Bill Justis - More Instrumental Hits

After saxophonist, arranger and producer Bill Justis's heady days at Sun Records, where he recorded the hit Raunchy and produced sessions by the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash, he moved on to the Mercury subsidiary Smash Records. There Justis recorded a series of instrumental cover albums that began in 1962 with Bill Justis Plays 12 Big Instrumental Hits. (For more info on that LP and a few details of Justis's career take a look at this previous post.)

These albums, featuring versions of the top pop and rock instrumentals of the day, were designed to compete with similar LPs being put out by The Ventures. Most of Justis's arrangements followed those of the original hits pretty closely, as is the case in the cover of Al Hirt's chart success, Java. This comes from More Instrumental Hits (1965), not the second in the series as one might surmise from the title, but the seventh (there were at least eight).

Java



Most of Bill Justis's Sun recordings have made their way into the digital domain, on CD and as downloads. But none of his Smash albums appear to be legally available. Still, used copies of the LPs turn up frequently online and somewhat less often in thrift store bins.

Justis did have a No. 1 hit while with Smash, but in Australia, not in the U.S. Tamouré, with a pseudo-Tahitian flavour to it, was also a Top 10 record on WLS in Chicago, but nationally it just bubbled under the Hot 100 in 1963. Strangely the song was never included on a Justis LP.