Happy Birthday Joyce Moreno!

Celebrating the birthday of singer/songwriter Joyce Moreno with her 2015 session for Nelson Faria's Um Café Lá Em Casa.

R.I.P. Hargus "Pig" Robbins, 1938-2022

Remembering Nashville session great Hargus "Pig" Robbins with an informative two-part interview. 

That time Fred Stone sat in with Ed Bickert, Jerry Toth & Butch Watanabe

Here's an interesting Toronto jazz time capsule featuring trumpeter Fred Stone with a bearded Ed Bickert and crew circa 1965. 

R.I.P. artist/educator Tony Urquhart, 1934-2022

Sadly, iconic Canadian regionalist, CARFAC founder & U of Waterloo prof Tony Urquhart has died. He'll be greatly missed.

LINKS
Tony Urquhart documentary
Toronto Star Canadian artist Tony Urquhart had a legacy of groundbreaking work
London Free Press Tony Urquhart left indelible mark on London't art scene
 

Happy Birthday Steve Marriott

Remembering Steve Marriott of the Small Faces and Humble Pie fame with a couple of vintage clips. 

Whaddya mean you don't know The Hamiltones

From deepest darkest Western New York comes The Hamiltones' terrifyingly twangy debut LP, Dracula Invitational1791.

Here's the scoop...

You are about to hear the score of the most ridiculous, b-movie Dracula film no one has ever seen (and may not even exist). The Hamiltones' debut LP, Dracula Invitational 1791 (out now on Swimming Faith/Big Neck Records) is an instrumental, surf-punk adventure that has as much in common with Ennio Morricone and The Cramps as it does with the Ventures. Nimble guitars, lurking bass, swirling organs, and eerie violin create a sound that can transform from uptempo and raucous to dark and baroque, harkening back to an era when ghouls roamed every Eastern European forest. 

Get a copy of Dracula Invitational 1791 – now in it's second pressing – via Bandcamp right here. Check out a few tracks below. 

Happy Birthday Jeanne Lee

Remembering innovative jazz vocalist Jeanne Lee with "Sundance" from '74 and "O Western Wind" with Gunter Hampel from '68. 

With a Wade Walton haircut, you sometimes got a song

Mississippi bluesman Wade Walton – who cut a 1961 album for Prestige – ran Wade's Barbershop in Clarksdale, MS for decades. 

Karibuni Africa Virtual Series: Lionel Kizaba livestream, Friday

Watch Afro-futurist drummer Lionel Kizaba and crew tonight at 8 pm. Check out a performance from April while you're waiting.

Watch Irene Torres live under the Canopy

Toronto's Irene Torres offers a glimpse of her new album with guitarist Eric St-Laurent, Matias Recharte & Mario Rivas Rosas.

Happy Birthday Maurice Dollison aka Cash McCall

Remembering songwriter Maurice Dollison aka Cash McCall with "S.O.S." which his pal Otis Clay re-cut as "That's How It Is"

One For The Weekend: Yiannis Tatassopoulos

Here's bouzouki boss Yiannis Tatassopoulos with Fred Elias tearing through "Bouzoukee Cha Cha"

April March's limited-run In Cinerama LP gets CD release with bonus tracks

April March's RSD 2021 release In Cinerama is being issued in an expanded digital version with two previously unissued songs.

Here's the scoop...

April March has quite the resume: an animator on Pee Wee’s Playhouse and for Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl” video, and collaborating with Brian Wilson, LL Cool J, Ronnie Spector and Bertrand Burgalat. But she also has an acclaimed recording career, heavily influenced by French pop music.

She named her English version of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Laisse tomber les filles” “Chick Habit,” and Quentin Tarantino featured it in his 2007 film, Death Proof.

Following a quarter century of recording, March unveiled In Cinerama as a vinyl-only release for Record Store Day in 2021. It was an unprecedented success, selling out of its small run before most could hear the magic. In Cinerama has a wide sonic span from Nigeria to California, with Fela Kuti’s drummer Tony Allen at the helm and The Beach Boys’ Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford by his side, as well as talented friends ranging from the French underground to Nashville; The 11 tracks, co-written and co-produced by Mehdi Zannad, recall the 5th Dimension, Belle And Sebastian and even your favorite Gainsbourg or Curt Boettcher productions but stand on their own just as fresh and contemporary as the waves of Malibu or a Parisian Uber.

Omnivore Recordings will issue a revamped In Cinerama on CD and Digital on March 18, 2022, with updated artwork, new liner notes (both in English and en Français), printed lyrics, plus two previously unissued bonus tracks (“Goodbye” and “Friends Peculiar”).

