Gentlemen, Please! Croydon Collects “Mid-Century Minx,” “Soho Blondes” and Other Pop Pleasures

Bob Stanley’s Croydon Municipal label has carved out a niche as part of Cherry Red’s label roster with its eclectic compilations and album reissues from the 1950s and early 1960s focusing on dusty corners of classic American pop ripe for reevaluation.  Three of Stanley’s latest projects continue that mission with the compiler’s usual flair for the unexpected.  The anthology Mid Century Minx focuses on many of the lesser-known ladies of vocal jazz along with some still-beloved (if underrated) performers like Jo Stafford, Anita O’Day and Broadway’s Dolores Gray.  Soho Blondes and Peeping Toms lives up to its subtitle of “Saucy Vocals and Piquant Pop from the ‘50s and ‘60s,” while Croydon’s reissue of Corky Hale reintroduces listeners to the titular harpist and the jazz sextet she led for one “lost” album.

Stanley, whose wonderfully ambitious Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop surely contains enough opinions to delight and anger most readers of this site, begins his notes for Mid Century Minx with a truthful admission: “Some days, it isn’t hard to see why rock ‘n’ roll pissed off so many people.  Here is a collection from an era of urbane, sophisticated music, taken from a bunch of captivating albums by female jazz singers made in the 1950s and the early ’60s, after which time this luscious American art form was swept aside by self-sufficient guitar bands.”  Indeed, rock and roll gave a shot of adrenaline to popular music and empowered the burgeoning youth culture – but at what cost?  Mid Century Minx answers that question with 20 well-chosen tracks from an eclectic array of the ladies of vocal jazz.   The likes of Jeri Southern, Stafford, O’Day and Gray are still known to many, but most of the women here are ripe for rediscovery.

There are collaborations with other famed musicians such as Miles Davis’ great orchestral collaborator Gil Evans on Lucy Reed’s “No Moon at All” and Marcy Lutes’ “Travelin’ Light,” Oscar Peterson on Toni Harper’s “Can’t We Be Friends” and “Mack the Knife” arranger Richard Wess on Sallie Blair’s “Better Luck Next Time.”  These cool, smoky tracks bring to mind the urbane soundtrack to a cocktail party for the swells; the only major liability here is the complete lack of songwriter, producer and arranger credits along with any kind of discographical annotation.  (Stanley does provide biographical details in his entertaining essay.)   Alas, the lack of credits extends to our next title, as well.

Soho Blondes and Peeping Toms! takes listeners back to the Soho described by Stanley as “the bohemian epicenter of London,” the place which writer Colin Wilson once boasted had “the futile fascination of forbidden fruit, the heady intoxication of a bogus Baudelairean romantic evil.”  Today, Soho is rather less seedy, though some licensed sex shops still flourish among the trendy restaurants and clubs, fashionable retail, record shops, West End theatres, LGBT-friendly venues, and the like.   This 25-track compilation follows up Stanley’s It’s a Scandal! Songs for Soho Blondes, released on the Fantastic Voyage label.  Whereas that release “explored the songs and saucy instrumentals built to accompany strip shows in clubs where the champagne tasted like cherry cola,” this sequel focuses instead on pop songs that conjure up the patrons of such establishments.

Personnel here are expectedly eclectic.  A few American artists have made their way into this mixture including Peggy Lee and her onetime husband Dave Barbour on “Sweetheart” and “Bu Bam,” respectively, as well as Kay Starr (“Bossa Nova Casanova”).  Famed Brit arranger Johnnie Spence (Matt Monro, Tom Jones) is represented with “Sugar Beat.”  Johnnie Scott, who played saxophone for Goldfinger and flute on The Beatles’ “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” appears here on the George Martin-produced “Hi Flutin’ Boogie.”  Welsh singer Ricky Valance’s “Lipstick on Your Lips” was written by Sherman Edwards (1776, “See You in September”) and Hal David, while Bob Hilliard – another Burt Bacharach collaborator – co-wrote The Friday Knights’ “Don’t Open That Door” with future Tonight Show and Gong Show bandleader Milton DeLugg.  Campy, jazzy, and brassy, the music of Soho Blondes and Peeping Toms might leave you asking the question performed by Kenny Day on a 1960 Top Rank single included here, “Why Don’t We Do This More Often?”

After the jump: the scoop on Corky Hale, plus track listings and order links for all three titles!

