both formats is vinyl and reviews on the web indicate the quality is substandard.
A much earlier version of Wabash Blues by Russ Morgan appeared in a 1936 film short directed by Adolph Zukor. It's the second of the four tunes performed by the orchestra.
Milt Jackson and the Hip String Quartet: That's not exactly a moniker that conjures up images of funk. But that's exactly what you get in this 1968 Verve release from vibraphonist Jackson and the four strings -- bassist Ron Carter, along with Sanford Allen on violin, Alfred Brown, viola and either Sidney Edwards, Ronald Lipscomb or Kermit Moore on cello. Granted the funk is on the easy side, but still...
Bags with Strings features a fine drum intro by Grady Tate. The MP3 is taken from the original vinyl LP.
The only digital release for this album came on an expensive Japanese CD, which is now out of print and seems to command about $80. Used vinyl copies start north of $20 online.
Below is a sample of Milt Jackson with a much larger string aggregation on a later release for Pablo.
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