As Christophe Conte writes in the notes: “In Cinerama is an active medley of images and sounds inherited from pop’s golden age, made not into a nostalgic mirror of times gone by but a vital, vibrant material. In the movies as in music, time stands still. Actors and actresses, singers, musicians, and moments fixed in wax and celluloid exist forever. They are the stuff of our mythologies, both personal and communal; they live in greater, more beautiful, and more exhilarating countries than any real ones we will ever visit… April March, Mehdi Zannad, and their magnificent entourage give us one such stationary voyage, an ideal map to admire down to the tiniest detail, a world we dream of inhabiting.”

The updated In Cinerama is the perfect way to get acquainted with this influential and important artist. But, mostly, it’s a way to experience one of 2021’s most acclaimed releases. Pre-order April March's In Cinerama right here. Watch the release trailer below. 

April March – In Cinerama (Omnivore)

Lift Off

Rolla Rolla

Open Your Window Romeo

Californian Fall

Stand in the Sun

Ride or Divide

Elinor Blue

Runaway

Baby

Down The Line

Born

BONUS TRACKS:

Goodbye

Friends Peculiar

JD McPherson vs. Big Al Downing

JD McPherson does a fine version of Big Al Downing's 1958 R&B cooker "Just Around The Corner," the flipside of "Miss Lucy."

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed previews new Merle Haggard salute with "Mama Tried"

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed puts a soulful spin on Merle Haggard's country classics on Down Every Road out April 29th.

Here's the scoop...

Eli “Paperboy” Reed pays homage to country legend Merle Haggard by putting a soulful spin on some classic tunes on Down Every Road set for release April 29th via Yep Roc. Recorded in Brooklyn with longtime collaborator Vince Chiarito (Black Pumas, Charles Bradley), Reed taps into all the heartache of Haggard’s iconic catalog and channels it into explosive, high-octane performances that blur the lines of genre, geography, and race to reveal the common, distinctly American threads tying them all together. 

You can pre-order Down Every Road right here. Listen to "Mama Tried" and "I'm Gonna Break Every Heart I Can" followed by the tracklisting.

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed – Down Every Road (Yep Roc) 

1. Mama Tried 

2. I'm Bringing Home Good News

3. Somewhere Between

4. Teach Me to Forget

5. It's Not Love, But It's Not Bad

6. If We Make It Through December

7. Silver Wings

8. I'm Gonna Break Every Heart I Can

9. I'm a Lonesome Fugitive

10. One Sweet Hello

11. Workin' Man Blues

12. Eli Paperboy Reed featuring Sabine McCalla & Sabine McCalla - Today I Started Loving You Again

Happy Birthday Huey "Piano" Smith!

Celebrating the birthday of New Orleans legend Huey "Piano" Smith with his swingin' "We Like Mambo" 

For more on Huey "Piano" Smith, read the New Orleans chapter of Jonas Bernholm's Soul Music Odyssey USA 1968. 

Midweek Mixdown: JJ Whitefield at Bar Charlie in Munich and more!

Check out JJ Whitefield's entrancing hour-long set at Munich's Bar Charlie followed by some crackly Zamrock finds below.  

Listen to some Zamrock on the Spectrum Road radio show here and a bit of krautrock here and there. 

Watch Sally Timms & Jon Langford perform Wild Honey benefit in LA

The Mekons' Jon Langford & Sally Timms were joined by John Szymanski & Martin Billheimer for an hour-long set.

Jake Xerxes Fussell focuses on his own songs for Good and Green Again

Jake Xerxes Fussell's fourth album, Good and Green Again, is a promising step forward for the Durham, NC guitar picker. 

Here's the scoop...

One of the most striking and strangely moving moments on Jake Xerxes Fussell’s gorgeous Good and Green Again—an album, his fourth and most recent, replete with such dazzling moments—arrives at its very end, with the brief words to the final song “Washington.” “General Washington/Noblest of men/His house, his horse, his cherry tree, and him,” Fussell sings, after a hushed introductory passage in which his trademark percussively fingerpicked Telecaster converses lacily with James Elkington’s parlor piano. That’s the entire lyrical content of the song, which proceeds to float away on orchestral clouds of French horn, trumpet, and strings, until it simply stops, suddenly evaporating, vanishing with no fade or trace, no resolution to its sorrowful minor-key chord progression, just silence and stillness and stark presidential absence. It feels like the end of a film, or the cold departure of a ghost, and is unlike anything else Jake has recorded. 