Ray Charles, Glen Campbell, Chet Baker, Peggy Lee Featured On Soundtrack Bumper Crop From Varese

Varese Vintage is going any which way they can with an exciting trio of soundtrack releases from the library of Snuff Garrett’s Viva Records label.  Garrett, of course, was the producer behind major hits from Gary Lewis and the Playboys (“This Diamond Ring”), Cher (“Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves”) and future “Mama” Vicki Lawrence (“The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia”).  At Viva, he oversaw an eclectic array of releases from artists like the Midnight String Quartet, Alan O’Day, Ray Price and even crooner Rudy Vallee.  (If you ever wanted to hear Vallee warbling “Winchester Cathedral” and “Michelle,” look no further than 1967’s Hi-Ho Everybody on Viva!)  He also helmed a number of film soundtracks, three of which are arriving on CD from Varese: 1980’s Any Which Way You Can, 1981’s Sharky’s Machine, and 1982’s Honkytonk Man.  Collectively, these feature original music by an all-star roster including Ray Charles, Glen Campbell, Fats Domino, Marty Robbins, Ray Price, The Manhattan Transfer, Chet Baker, Peggy Lee and Sarah Vaughan – to name a few!

Music has played an important part in the career of Clint Eastwood since his earliest days.  Though the actor-director has limited his onscreen musicals to one (1969’s Lerner and Loewe adaptation Paint Your Wagon), Clint recorded an album of country-and-western songs (Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites) in 1963 and has appeared in, or directed, a number of films with prominent musical moments or scores.  Think The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Play Misty for Me, Bird, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and so on.  Eastwood has composed the scores for numerous films including J. Edgar, Changeling and Mystic River, and this June, he returns to musicals as the director of the big screen adaptation of Jersey Boys.  So it’s no surprise that music was front and center in Every Which Way But Loose and Honkytonk Man.

The comedy-action film Any Which Way You Can, a sequel to 1978’s Every Which Way But Loose, again paired Eastwood’s Philo Beddoe with his pet orangutan Clyde for a series of misadventures.    Audiences couldn’t get enough of Philo and Clyde, as the movie became the fifth highest grossing picture of the year.  The soundtrack, an Eastwood-Garrett production overseen by Snuff and arranger-conductor Steve Dorff, hit the Country Top 5 and spawned seven (!) charting C&W singles out of just twelve tracks.  The album, remastered by David Shirk, is a breezily enjoyable listen.  Eastwood reminisces with Ray Charles on “Beers to You” (No. 55), Fats Domino laconically dreams not of “My Blue Heaven” but of “Whiskey Heaven” (No. 51), and Johnny Duncan turns things tropical on “Acapulco” (No. 16).  Jim Stafford also scored with “Cow Patti” (No. 65) and Gene Watson with “Any Way You Want Me” (No. 33).  But the two biggest hits came from Glen Campbell and the duo of Lefty’s younger brother David Frizzell and Dottie’s daughter Shelly West.  Frizzell and West had recorded a few albums both jointly and separately for Viva, and took the soundtrack’s “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” all the way to No.1 Country.  Campbell’s rendition of the soaring MOR-country Dorff/Garrett/Milton Brown title ballad went to No. 10.  The soundtrack is rounded out by a couple of performances from Eastwood’s onscreen and offscreen co-star Sondra Locke, a bluegrass selection from The Texas Opera Company, and even an ode to the “Orangutan Hall of Fame” by Cliff Crofford.

After the jump, we’ll dive into Honkytonk Man and Sharky’s Machine – plus we have full track listings and order links for all three CDs!

Come Fly With Me: Bobby, Peggy, Ella, Buddy Take Off With “Pan Am” Soundtrack

Following in the footsteps of Matthew Weiner’s 1960s drama Mad Men, Jack Orman’s Pan Am takes to the airwaves each week on ABC with a period-perfect recreation of the days when “the world’s most experienced airline” ruled the skies.  Now, the show’s impeccably-selected music can be yours to keep – and perhaps used as the soundtrack to your very own swinging cocktail party! – on Verve’s Pan Am: Music From and Inspired by the Original Series, due to arrive on January 17.  How appropriate that one of the most recognizable labels of the Jet Age will release the soundtrack to the series that celebrates the period’s glamour, sex appeal and style.

The CD’s fourteen tracks are a pleasing mix of the familiar and the uncommon, and the classic line-up has been bolstered by two new performances.  Grace Potter, of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, offers a new take on Bart Howard’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” while Nikki Jean puts her own spin on John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s “Do You Want to Know a Secret.”  Nikki Jean certainly knows her way around a great song, having collaborated with Burt Bacharach, Thom Bell, Jimmy Webb, Carole King, Paul Williams, Lamont Dozier and even Bob Dylan on her 2011 debut (and future classic!) Pennies in a Jar.

