THIS MONTH’S COVERMOUNT CD is Boogie Children, Volume 7 of our popular Heavy Nuggets series. Hypnotic rifferama in the key of Young/Young, starring Canned Heat, ZZ Top, Little Feat, John Lee Hooker, R.L. Burnside, Howlin Rain, Endless Boogie and more!
This Month's Covermount CD is Glam Nuggets – 15 deep cuts of flash and boogie with New York Dolls, Sparks, Mick Ronson, The Damned, Hammersmith Gorillas and more.
His highly distinctive trumpet playing and his remarkable achievements as one of the chief architects of New Orleans R&B during the late '40s and early '50s as a producer (notably of Fats Domino) and his prolific song writing attracted a considerable amount of attention. However what is often neglected when discussing his career are his own recordings and this 2CD set from Jasmine attempts to collect together all of these recordings for Imperial records between 1950 and 1962. Features 57 superb slices of early New Orleans R&B with tracks such as 'Jump Children', 'Shrimp and Gumbo', 'Hard Times (The Slop)' 'When The Saints Come Marching In Boogie' and his first version 'Little Girl Sing Ding-A-Ling' which later became a hit for Chuck Berry in 1972.
Consider that Frankie "Sugar Chile" Robinson was the premier, and almost the only boogie-woogie pianist to come out of Detroit. Consider that he retired from the music business before he graduated high school. And consider that he was between eight and fourteen years old when he made these recordings (also available on the Classics label,) which makes this release of vintage blues from the child prodigy an important document. Similar in looks to latter period child star Gary Coleman, and similar stylistically to the barrelhouse pianists who preceded him, he was a phenomenon, but hardly a novelty act. Robinson might be best known in contemporary times for the title track from this CD, which was the music for the popular Dockers slacks T.V. commercial…
The most iconic band of the U.K. glam rock scene of the '70s, T. Rex were the creation of Marc Bolan, who started out as a cheerfully addled acolyte of psychedelia and folk-rock until he turned to swaggering rock & roll with boogie rhythm and a tricked-up fashion sense. For a couple years, T. Rex were the biggest band in England and a potent cult item in the United States. If their stardom didn't last, their influence did, and T. Rex's dirty but playful attitude and Bolan's sense of style and rock star moves would show their influence in metal, punk, new wave, and alternative rock; it's all but impossible to imagine the '80s new romantic scene existing without Bolan's influence. In 1977, Bolan was killed in a car accident, and the band disbanded.
The Bee Gees' second R&B album, Children of the World, had the advantage of being written and recorded while the group was riding a string of Top Ten singles and the biggest wave of public adulation in their history off of the Main Course album…