OLÉ, JAMES! OLÉ!

Original Released on 2-LP Polydor 2371596/7

(PORTUGAL, 1968)

It begins softly with just some chords of an acoustic guitar. Then… the music explodes, blowing up your ears and your senses. And for about 67 minutes you’ll be surrounded by 23 classic spanish songs with fabulous orchestrations. This is a very rare set, ‘cause it includes both volumes one (tracks 1 to 12) and two (tracks 13 to 23) of “… Y Olé”, a double album released 1968 in Portugal. I was lucky enough to have found my copy in an antiques shop of Lisbon for just a couple of euros. And my expectations were far exceeded when I’ve listen to its exciting sound. So, here you have the chance to collect this instrumental gem from mr. James Last: don’t waste your time, get it while you can.

(James Last in 2006)

James Last (born Hans Last on April 17, 1929 in Bremen) is a German composer and big-band leader. Last learned to play the piano as a child, then switching to bass guitar as a teenager. At 14 he became entered the Bückeburg Military Music School of the German Wehrmacht. After the fall of the Nazis, he joined Hans-Gunther Österreich's Radio Bremen Dance Orchestra in 1946. In 1948, he became the leader of the Last-Becker Ensemble, which performed for seven years. During that time, he was voted as the best bassist in the country by a German jazz poll for three consecutive years, from 1950-1952. After the Last-Becker Ensemble disbanded, he became the in-house arranger for Polydor Records, as well as for a number of European radio stations. For the next decade, he helped arrange hits for artists like Helmut Zacharias, Freddy Quinn, Lolita, Alfred Hause and Caterina Valente.

James Last released his first album, "Non-Stop Dancing", in 1965, a recording of brief renditions of popular songs, all tied together by an insistent dance beat and joyous crowd noises. It was a hit and helped make him a major European star. Over the next four decades, Last released over 190 records, including several more volumes of "Non-Stop Dancing". On these records, he varies his formula by adding different songs from different countries and genres, as well as guest performers like Richard Clayderman and Astrud Gilberto. He also had his own successful television series in the 1970s with guests ABBA and Lynsey de Paul. Though his concerts and albums are consistently successful - especially in England, where he had 52 hit albums between 1967 and 1986, which made him second only to Elvis Presley in charting records - he has only had two hit singles with “The Seduction,” the theme from "American Gigolo" (1980), and “Biscaya” from the album "Biscaya". The song "The Lonely Shepherd", written by Last and performed by Zamfir and the James Last Orchestra, was featured in the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino's film "Kill Bill Vol. 1" (2003). He has won numerous popular and professional awards, including Billboard magazine's “Star of the Year” trophy in 1976, and has been honored for lifetime achievement with the German ECHO prize in 1994. Last had a large fan base in Europe and elsewhere. His trademark is big-band arrangements of pop music hits; his series of “party albums” is equally well known. Over the course of his career, he has sold well over 100 million albums. He lived in Palm Beach, Florida, when he passed away on 9 June 2015, aged 86 years.

"BRIGITTE FONTAINE EST..."

DONOVAN ~ ANTHOLOGY 3

SAM SKLAIR: "GUMBOOT DANCE"

Original released on LP RCA Victor 38 030

(SOUTH AFRICA, 1968)

Of course Sam Sklair did not invent the ‘gumboot dance’. He merely adapted the rhythms and sounds that are typical for the original style. The origins of ‘gumboot dancing’ can be traced back to the gold mines of South Africa at the height of the migrant labour system and during the oppressive Apartheid Pass Laws. The original name is ‘Isicahulo’ in the Baca language. ‘Gumboot dancing’ was performed by mine workers who worked in the Witwatersrand goldmines near Johannesburg. At best, working in the mines was a long, hard, repetitive toil. At worst, the men would be taken chained into the mines and shackled at their work stations in almost total darkness. The floors of the mines were often flooded, with poor or non-existent drainage. For the miners, hours of standing up to their knees in infected waters brought on skin ulcers, foot problems and consequent lost work time. The bosses discovered that providing gumboots (Wellington boots) to the workers was cheaper than attempting to drain the mines. This created the miners uniform, consisting of heavy black Wellington boots, jeans, bare chest and bandannas to absorb eye-stinging sweat. The workers were forbidden to speak, and as a result created a means of communication, essentially their own unique form of Morse Code. By slapping their gumboots and rattling their ankle chains, the enslaved workers sent messages to each other in the darkness. From this came an entertainment, as the miners evolved their percussive sounds and movements into a unique dance form and used it to entertain each other during their free time. Gumboot dancing has developed into a working class, South African art form with a universal appeal. The dancers expand upon traditional steps, with the addition of contemporary movement, music and song. Extremely physical, the dancing serves as a cathartic release, celebrating the body as an instrument, and the richness and complexities of South African culture.

