CNQ 2015 Retrospective

I'll be coming up with faves from the year's posts here shortly. Meanwhile, I had a lot of favorite other things this year, and this 30 Rock clip sums them up.

Bully's Feels Like is my favorite album of the year.

I became openly reggae and got big into dub and rocksteady. Check out The Upsetters' "Super Ape." Totally rad.

I discovered 19th-early 20th century composer Erik Satie's Gymnopédies.

I loved Tom Holkenborg's Mad Max: Fury Road score. I listened to his Black Mass score the other night and it's also good. Music scores in general are a new thing for me. I have never had a taste for them until recently.

The new Faith No More, Sol Invictus, was really good.

I like the Leon Bridges album.

The Lil Bub album "Science and Magic" might be the last great album of 2015.

Protomartyr's The Agent Intellect is top notch.

I recently discovered these next few. Johnny Burnette is amazing o.g. rockabilly. Some really raw, rockin' songs. This one is a little more kitschy:

The Vibrators are amazing o.g. punk. Here's the complete Peel Sessions.

Bluesman Tommy Johnson. The band Canned Heat got their name from this song:

Hollywood session man/jazz guitarist Howard Roberts. This is a cut from his excellent 1959 album, Good Pickin's.

Tommy Zang with Frank Metis and Orchestra: White Silence b/w With The Good Lord Willing (Mark Records, 1959)

Some googling didn't uncover anything about Tommy Zang, except he recorded for a label called Mark in the late 50s and for Hickory in the 60s. I think he may have been Canadian. He may have a daughter and a grandson who post in Youtube comments, which is pretty cool. I'd love to know more about Tommy Zang.

Discogs has three Tommy Zang 7"'s listed, and 45cat has five. Gemm and MusicStack have more for sale. Youtube has a few of his songs posted. But none of them have this particular record.

Zang was backed on these two songs by Frank Metis & His Orchestra. A little googling didn't uncover much about them either.

Praguefrank's Country Music Discographies is a cool site and it has this listed as Zang's first single, from '59. "White Silence" was written by one Frank Cavall, who is another mystery to me. The flip, "With the Good Lord Willing," was written by Zang himself.

Both are unusual and enjoyable. It's pop, it's orchestral, it's a little country, maybe? White Silence sounds like the theme song to Blazing Saddles, to me, anyway. This is some unique stuff. So enjoy it, Quieteers:

White Silence:

With the Good Lord Willing:

Another mystery is the label, Mark Records, outta Utica, New York. This rockabilly song was also released on Mark:

Jimmy Pruett: My Gal Sal/A Shanty In Old Shanty Town (1962?)

I was over at vintage store B4 in Deep Ellum again tonight, and, among a few other righteous treasures, found this 7". According to Jimmy Pruett's German-language Wikipedia entry (he doesn't have one in English), Pruett was a blind pianist and guitarist, born in 1925 in Los Angeles. Here's another bio from Hillbilly.com.

Pruett was a member of this radio and television country music program called Town Hall Party. I'd never heard of it -- Town Hall Party looks pretty cool.

Here's a brief bio of Pruett from musician Lee Bloom's list of important jazz pianists.

Here's a copy of this record (a Capitol Records release) on gemm.com for $12.00, and here's a copy on Ebay for $4.79. That's what my copy looks like.

The Discogs page for Jimmy Pruett is sparse and doesn't list this recording. Over on 45cat, Pruett's name is even more rare, with only one listing, as piano on a Jackie Lee Cochran bootleg reproduction from 1973.

The Worldcat entry for this 45 is the only site I found that hazards to guess what year this was released.

The two songs on this 45 are more like swing jazz, like Reinhardt/Tatum kinda stuff, and I really dig it. But as you can see from the Youtube videos below the two mp3s, Pruett also had more rockin' fare. Jimmy Pruett is 89 or so years old now, and, as far as I could tell using the Internet, may still be alive somewhere. I hope he's doing well. This guy wailed on axe and the keys. I've very glad I found this!

Here's "My Gal Sal," a traditional written by Paul Dresser:

And here's "A Shanty In Old Shanty Town," which says it was written by Siras-Little-Young:

Here's Pruett wailin' on guitar, both vidjas from Town Hall Party:

Finally, here's those two Jackie Lee Cochran songs with Pruett on piano. Cool stuff.

The Pacers: "Steer Stomper" (1965)

Merry Christmas...to me! I hit a gold mine -- or rather, a wax mine -- on our holiday visit home. My dad (to the left, circa 1963) found a bunch of his parents' old 45s.

Here's the Pacers' "Steer Stomper," the B-side from their 1965 45 "Short Squashed Texan" (which can be heard courtesy that embedded Youtube video). The Pacers were the backing band for Sonny Burgess, a rock'n'roll pioneer from Arkansas. "Steer Stomper" is an instrumental. Go Hogs!

Steer Stompers

Download: Steer Stomper