The song provides an apt metaphor for the record as a whole and for Fussell’s artistic process itself. He appropriated the text from an early 20th century hooked rug by an anonymous Virginian artist depicting exactly what its red-stitched all-caps headline text and caption declares: Mount Vernon, a horse, a cherry tree, and the big man himself, cartoonishly grimacing (or is it wryly grinning? there’s not much mouth, just a red-thread wrinkle). George sits cross-legged in foppish leggings and slippers on a blue bestarred chair, with a perfect arch of snow-white wig haloed around his noble head. The rendering of this folk-art artifact ignores perspective and punctuation: every object in the lineup is the same size, and the list of the General’s stuff includes no commas or line breaks, a kind of accidental concrete poem that democratizes the supposedly great democratizer, reducing him to the same prosaic level as his diminutive crib, his prancing pony, and his tart cherries (maybe he is grimacing after all). The image may have been intended as a tribute, maybe even a reverent one—if we forget the fact that it’s a rug, and that we’re meant to walk all over it—but it hits as satire in its contemporary context, like a textile version of one of those all-caps cat caption memes. (I CAN HAZ CHERRIES?) The “noblest of men” looks a bit pathetic here, a little childish with his big-boy toys, a little goofy and alone—a little like how the rest of us often feel. 

(Now, Jake is certainly no apologist for George Washington, nor for the myriad atrocities of American history, but he recognizes the deep wells of American song are filled from headwaters both fresh and vile. Within its ambiguities, “Washington” is, for Fussell, a placid protest song that elevates an artist and her rug above a general in his splendor. It’s a fragment of the broken ways we speak about history and power, a satirical shard sent to pierce and deflate our pernicious, endlessly regurgitated national mythologies. As such, it’s a deeply sad song. It’s not the only one here.) 

Fussell carefully considers such contradictions in his studious choice of songs. He’s distinguished himself as one of his generation’s preeminent interpreters of traditional (and not so traditional) “folk” songs, a practice which he approaches with a refreshingly unfussy lack of nostalgia and preciousness, utterly devoid of folkie cosplay. By recontextualizing ancient vernacular songs and sources of the American South, he allows them to breathe and speak for themselves and for himself; he alternately inhabits them and allows them to inhabit him. His mesmerizing performances reveal the beauty of calling things by their true names, of coaxing old texts and recordings gently through the telescope of time, thereby transmuting them, through his own ineffable alchemy, into something approachably intimate and immediately relevant, something both his and ours. 

In all his work Jake humanizes his material with his own profound curatorial and interpretive gifts, unmooring stories and melodies from their specific eras and origins and setting them adrift in our own waterways. The robust burr of his voice, which periodically melts and catches at a particularly tender turn of phrase, and the swung rhythmic undertow of exquisite, seemingly effortless guitar-playing—here he plays more acoustic than ever before—pull new valences of meaning from ostensibly antique songs and subjects. What’s different about “Washington” is that it’s one of four original compositions on the album—the others are the three instrumentals—a career first for Fussell, who has heretofore been content to remain a vitreous vessel for existing, often anonymous, songs. 

On Good and Green Again, Jake not only ventures beyond his established mastery of songcatching and songmaking into songwriting, but likewise navigates fresh sonic and compositional landscapes, going green with lusher, more atmospheric and ambitious arrangements. The result is the most conceptually focused, breathtakingly rendered, and enigmatically poignant record of his wondrous catalog. It’s also his most deliberately premeditated album, representing his fruitful return to a producer partnership after two self-produced projects, What in the Natural World (2017) and Out of Sight (2019) (William Tyler produced his friend’s self-titled 2015 debut.) This time James Elkington produced and played a panoply of instruments, bringing to Jake’s arcane song choices his own peerless sense of harmony and orchestration, balance and dramatic tension, honed from collaborations with artists such as Michael Chapman, Steve Gunn, Joan Shelley, Richard Thompson, and Jeff Tweedy. Jake knew after a 2018 Midwestern tour together that he wanted to work with Jim, appreciating his open ears, unorthodox influences, and flexibility in following instincts. 

The pair enlisted a group of formidable players hailing from Durham, North Carolina (where Fussell lives) and elsewhere, including regular bandmembers Casey Toll (Mt. Moriah, Nathan Bowles) on upright bass, Libby Rodenbough (Mipso) on strings, and Nathan Golub on pedal steel. They were joined by welcome newcomers Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Joseph Decosimo on fiddle, Anna Jacobson on brass, and veteran collaborator and avowed Fussell fan Bonnie “Prince” Billy, who contributes additional vocals. 