VAN MORRISON: "Astral Weeks"

Original released on LP Warner Bros WS 1768

(UK, November 1968) 

"Astral Weeks" is generally considered one of the best albums in pop music history, but for all that renown, it is anything but an archetypal rock and roll album. It isn't a rock and roll album at all. Van Morrison plays acoustic guitar and sings in his elastic, bluesy, soulful voice, accompanied by crack group of jazz studio players: guitarist Jay Berliner, upright bassist Richard Davis, Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay, vibraphonist Warren Smith and soprano saxophonist John Payne (also credited on flute, though that's debatable - some claim an anonymous flautist provided those parts). Producer Lewis Merenstein added chamber orchestrations later and divided the album into halves: "In The Beginning" and "Afterwards" with four tunes under each heading. Morrison's songs are an instinctive, organic mixture of Celtic folk, blues and jazz. He fully enters the mystic here, more in the moment than he ever would be again in a recording studio. If his pop hit "Brown-Eyed Girl" was the first place he explored the "previous" - i.e. the depths of his memory - for inspiration and direction, he immerses himself in it here. The freewheeling, loose feel adds to the intimacy and immediacy in the songs. They are for the most part, extended, incantory, loosely narrative and poetic ruminations on his Belfast upbringing: its characters, shops, streets, alleys, and sidewalks, all framed by the innocence and passage of that era. Morrison seems hypnotized by his subjects; they comfort and haunt a present filled with inexhaustible longing and loneliness. 

He confesses as much in the title track: "If I ventured in the slipstream/Between the viaducts of your dream/Where immobile steel rims crack/And the ditch in the back roads stop/ Could you find me?/ Would you kiss-a my eyes/... To be born again...." Morrison doesn't reach out to the listener, but goes deep inside himself to excavate and explore. The album's centerpiece is "Madame George" a stream-of-consciousness narrative of personal psychological and spiritual archetypes deeply influenced by the road novels of Jack Kerouac. The climactic epiphany experienced on "Cyprus Avenue" paints a portrait of place and time so vividly, it fools listeners into the experience of shared - but mythical - memory. "The Way Young Lovers Do" is the most fully-formed tune here. Its swinging jazz verses and tight rhythmic choruses underscore a simmering, passionate eroticism in Morrison's lyric and delivery. "Astral Weeks" is a justified entry in pop music's pantheon. It is unlike any record before or since; it mixes together the very best of postwar popular music in an emotional outpouring cast in delicate, subtle, musical structures. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

TEN YEARS AFTER ~ "UNDEAD"

Original released on LP Deram DML 1023 (UK 1968, August 16)

CREAM: "WHEELS OF FIRE"

Original released on Double LP Polydor 

582 031 2 (mono) / SPDLP 2 (stereo)

(UK, 1968-08-09)

If "Disraeli Gears" was the album where Cream came into their own, its successor, "Wheels of Fire", finds the trio in full fight, capturing every side of their multi-faceted personality, even hinting at the internal pressures that soon would tear the band asunder. A dense, unwieldy double album split into an LP of new studio material and an LP of live material, it's sprawling and scattered, at once awesome in its achievement and maddening in how it falls just short of greatness. It misses its goal not because one LP works and the other doesn't, but because both the live and studio sets suffer from strikingly similar flaws, deriving from the constant power struggle between the trio. Of the three, Ginger Baker comes up short, contributing the passable "Passing the Time" and "Those Were the Days," which are overshadowed by how he extends his solo drum showcase "Toad" to a numbing quarter of an hour and trips upon the Wind & the Willows whimsy of "Pressed Rat and Warthog," whose studied eccentricity pales next to Eric Clapton's nimble, eerily cheerful "Anyone for Tennis."

