Goodbye ... and Thanks

Sorry to report that the Guitars & All That Jazz blog is now closed. Thanks to all of you who read the posts and listened to the music and expressed your thoughts via Google+ and elsewhere.
There's lots of great music out there, so keep listening and keep searching for those thrift store gems.
All the best and thanks again.

Lenny Dee - Dee-lirious!

Like many of pop organist Lenny Dee's early LPs, Dee-lirious! (Decca, 1956), his second release, is laced with vintage boogie-woogie, swing and jazz tunes. (For more on Dee's 1950s albums, read this earlier post.)

Among the standards on Dee-lirious! are Chinatown, My Chinatown, Caravan, Twelfth Street Rag and Coquette, a 1928 classic with music by Johnny Green and Carmen Lombardo and lyrics by Gus Kahn. Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, with Carmen on vocals, recorded it that year for Columbia. RCA Victor had a competing version by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra.

Coquette has found its way onto scores of records since, including versions by Django Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong and Billy Eckstine. Here's Lenny Dee's take.

Coquette



Information on the availability of digital versions of Dee's early LPs that was included in the earlier post is still valid. And don't forget that his LPs make frequent stopovers in thrift store bins. Look for the ones released from 1954 (DEE-Lightful! Hi-Fi Organ Solos With A Beat) to about 1965 (Sweethearts on Parade). Most of his recordings after that are mainly easy listening mush.

Here's another selection from Dee-lirious!, That's My Weakness Now. Composed in 1928 there were contemporary popular recordings by Helen Kane and Cliff Edwards, who often recorded under the name Ukulele Ike.

Jack Cole Quintet - Macy's (single)

Macy's, a rockin' sax-organ combo piece by the Jack Cole Quintet, sounds very much like Plas Johnson's singles for Capitol in the 1950s. You can also hear the influence of Earl Bostic's fine sides for King.

It's not surprising that Cole (I'm assuming he's the sax player) sounds very much like Johnson. On the "A" side of this single is a cover of Sax Fifth Avenue, which Johnson took into the charts, using the pseudonym Johnny Beecher, in the spring of 1963. Both versions were released around the same time.

Sax Fifth Avenue and Macy's appear to have been the only two sides recorded by the Jack Cole Quintet.

Macy's



Neither side of this single has appeared in a digital format.