Buddy Greco’s fizzy version of Victor Young and Harold Adamson’s “Around the World” featured prominently in the Pan Am pilot, and it’s of course heard here.  From Verve’s own catalogue comes Ella Fitzgerald’s Songbook recording of Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies,” Shirley Horn’s interpretation of Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s optimistic “The Best Is Yet To Come,” and the original Stan Getz recording of the bossa nova anthem “The Girl from Ipanema.”  The era-defining bossa nova sound is also heard on Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66’s “Mas Que Nada.”  Peggy Lee offers “New York City Blues,” co-written by the chanteuse with Quincy Jones, and the travel theme continues with Dinah Washington’s “Destination Moon” and Connie Francis’ Italian take of “Quando Quando Quando” (recorded years before Engelbert Humperdinck popularized the song in English).

Hit the jump for more, including the full track listing with discographical annotation!

Where The Hits Are: Sedaka and Greenfield Profiled in “Songwriters” Series

Doo doo doo down doo be do down down/Come a come a down doo be do down down…

One year before “Da Doo Ron Ron,” eleven before “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” and eighteen before “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da,” Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield taught the world that “Breakin’ Up is Hard to Do” with their immortal wordless refrain.  Sedaka went on to become the king of the “Tra-la-las” and “shoo-be-doos” with his early rock-and-roll records, and the Juilliard-trained musician was one of the relatively rare few rockers of his generation equally adept at both performing and songwriting.  As active members of Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music stable (which could also claim Carole King and Gerry Goffin as well as Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil!), Sedaka and his frequent lyricist Howard Greenfield turned out one tune after another for a great number of famous artists.  Following in the footsteps of its compilations devoted to other Brill Building greats like Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Goffin and King and Mann and Weil, Ace devotes the latest installment of its Songwriters and Producers series to the team of Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield.  Where the Boys Are will be available on September 6 in the U.K. and features 25 tracks, 17 of which were written by the team and a further eight penned by one member with an outside collaborator.

Where the Boys Are spans a remarkably prolific 15-year period from 1956 until 1971, at which time Sedaka began in earnest to rekindle his solo career.  (1974’s Sedaka’s Back sealed the deal.)  His last hit in the U.S. had come in 1965, and he’d tried to make it over the next few years almost exclusively as a songwriter in an era when the Brill Building was waning and singer/songwriters were becoming the norm.  (It was lost on many that Sedaka had been writing his own material since he was a teenager.)  He had a great amount of success even after RCA Victor dumped his recording contract in 1966, and his songs, with and without Greenfield, were recorded by The Monkees, The 5^th Dimension, The Cyrkle, Frankie Valli and more.  Ace’s, well, ace producers Mick Patrick and Tony Rounce tell that story from its very beginning.

Hit the jump for a look into the Brill Building hits of Sedaka and Greenfield!

Miss Peggy Lee’s Capitol Catalogue Goes Digital

Norma Deloris Egstrom of Jamestown, North Dakota, was born in 1920, but as Peggy Lee she blazed a trail like few others in American popular music.  A triple threat singer/songwriter/actress, Lee had a long recording career spanning over fifty years.  Her first No. 1 was scored in 1942 and her final track was released in 1995, seven years before her death in 2002.  She was an Academy Award-nominated actress (Pete Kelly’s Blues) and a talented songwriter whose collaborators included Harold Arlen, Cy Coleman, Duke Ellington and Lalo Schifrin.  Lee was also a fierce advocate of artists’ rights, winning a highly-publicized lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company over home video exploitation of Lady and the Tramp, the 1955 film for which she supplied songs (including the sultry “He’s a Tramp,” romantic “Bella Notte” and delightful “Siamese Cat Song”) and the voice of – who else? – Peg.  EMI/Capitol has just announced a major digital campaign celebrating what would have been Lee’s 91^st birthday, introducing 22 albums to the digital domain.

These albums, available from all digital service providers, include a number of titles out-of-print on CD.  Much of Lee’s Capitol catalogue has previously been released on CD from Capitol in America, EMI in the U.K., DRG, and the much-missed Collectors’ Choice Music label.  The albums in this campaign range from 1992 to 2002, with that last title (Peggy Lee at Basin Street East: The Unreleased Show) a first-time issue of a concert recorded in 1961.  The original LP drawn from that concert, Basin Street East Proudly Presents Peggy Lee, is also among this batch of titles.

Lee’s first release as a solo artist on Capitol was in 1945; she remained at the Tower until 1972, absent only for a brief stretch at Decca between 1952 and 1957.  Lee was a femme fatale, for sure, with a husky and knowing tone.  Her hit “Fever,” a canny reworking of the Otis Blackwell-penned tune which was an R&B hit for Little Willie John, remains a summation of the distinct Peggy Lee sound.  Despite an ambitious jazz sensibility that saw her through collaborations with George Shearing, Benny Carter and others, Lee also embraced the pop/rock songbook in the 1960s and 1970s, reinventing songs by The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Carole King, Bread and The Kinks.  Paul McCartney even wrote and produced 1974’s “Let’s Love” for Peggy, which turned out to be her 70^th and final chart hit. 

Hit the jump for more details including the complete list of albums in this collection!