In almost every regard, "Wheels of Fire" is a terrific showcase for Clapton as a guitarist, especially on the first side of the live album with "Crossroads," a mighty encapsulation of all of his strengths. Some of that is studio trickery, as producer Felix Pappalardi cut together the best bits of a winding improvisation to a tight four minutes, giving this track a relentless momentum that's exceptionally exciting, but there's no denying that Clapton is at a peak here, whether he's tearing off solos on a 17-minute "Spoonful" or goosing "White Room" toward the heights of madness. But it's the architect of "White Room," bassist Jack Bruce, who, along with his collaborator Peter Brown, reaches a peak as a songwriter. Aside from the monumental "White Room," he has the lovely, wistful "As You Said," the cinematic "Deserted Cities of the Heart," and the slow, cynical blues "Politician," all among Cream's very best work. And in many ways "Wheels of Fire" is indeed filled with Cream's very best work, since it also captures the fury and invention (and indulgence) of the band at its peak on the stage and in the studio, but as it tries to find a delicate balance between these three titanic egos, it doesn't quite add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. But taken alone, those individual parts are often quite tremendous. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)

ROTARY CONNECTION 1ST ALBUM

Original released on LP Cadet Concept / LPS-312 (US 1968-02-01)

ANDRE KOSTELANETZ: "Scarborough Fair"

Original Released on LP Columbia CS 9623 

(US, 1968)

KOSTELANETZ's "For the Young at Heart"

Original released on LP Columbia CS 9691

(US, 1968)

THE ZOMBIES: "ODESSEY AND ORACLE"

Original Released on LP CBS D-63280
(UK 1968, April 19)

"Odessey and Oracle" was recorded in 1967 after the Zombies signed to the CBS label, and was only the second album they had released since 1965. As their first LP, "Begin Here", was a collection of singles, "Odessey" can be regarded as the only true Zombies album. While their first album included several cover versions, "Odessey" consisted entirely of original compositions by the group's two main songwriters, Rod Argent and Chris White. The famous misspelling of "odyssey" in the title was the result of a mistake by the designer of the LP cover, Terry Quirk (who was the flatmate of bass player Chris White). The group began work on the album in June 1967. Some songs were recorded at EMI's Abbey Road Studios, where earlier in the year the Beatles had recorded "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and Pink Floyd recorded "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn". This was the first time Abbey Road would be used for an independently produced (non-EMI) release. By the time the recording was finished, in late 1967, the Zombies were effectively disbanded, due to lack of financial success. "Odessey and Oracle" was released in the UK in April 1968 and in the United States in June. The single "Time of the Season" became a surprise hit in early 1969, and Columbia Records (in the United States) re-released "Odessey" in February, with a different album cover that severely cropped the original illustration.

The gap in time between the UK and US record release dates owes to the Zombies having not prepared a stereo mix initially, a condition the American label insisted on. At the urging of Al Kooper and Columbia / Epic / Date records, Argent and White spent their accrued royalties to book studio time and remix the album for stereo specifically for that US release. However, the one song "This Will Be Our Year" was not mixed into stereo in 1969 owing to a "missing" horn overdub not on the original multitrack tape. Since its release the LP has come to be regarded as one of the greatest of all pop albums, with indelible melodies, complex harmonies, and an air of nostalgia and longing that makes it comparable to such albums as Love's "Forever Changes" and the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds". In 2002, Rolling Stone placed "Odessey" in 80th place on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

MARIANNE's "My Songs of the Sixties"

Once upon a time there was a sweet loving girl called Marianne... No woman from the 1960s lost her youth as thoroughly as Marianne Faithfull. And by youth, I mean her innocence, not her looks. Long after that decade ended, she wrote in a song, "Where did it go to ... my youth?" She answered herself only last year with lyrics that begin, «I drink and I take drugs/I love sex and move around a lot». And no citizen of the '60s drank, took drugs and had sex with Faithfull's public abandon. This Rato Records's collection (shared once more 'cause of many requests), in three parts, reunites 75 great songs that Marianne recorded during the sixties, before her personal life went into decline, and her career went into a tailspin.