Together this crew is uncannily able to pinpoint that magical place on Jake’s musical map where melancholy, quietude, and head-nodding, foot-stomping joy commingle and transcend—places like, on previous albums, “Raggy Levy,” “Jump for Joy,” and “The River St. Johns.” Album opener “Love Farewell” (featuring some beautiful singing by Bonnie “Prince” Billy) rings that bell with an elliptical tale of the folly of war, set to the world’s most heartbreaking goodbye march for a lover left behind. “Carriebelle” and “Breast of Glass” each similarly concerns, in its own way, romantic love and leavings. All three songs highlight Jacobson’s diaphanous, understated brass parts, tying them together in a true lover’s knot. “Rolling Mills Are Burning Down,” with its distant keening strings and capacious sense of space, observes and mourns the loss of work and community in the wake of elemental disaster. Nine-minute tour de force “The Golden Willow Tree,” the sole explicitly narrative song herein, is a hypnotic, minimalist rendering of a tragic maritime ballad about scuttling an enemy ship in exchange for wealth and glory—and a captain’s inevitable betrayal. It’s a rejoinder to “Love Farewell”’s naïve cheer in the face of imminent violence. 

If overall Good and Green Again sounds a little sadder and slower than Fussell’s past records, well, maybe we’re all a little sadder and slower these days. A smoldering mood of regret and loss pervades, a distinct vibe of vanitas. But three airy instrumentals, all Fussell originals—“Frolic,” “What Did the Hen Duck Say to the Drake?,” and “In Florida”—punctuate the program, offering respite and light in the form of crisp, shuffling play-party tunes, each in turn somewhat more hopeful and exuberant than the last. Their resemblance to lullabies is, perhaps, not coincidental. Fussell and his partner welcomed their first child into the world during the making of Good and Green Again. These lovely songs bear that promise in letters of bright gold. 

Get Jake Xerxes Fussell's new album Good and Green Again right here. Listen to "The Golden Willow Tree" and "Rolling Mills Are Burning Down" below. Watch Jake play a Tiny Desk (Home) Concert for NPR right here. 

Happy Birthday Etta James!

Remembering the great Etta James on her birthday with a powerful 1966 performance of "Something's Got A Hold On Me"

Listen to "Jegue" off rare Hermeto Pascoal live recording from 1981

Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo's Live at Planetário Da Gávea is being released by Far Out on Feb 4. Hear the swingin' "Jegue" below.

Here's the scoop...

On a balmy Brazilian night in February, 1981, a crowd gathered in Rio de Janeiro's Gávea neighbourhood under the iconic dome of the city's Planetário (Planetarium). Alongside musicians like Helio Delmiro and Milton Nascimento (who were in the audience that night), they were there to see the great "Bruxo" (sorcerer) Hermeto Pascoal live in concert, with his new band formation which would become known simply as "O Grupo" (The Group).

Growing up on a farm in Brazil's northeastern state of Alagoas, Hermeto has always been deeply in tune with, and inspired by nature. In his youth he would make his own flutes to play call and response with the birds and frogs. He would build scrap-metal instruments in his blacksmith grandfather's forge, and sit for hours by the lake listening to the sounds of nature. On the Planetário Da Gávea recordings though, Hermeto is cast as the "sorcerer" or the "cosmic emissary" (as the great Brazilian guitarist Guinga once called him), exhibiting an intuitive sense of harmony and melody beyond that of our own world.

"Tudo e Som" (All is Sound). It's a phrase Hermeto regularly returns to, and it points to the fact that not only can music be made from anything, but also alludes to something much more profound. It's an understanding of the universe as being in a state of constant movement, forever vibrating at the quantum level, like the string of a guitar, or a saxophone's reed. "Tudo e Som" is a declaration of the mystical and spiritual power of sound, as a fundamentally vibrational force.

The series of concerts at the Planetário marked the birth of "O Grupo" which would last with the same line-up (apart from Zé Eduardo Nazário) for the next eleven years. Every member of O Grupo was a phenomenal musician in their own right. It was one of saxophonist/flautist Carlos Malta's first gigs with the group, and the concert unusually featured two drummers, Zé Eduardo Nazário and Marcio Bahia. Nazário, from São Paulo, had played with Hermeto during the mid-70s (as well as with Milton Nascimento, Egberto Gismonti and Toninho Horta, to name a few). Bahia though had just joined the group. Acclaimed keyboard player Jovino Santos Neto was on keyboards, piano and organ, and the great Itiberê Zwarg (who remains in Hermeto's band to this day), played bass. Rounding the group off was the percussionist Pernambuco. During this period (up until the early 90s) the group would rehearse for hours on end, virtually seven days a week, with a total dedication to music and Hermeto's musical vision.

