Albert Collins - Hot 'n Cold (45 single)

Blues guitarist Albert Collins (1932-1993) had his own band in Houston, Texas, when he was 18, but it wasn't until 1958 that he recorded his first single, The Freeze, in a local studio.

Almost all his early singles recorded from 1958 to 1965 for several Houston labels were instrumentals. Several of them, like his signature tune Frosty, became staples of  his shows over the next three decades.

Hot 'n Cold (b/w Dyin' Flu, a vocal) was recorded in 1965 for Hall Records in Houston and distributed nationally on the TCF/Hall label, a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox. The featured saxophonist is identified only as "Big Tiny." The MP3 is from the 45 single.

Hot'n Cold



A dozen of Collins's early sides were gathered on The Cool Sound of Albert  Collins, an LP issued on TCF/Hall in 1965.

This album was reissued by Blue Thumb in 1970 as Truckin' with Albert Collins, with a gatefold cover.

Truckin' with Albert Collins is available as a download from most of the major sites, including iTunes. Cheap copies on CD are also plentiful and it has been recently (late 1993) issued on 180-gram vinyl for audiophiles.

Below is another selection from the album.

The Brothers Hawk - Funny, Funny (A Go Go) (track)

The instrumental compilation Teen Dance Music from China and Malaysia has been floating around the web now for more than a dozen years. Incredibly this album is now being marketed by iTunes, though it's obviously taken from a vinyl LP, given that the originating company's name is is Thrift Score Records.

This vinyl compilation probably surfaced in the late 1960s or early '70s and included several tracks by the Brothers Hawk, who played and recorded throughout Malaysia and Singapore. According to the Radiodiffusion International Annexe blog bands like the Brothers Hawk played in a style known as Hala Hala or A Go Go. This added elements of traditional dance rhythms like the rumba, fox trot and quick step to the sort-of surf style twangy guitar that was popular in China at the time.

The Brothers Hawk and similar groups released mainly instrumental material under their own names while also serving as backing bands for pop singers. So here's a sample of the Brothers Hawk.

Funny, Funny (A Go Go)



Before shelling out the going rate for Teen Dance Music from China and Malaysia (providing you like this kind of thing, of course) take a look at YouTube. Many of the tracks from the LP are available there, including this outstanding contribution from The Stylers -- a medley of four James Bond themes.

Orchestral Strings - Hawaii's Favorite Instrumentals

Although this album was recorded in Hawaii you'd never know it if you didn't have the CD insert at hand. That's not to say this is a bad recording. But if you're looking for genuine Hawaiian instrumentals with ukulele and steel and slack key guitar this isn't going to appeal to you. It's strictly an orchestral recording.

Hawaii's Favorite Instrumentals was issued in 1983 by Hula Records, one of the islands' top recording enterprises, but was probably recorded earlier as the CD was mastered from analog sources. The sound quality and stereo separation are superb, so lovers of easy listening music that has an expansive aural palette would be well advised to search for a copy.

Recording credits are slim; no arranger or musicians are credited. The executive producer was Don McDiarmid Jr., the head of Hula Records, while his son, Donald P. (Flip) McDiarmid III, was the hands-on producer.

McDiarmid Jr., who died in 2010 at age 88, campaigned for years to have a Hawaiian music category added to the Grammy Awards. That finally happened in 2005.

McDiarmid Jr. helped launch the careers of many Hawaiian entertainers, including Don Ho, who made his first commercial recordings for Hula Records. Among the other artists who recorded for Hula were Gabby Pahinui and the Cazimero Brothers.

"One thing that he really stressed was the importance of preserving Hawaiian music correctly, by doing that not only through recorded music, but by printed lyrics and biographical material about the artists and about the songs themselves," Flip McDiarmid told the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper after his father's death.

Unfortunately that kind of information isn't available for this album. But the Orchestral Strings, whoever the might be, provide a fine version of Don Ho's signature song Tiny Bubbles.

Tiny Bubbles



Hawaii's Favorite Instrumentals is out of print and doesn't look like it's available as a download. However, copies of the CD frequently turn up on eBay and other auction sites at a reasonable price. Those sold on Amazon tend to be overpriced.

Mid-Winter Break

Posting on Guitars & All That Jazz will resume on Feb. 21 following a mid-winter break. Stay tuned.

Tony Mottola - Guitar....Paris

Guitarist Tony Mottola recorded this instrumental tribute to the French capital for producer Enoch Light's Command label in 1964. (For more on Tony Mottola read this earlier post.)

The album was reissued, with a different cover, in 1971 as an LP for quadraphonic systems, a short-lived four-channel format that utilized an extra pair of speakers. It was similar to today's surround-sound systems. Quadraphonic LPs, which generally were sold at a premium price, could also be played on regular two-channel stereo systems.

