Funny Birds

Founded in 1942 by Herman Lubinsky, Savoy grew to become one of the great reputable jazz and blues labels. Reaching its zenith in the bebop ear, Savoy became renowned for its great recordings of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Erroll Garner, Miles Davis, The Ravens, George Shearing, Art Pepper and countless other famous names of Fifties Jazz. This compilation of Great Trumpets is drawn entirely from the famous Savoy Jazz Catalogue and is the first time that a compilation of this depth has been made available. Good jazz guitar recordings are rare birds and this compilation of standards from some of the "raves" and less popularly acclaimed guitar players of the last fifty years makes for welcome and relaxed listening.
Kenny Burrell, Pat Martino, Charlie Byrd, Grant Green and others.

When Jimmie Vaughan left the Fabulous Thunderbirds in 1990, the band's old pal Duke Robillard filled the guitar slot. The experience seems to have transformed Robillard, a charter member of Roomful of Blues, from a swinging jump-blues man into a thumping blues rocker. You could hear the early indications on his 1991 solo album, Turn It Around, and his 1992 album with the T-Birds, Walk That Walk, Talk That Talk, but the transformation is complete on Temptation. The singer/guitarist has concentrated his grooves around big, fat snare-drum beats and has given his guitar riffs a thick, dirty sound. He wrote or cowrote 9 of the 11 songs, but none of these originals is likely to join the standard blues repertoire.

This 26-song anthology is almost identical in track selection to the most comprehensive prior Scaffold collection, Abbey Road Decade 1966-1971, released just four years before this CD. And indeed, the track selection isn't too different from the only other Scaffold anthology, See for Miles' Singles A's & B's. It's a bit puzzling as to why this body of work, not in terribly high demand at any rate, was packaged with such slight alternations so soon after the Abbey Road Decade 1966-1971 disc. Anyway, assuming this is the first Scaffold best-of you come across, it does its job well, spanning 1966 to the early '70s, and naturally including their two big British hits of the late '60s, "Thank U Very Much" and "Lily the Pink." The music, frankly, is an erratic mix of comedy and rock that's much patchier and rather more twee than, say, that of fellow U.K. humorists the Bonzo Dog Band.