Most of the compositions performed that night at the Planetário had never been recorded before, and many are unique to this album, including the wild 'Homônimo Sintróvio', the exaltant 'Samba Do Belaqua', 'Vou Pra Lá e Pra Cá' and 'Bombardino', which features Hermeto's wonderfully absurd call and response mouthpiece soliloquy. Then there's the stunning 7/4 Samba 'Jegue' which builds with inventive dissonance, before releasing yet another celestially colourful, celebratory refrain. The show also features the first recorded performances of 'Era Pra Ser e Não Foi' and 'Ilza na Feijoada' (inspired by Hermetos' wife Ilza's famed black bean and meat stew), which Hermeto later recorded on his 1984 studio album "Lagoa Da Canoa Município De Arapiraca".

Dubbed by Miles Davis as "one of the most important musicians on the planet", a Hermeto Pascoal live show was (and still is) an experience like no other. Across the recording of the Planetário concert, wild improvisation meets groovy, virtuosic vamping on progressive, extended psychedelic jams. The tracks are generally built around a beautiful, transcendent melody; instantly recognizable as being Hermeto's, and for the most part, the musicians then solo over extended two chord vamps. There's a plethora of powerfully delivered rhythms, wild solos and the performances are punctuated by Hermeto's unpredictable, at times comical sonic antics.

Over forty years since this historic happening, Far Out Recordings is overjoyed to release this magical recording of Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo's Live at Planetário Da Gávea, on double vinyl LP, CD and digitally for a February 4th release. Get a copy via Bandcamp right here. Listen to "Jegue" below. 

Happy Birthday Kim Salmon!

Celebrating Kim Salmon's birthday with a couple of recent clips and a 2001 appearance by The Scientists on Studio 22. 

That time Tony Joe White played "Polk Salad Annie" on Swedish TV

Here's Tony Joe White performing his unlikely international hit "Polk Salad Annie" in 1969 followed by a documentary. 

R.I.P. Ventures co-founder Don Wilson, 1933-2021

Saddened to hear that Ventures rhythm guitarist Don Wilson has passed away at the age of 88. Watch the film Beloved Invaders. 

Happy Birthday Pat Todd!

Celebrating Pat Todd's birthday with "...There's pretty things in Palookaville" which you can get on vinyl from Hound Gawd! 

Grab a copy of Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders' latest single "Tell Us All A Story" b/w "Prison Of Love" from I-94 Records. 

LINKS

I-94 Bar Pat Todd throws out his rearview mirror 

The Sadies share new video for "Message To Belial"

Check out the video for The Sadies' "Message To Belial" by Hilotrons ace Mike Dubue with footage from La Légende du Fantôme. 

Whaddya mean you don't know The Athenians

The Athenians from Scotland released a great two-sider on Edinburgh's Waverley label in 1964. Have a listen.  

Mekons' Sally Timms & Jon Langford join Freakwater for Freakons project

What better way to deliver grim tunes about the horrors of coal mining than the sweet voices of Catherine Irwin and Sally Timms.

Mekons + Freakwater = Freakons

The Mekons and Freakwater have been friends for decades, forged in the punk rock/art school crucibles of late ’70s Leeds and mid ’80s Louisville respectively. Both bands mined British folk and American classic country music for three-chord songs whose lyrics fit the nihilism or political rage or outlandish joy of the moment. Many of these songs were about coal mining. Traditional songs about heroic union organizers, deadly mine disasters, wailing orphans, or mining's grim history of economic and ecological devastation fit seamlessly alongside each band's original material. And so it is with FREAKONS. 

Deep pit mines, strip mines, mountaintop removal, collapsing slag heaps. Deadly work, poisoned water, and fantastic songs. Always fantastic songs. 

This is where the FREAKONS were born, from the very bowels of the earth. 

The Mekons’ Jon Langford & Sally Timms and Freakwater’s Janet Bean & Catherine Irwin are joined here by the stellar string and vocal harmonies of Jean Cook (Ida, Tara Jane O’Neil, Skull Orchard) and Anna Krippenstapel (The Other Years, Joan Shelley, Freakwater), along with special guest, the beloved guitar genius Jim Elkington (Richard Thompson, Eleventh Dream Day, Horse’s Ha, Skull Orchard, Freakwater, The Zincs). 

Belgian painter Jo Clauwaert created the album’s intricate gatefold cover. Images from song lyrics and related history emerge and recede again in this gorgeously illustrated artistic fever dream. 