On this album is Boulevard of Broken Dreams (no relation to Green Day's song of the same name), written in 1933 by Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics), and set in Paris. The song made its debut in the 1934 motion picture Moulin Rouge and Tony Bennett had a hit with it in the early 1950s. Here's Mottola's version, taken from the reissued LP.



Guitar...Paris is not available on CD or as a download. For information on other Tony Mottola recordings in digital formats, please visit the earlier blog post cited above.

From YouTube here's another track from Guitar...Paris.

Sid Bass - Funny Bone (45 single)

Orchestra leader and composer Sid Bass (1913-1993) worked for the Muzak background music service before signing with RCA Victor in the 1950s. He released several albums under his own name, including Sound and Fury, From Another World and With Bells On, mostly on the budget Vik and Camden labels.

In the 1960s Bass returned to Muzak, pumping out hundreds of elevator music versions of popular songs and also worked for the Carlton label, where he remained pretty much in the background except for a couple of 45s. One of them was Funny Bone (b/w The Giggling Girls of Greece), a slice of cutesy space age pop that has long since been forgotten and probably was similarly ignored in 1961 when it was released.

Funny Bone



The few sides that Sid Bass recorded for Carlton have not surfaced in a digital format. The only one of his RCA recordings that made it to CD was From Another World (Vik, 1956), released on disc by RCA in 2000, but only in Spain. From Another World is also available almost everywhere as a download in several versions, all of which are likely sourced from vinyl.

Here's Stormy Weather from that album.

Dan Estrem & John Holmquist - Take Five

Dan Estrem, a guitarist from Minnesota, and fellow American guitarist John Holmquist have done most of their work in the classical field. However, the pair collaborated on five CD's of jazz standards for the ProJazz label, beginning c.1987.

Most of these fine jazz albums have long been out of print. I believe that Take Five (1987) was the first to be released, although discographical information on these CD's is sparse to say the least. Among the standards arranged for two guitars was the title tune, which was of course a massive hit for Dave Brubeck. The MP3 is from a cassette version of the album.

Take Five



If you like what you hear you're in luck. Used copies of Take Five are plentiful in the Amazon Marketplace, with some going for less than a dollar. Amazon also has cheap copies of several other jazz CDs from Estrem and Holmquist -- I Get a Kick Out of You (music of Cole Porter), Love You Madly (Duke Ellington) and Bossa.

None of the pair's albums are downloadable, but some of John Holmquist's classical work is available from iTunes and elsewhere.

Lou Donaldson - Light Foot (Post #2)

This superb LP from alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson's early days on Blue Note was discussed in a post in March 2013. All the background and availability information is still relevant, so you can click here to read it.

The track contained in the previous post was the laid-back Day Dreams, which was put on the "B" side of a single to promote the album to jazz radio stations.

On the "A" side was a bluesy Donaldson original, Hog Maw. Again, as on Day Dreams (an original by the pianist on the session, Herman Foster), Blue Note managed to squeeze almost six minutes of music onto a 45. That's the source of the track you can listen to below.

Hog Maw



Here's something from Lou Donaldson's funk period in the late 1960s. Jazz purists scoffed at these recordings of course, but a lot of people dug them. This is from Mr. Shing-A-Ling (Blue Note, 1967).

Billy Ward and the Dominoes (Decca LP)

Billy Ward and the Dominoes were one of the most successful R&B groups of the early 1950s, but by the time this LP came out in '57 they were starting on their way down.

Many people assumed at the time that Ward was the lead singer, but that wasn't the case. Although Ward was the group's musical director (and by all accounts a strict disciplinarian) and played piano, the Dominoes' success was based largely on the styles of lead tenors Clyde McPhatter (1950-53) and Jackie Wilson (1953-57). When McPhatter departed to form The Drifters, Wilson was his replacement.

The group's success was largely confined to the R&B chart and the Dominoes had not had a pop hit since Sixty-Minute Man in 1951. That changed in 1956, a year after Ward signed the group with Decca, when St. Therese of the Roses was a surprise chart entry. It was included on the Billy Ward and the Dominoes album, which also included a version of To Each His Own, a 1946 composition by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Eddy Howard, Freddy Martin and His Orchestra, the Ink Spots and several others recorded hit versions at the time. On the Dominoes' recording Jackie Wilson is the lead singer.

The MP3 is from the original vinyl LP.

To Each His Own



Some of the Dominoes Decca recordings, including St. Therese of the Roses and To Each His Own, are available almost everywhere on various download compilations, many of them of dubious origin. The quality varies widely.

The best overview of the group's career on CD, although it only includes a couple of Decca cuts, is Sixty-Minute Men: The Best of Billy Ward & His Dominoes, a 1993 compilation from Rhino.

No need to pay the $35 demanded by Amazon for this out-of-print item. Used copies are available at a fraction of the price.

Here's the one and only Decca hit by Billy Ward and the Dominoes.