Pre-order the debut album from Freakons (out March 25th) via Bandcamp right here or directly from the label, Portland's Fluff & Gravy Records right here. 

Check the release trailer and the video for "Blackleg Miner" following the tracklisting below.

Freakons – s/t

1. Dark Lords Of The Mine

2. Chestnut Blight

3. Abernant 84/85

4. Judy Belle Thompson

5. Canaries

6. Blackleg Miner

7. Phoebe Snow

8. The Mannington Mine Disaster

9. Never Thought I'd See The Day

10. Dreadful Memories

11. Coorie Doon

12. Blue Scars Of A Miner

"Phoebe Snow"

Interestingly enough, the Freakons debut includes a song about the fictional Phoebe Snow, not the popular 70s singer/songwriter – born Phoebe Ann Laub – who voiced numerous commercial jingles. The character "Phoebe Snow" was a white dress wearing Victorian traveller who appeared in a series of Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad posters at the turn of the century (see below) as part of a popular advertising campaign to create the impression of cleaner railroad travel with anthracite coal. 

Earnest Elmo Calkins' advertising campaign used "Phoebe Snow" to sell the concept of cleaner railroad travel with anthracite coal. 

Early recordings by Azymuth's José Roberto Bertrami being reissued by Far Out

Both the hard-to-find Os Tatuís (1965) and José Roberto Trio (1966) albums are being released on CD and vinyl on March 18. 

Here's the scoop...

Best known as the keyboardist and bandleader of legendary trio Azymuth, the late José Roberto Bertami also wrote for, arranged for and performed with Elis Regina, George Duke, Sarah Vaughn, Jorge Ben, Eddie Palmieri, Milton Nascimento, Flora Purim and Erasmo Carlos, among countless others. But before all of that, in 1965, at the age of just nineteen, Zé Roberto recorded his first studio album with his group Os Tatuís, and the José Roberto Trio in the following year. These largely slept-on albums of beautiful, expressive samba jazz and bossa nova stand as a testament to the prodigious genius of one of the most important musicians in Brazil’s history. 

Born in 1946 in Tatuí - a small city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, José Roberto was the eldest of seven children, four of whom became musicians. His father Lázaro was a classical violinist and a professor at Tatuí’s public conservatory, the largest music school in Latin America - for which the city is nicknamed "Music City". After two years of piano lessons from the age of seven, Bertrami began losing interest, spending more time playing football and what he himself referred to as “professional vagabondage”. At thirteen, as his mother was despairing that her son was going off the rails, Zé Roberto enrolled at the conservatory. “In my two years there, I did seven years’ work and then I was expelled. The conservatory was almost entirely a classical music situation, and I’d begun to break some rules—like holding a jam session at school.” 

Having discovered Bill Evans and Miles Davis in his early teenage years, Betrami began to channel his passion and exceptional musical talent into jazz rather than classical music. The bossa nova sound was also gaining popularity and Bertrami became especially interested in the music of Luiz Eça and Tamba Trio. 

In his late teens, and around the same time as he was regularly sneaking off to São Paulo by train to perform in nightclubs, Zé Roberto, alongside his brother Claudio (a successful musician in his own right, who would go on to play on seminal albums by Gal Costa, Tom Zé, Edu Lobo and João Bosco) and other musicians from Tatuí’s emerging jazz and bossa nova scene, recorded the first album under the group name Os Tatuís. The self-titled LP featured Zé Roberto on piano, Claudio on double bass, a horn section and an organist. With compositions by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Roberto Menescal, Carlos Lyra, Durval Ferreira and Adilson Godoy, the album also featured Bertrami’s own composition “A Bossa do Zé Roberto”, a mesmerising piece of bossa jazz, which proved that already - even as a teenager - Bertrami’s compositions could stand alongside those by the bossa greats. 

A year later, in 1966, Bertrami went back into the studio, but this time stripping the format back to a trio set up. Again featuring Claudio Henrique Betrami on double bass, and with Jovito Coluna on drums, the José Roberto Trio recorded their one and only album, featuring compositions by Baden Powell, Manfredo Fest, and Marcos Valle. The album also featured three of Betrami’s own compositions: the wistful “Lilos Watts”, the groovy “Kebar” and the dazzling “Talhuama”. In the vein of the pioneering Tamba Trio who had so inspired Bertrami in the few years prior, the José Roberto Trio typified an emerging movement within bossa nova in the mid-sixties, with a distinctively Brazilian reimagining of the piano jazz trio sound conceived by the likes of Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal, and further developed by Bill Evans. Following on from Tamba Trio, in Brazil, the mid-sixties saw a number of great Brazilian bossa jazz trios recording around this time, such as Bossa Três, Milton Banana Trio, Tenório Jr, and Bossa Jazz Trio, the latter another group helmed by Betrami. 

Both Os Tatuís and José Roberto Trio will be reissued on vinyl, CD and digitally for an 18th March 2022 release via Far Out Recordings which you can pre-order via Bandcamp right here. Across both of these historic albums, Bertrami’s stunningly performed compositions are rich with harmonic complexity and rhythmic ingenuity, providing a precursor to some of Bertrami’s futuristic fusion with Azymuth later in his career. Listen two both albums below. 

Ron S. Peno chats about his new album Do The Understanding

Died Pretty mainmain Ron S. Peno discusses his latest album with the Superstitions, Do The Understanding, out now. 

Here's the scoop...

Four years (and one global pandemic) since the Australian Music Prize-longlisted 'Guiding Light' (2017) elevated the band to new peaks of artistry, Ron S. Peno and The Superstitions return with Do the Understanding, a stunning new record born from connection and perseverance. 

Long renowned as one of Australia’s most soulfully distinctive rock vocalists, Peno (Died Pretty) has overcome illness to deliver, in a highly intuitive song writing collaboration with The Superstitions’ co-founder, guitarist and composer Cam Butler, a thrilling and sophisticated set of new songs certain to find their way into the hearts of audiences new to the band’s grandly uplifting songcraft and ecstatic live performances, as well as dedicated Superstitions fans. In passion of performance, in romantic rush and in sheer musicianship, 'Do the Understanding' already bears the hallmarks of a new Australian classic, a timely record of difficulties met and addressed, and fresh hope glimpsed with clear eyes in unexpected places. 

The band’s return to the stage will reveal Peno as one of Australia’s greatest and most charismatic performers, in case anyone should require reminding of something so well-known. It will also show The Superstitions as one of the most supple, stirring and ingenious acts in the game. Ron S. Peno and The Superstitions are a band who permanently exist at the height of rock artistry and, miraculously, are only getting better. – Gerard P. Elson

Watch an interview with Ron S. Peno followed by the video for "The Strangest Feeling." Get a copy of Do The Understanding via Bandcamp right here. 

 

Jean-Jacques Perrey created ambient electronic music to help people sleep

Check out "Prelude au Sommeil" recorded by Jean-Jacques Perrey using an Ondioline and issued in 1957.

Rare Wayne McGhie recordings from 1976 surface

Recently, an unissued 10-song album Wayne '76 by Wayne McGhie appeared without fanfare. Check out "Talk To Me" below.

Here's the scoop from Voluntary In Nature... 

In 1976, Montego Bay’s Wayne McGhie recorded an extremely personal, self-penned, follow up to his now legendary 1970 Sounds of Joy LP, not only one of the first long playing albums by a black artist in Canada, but a recent immigrant from Jamaica. 

Amidst the hustle and bustle of an evolving Toronto city life with its growing Caribbean population, grinding gig work with the likes of Studio One keyboard king Jackie Mittoo, and a lack of deep support from the greater Canadian music industry and colonial mass media, Wayne’s '76 sessions never saw the light of day bar a small run two-song 7” single, pairing "Talk To Me" b/w "Too Bad" on the Hot Stuff label. 

Within a few short years, Wayne was battling overwhelming mental health challenges and unable to write, record or perform, an unfortunate condition that continued into the 1980s, but was eventually diagnosed and treated with medical attention and loving family care. 

Removed from the pioneering Jamaican-Canadian music community that he helped to build alongside Jo-Jo Bennett, Lloyd Delpratt, Bob & Wisdom, The Sheiks’ Val Bent and The Mighty Pope, Everton “Pablo” Paul, The Cougars, and Eddie Spencer, Wayne was far gone. 

Meanwhile, in the 1990s, Wayne’s sound had been picked up by a younger generation of hip hop DJs and producers, helping to lay a rhythmic foundation for the movement’s “golden age.” 

Voluntary In Nature first connected with Wayne in 2004 during the process of an official reissue of his debut LP and the much celebrated Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk, and Reggae 1967-1974 compilation from 2006, both released on Light In The Attic Records. 

Before he passed in 2017, Wayne's complete 1976 recordings, preserved on two 2" master tapes reels, were shared with Voluntary In Nature for release by McGhie himself, and his immediate family, with their full blessing, consent, love, and encouragement. This is the first time Wayne’s unreleased album has been heard by the general public. After giving VIN its start way back in 2004, it is our utmost honour to launch this outlet for sharing with Wayne '76. Thank you Wim. I hope that the sound is sweet up there in soul heaven…

Get a digital copy of Wayne '76 via Bandcamp right here. Listen to "Talk To Me" below. 

 

R.I.P. Elza Soares, 1930-2022

Sadly, legendary Brazilian singer Elza Soares has passed away at the age of 91. She'll be greatly missed. 

Valerie June covers Nick Drake for deluxe edition of The Moon and Stars

Valerie June's version of Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" is one of nine bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of The Moon and Stars album.

Here's the scoop...

Valerie June’s latest album, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers, was one of 2021’s most celebrated releases. Today, the Grammy-nominated, genre-busting artist expands the album’s visionary scope with a special digital Deluxe Edition featuring 23 tracks in all: The Moon and Stars’ 14 original tracks, six reimagined, acoustic versions plus three brand-new covers that align with the album’s theme: Nick Drake’s "Pink Moon," John Lennon’s "Imagine" and Stephen Foster’s "Beautiful Dreamer." Check out "Pink Moon" below. 

The Deluxe Edition’s six reimagined album tracks include the previously shared Within You (Moon And Stars/Acoustic), Why The Bright Stars Glow (Moon And Stars/Acoustic) featuring Mavis Staples, and You And I (Moon And Stars/Acoustic) along with three previously unreleased acoustic versions of the songs, "Smile," "Stardust Scattering," and "Stay."

“This Deluxe Edition reimagines a few of the album’s key tracks in a stripped-down acoustic setting that offer intimate takes of some the album's richest arrangements,” June explains. “Listening to the original album versions alongside these acoustic arrangements shows the life of each song and how they can be appreciated both with luscious layers and in their simplest forms.  Songs are living entities, and it's always lovely to watch how a song with a huge arrangement can still touch a listener even in its simplicity.” 

The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers, produced by June and Jack Splash, is sweeping and ambitious with earthy R&B production and a touch of psychedelia amidst its astral folk-pop orchestration. Uncut called it “a psychedelic tour de force” that is “powerfully, elegantly subversive,” and Rolling Stone proclaimed it, “career making.” At the centre is June’s spellbinding vocals and infectious sense of wonder that finds the Brooklyn-via-Memphis artist narrating the often-precarious journey to joyful possibility. The follow-up to her 2013 breakthrough, Pushin’ Against A Stone, and the widely adored The Order of Time—a 2017 effort that earned the admiration of Bob Dylan and landed on best-of-the-year lists—The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers is a transportive, deeply affecting work - a potent catalyst for those foolish enough to dream. 

Tickets are on sale now for June’s 2022 headlining tour which kicks off on March 31st in Seattle, WA, with a stop at The Danforth Music Hall in Toronto on May 10th. Check the full routing is below and for more information visit valeriejune.com/#tour.

 

The Moon & Stars 2022 Tour Dates

Thu Mar 31 – Seattle, WA – The Showbox 
Fri Apr 1 – Vancouver, BC – The Commodore Ballroom 
Sat Apr 2 – Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater 
Sun Apr 3 – Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater 
Tue Apr 5 – San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore 
Wed Apr 6 – Berkeley, CA – The UC Theatre 
Fri Apr 8 – Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda Theatre 
Sat Apr 9 – San Diego, CA – Belly Up 
Fri Apr 22 – Kennett Square, PA – Longwood Gardens Open Air Theatre
Tue May 3 – Northampton, MA – Academy of Music Theatre 
Wed May 4 – New York, NY – Town Hall 
Thu May 5 – Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore 
Fri May 6 – Munhall, PA – Carnegie Music Hall at Homestead 
Sat May 7 – Ithaca, NY – State Theatre 
Tue May 10 – Toronto, ON – Danforth Music Hall 
Wed May 11 – Ferndale, MI – Magic Bag 
Fri May 13 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom 
Sat May 14 – Columbus, OH – The Athenaeum Theatre 
Sun May 15 – Indianapolis, IN – HI-FI Annex 
Mon May 16 – Bloomington, IL – The Castle Theatre 
Wed May 18 – Chicago, IL – Old Town School 
Thu May 19 – Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall 
Fri May 20 – Minneapolis, MN – Pantages Theatre
Sat May 21 – Iowa City, IA – Englert Theatre 
Sun May 22 – St. Louis, MO – Delmar Hall 
Tue May 24 – Louisville, KY – Paristown Hall 
Wed May 25 – Cincinnati, OH – Memorial Hall 
Fri May 27 – Harrisburg, PA – Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center 
Sat May 28 – Annapolis, MD – Ram's Head On Stage