Various Artists "Jamaican Skarama" (3.5*)

There are some who’ll baulk at the prospect of paying full price ($16.99, thank you very much at iTunes) for a dozen tracks, none of which run past two minutes and forty-five seconds, but as far as Hughesy’s concerned this small (Japanese) label collection of early ska sides that date right back to the early days of the Jamaican music industry delivers a rather good time vibe as it’s playing through.

Recorded at Federal Studio in downtown Kingston, produced by Ken Khouri the highlights come from The Maytals, with My Daily Food offering a slice of prime Toots and One Look couldn’t really be anyone else.

Apart from Toots and company there aren’t a whole lot of familiar names hereabouts and a quick scan of the reggae titles on Hughesy’s bookshelves failed to deliver much detail, but the Techniques bop along nicely on I Love You, Jamaican Gleaner salesman and proof-reader Dobby Dobson works more R&B related territory on Cry Another Cry and Tell Daddy. Eddie Perkins gets deep and meaningful on My Darling and may be the Eddie in Eddie & Patsy, who are out to Take These Chains From My Heart.

The Sneer-Towners deliver a Him Say You Say that bounces along merrily in a neighbouring postcode to Toots and the Maytals, complete with blaring trombone and Stranger & Patsy’s Word Is Wind has the characteristic infectious ska beat down pat. Big Brother took away the X-Rays’s girl, My Dream has one of the Group Singers reaching for the high notes over a doo wop background with some angular guitar cutting through the rather sparse backing and Eric Morris delivers There's A Place with familiar ska horns parping away in the background.

Hardly what you’d call essential unless you’re a ska/reggae completist, but an interesting slice of history that’ll add a bit of interest to your day to day shuffle playlist if this sort of thing floats your boat.

Various Artists "Tumbélé! Biguine, Afro and Latin Sounds From the French Caribbean, 1963-1974" (4.5*)

Sling the words Caribbean, West Indies and music together and your thoughts will, more than likely, head straight towards the reggae end of the spectrum, maybe with a passing thought of Cuba, Latin rhythms and the Buena Vista Social Club and possibly crossing to the shores of South America and Trinidadian calypso.

I guess that’s a natural reaction in the English-speaking world, where West Indian equates to reggae, calypso, cricket and rum, but we tend to forget there were other European nationalities that headed across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, and it might come as some surprise to learn how diverse the islands are, at least in terms of colonial dominance.

We think English and Spanish, possibly French, but we tend to ignore or forget the presence of the Dutch and the fact that the Virgin Islands were, at one time Danish and Norwegian colonies (the Danes sold them to the United States in 1916). That interest dates back to the middle of the seventeenth century, a time when the Swedes had North American colonies in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Caribbean interests. The Swedes also controlled the island of Saint Barthélemy in the Leeward Islands between 1784 and 1878.

Geographically (and there’s a point to all this rambling, don’t panic) the West Indian islands can be divided into two main groups, the Greater and Lesser Antilles, with a couple of extra groups covering the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands (the Lucayan archipelago) and the Leeward Antilles, Dutch colonies off the coast of Venezuela.

The Greater Antilles covers the big islands, namely Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti, the Dominican Republic), Jamaica and Puerto Rico with the Cayman islands just thrown in to confuse matters. Think standard forms of Caribbean music and that’s largely where it comes from. Figures. Big islands tend to have big populations and get the chance to develop their own music industry with their own individual styles, which is more or less what happened with ska, bluebeat and reggae in Jamaica.

Things are much more confused, and subsequently diverse in the smaller islands of the Lesser Antilles, covering the Leeward Islands (assorted United States, British, French and Dutch possessions and a couple of independent former British colonies) east of the Greater Antilles and the Windward Islands (largely independent former British colonies and the French island of Martinique) stretching down to Trinidad just off the South American coast.

What we’re looking at here comes from Guadeloupe (at the eastern end of the Leewards) and Martinique (Windwards). They’re not all that far apart, separated by the former British colony of Dominica. Interestingly, the two islands are overseas departements of France, first colonised by France in 1635 and literally, as a part of France, members of the EU that use the Euro. Put that way and it all sounds a bit white bread, but given the Caribbean confluence you’re in for African and Latin influences on Haitian, Congolese and Puerto Rican rhythms and the local biguine style that ruled the airwaves and dance floors of Martinique and Guadeloupe in the 1960s thrown into the mix.

Listing those elements you can start from gwo ka and bélé, the drum and vocal call-and-response traditional styles of Guadeloupe and Martinique, reflecting the islands' history of slavery and forced migration. The lilting biguine is more urbane, a synthesis of bélé rhythms and brass-led polka from Martinique with ties to le hot jazz from Paris. Throw in some Congolese rumba, Cuban and Haitian rhythms, Trinidadian calypso, American and French hot jazz, and you’ve got an imaginative combination that makes for interesting listening.


Not that you’re going to hear anything that’s too familiar, or recognize names like Barel Coppet et Mister Lof, whose Jeunesse Vauclin gets things off to a lively start, followed by Haiti's Les Loups Noirs’ Jet Biguine, complete with psych-out jet effects. Apart from recording in Martinique Les Loups Noirs apparently spent much of their time travelling between Haitian communities in, among other places, New York and Toronto, as well as throughout the Caribbean.

You could probably come up with equally intriguing stories if you delved deep enough, and spend any amount of time trying to figure out the influences on tracks like Abel Zéno’s Pas O Soué  La, Raphaël Zachille’s Manzé Mona or the Robert Mavounsy Quartet’s Henri Te Vlé Mayé but in an environment where Hughesy’s vaguely-remembered High School French isn’t enough to translate the titles I’m inclined to sit back and enjoy the grooves instead.

La Vie Critique by L’Orchestre Jeunesse de Paul-Emile Haliar might translate as The Critical Life, but doesn’t sound like a nitpicker in action, while Orchestre Combo Zombi et Michel Yéyé’s Mussieu A Têt’a Poisson La has something to do with fish, though I’m not sure about the shape or form.

I was tempted to come up with equally vague remarks about the rest of the album’s diverse array of styles and buoyant bounce but, in the long run, decided Tumbélé is something to be enjoyed rather than analysed.

That’s my excuse, anyway.

The sounds on this particular album sit on the fringes of familiarity, but there’s an exoticism that suggests a flow of people, cultures and traditions, backwards and forwards between metropolitan France, the Caribbean colonies and their neighbours and the African sources that drove so much of the music that came out of the Americas.  Forget classifications and generic definitions, this exotic concoction of French, African, Calypso, Latin and assorted local flavours is bound to add more than a desh of interest to a playlist, and I’m definitely looking for more.

I have a sneaky feeling I'll be taking a good long look at the catalogue over at Soundway Records. The difficult part is going to lie in deciding where to start.


Track listing:

Jeunesse Vauclin – Barel Coppet et Mister Lof

Jet Biguine – Les Loups Noirs D’Haïti

Pas O Soué  La – Abel Zénon

Manzé Mona – Raphaël Zachille

Henri Te Vlé Mayé – Robert Mavounsy Quartet

La Vie Critique – L’Orchestre Jeunesse de Paul-Emile Haliar

Mussieu A Têt’a Poisson La – Orchestre Combo Zombi et Michel Yéyé

Oriza – Les Kings

Colas-la – Claude Rolcin et Le West Indian Combo

Ti Fi La Ou Té Madam’ – Anzala, Dolor, Vélo

D’Leau Coco – Les Leopards

Jojo – Ensemble La Perfecta

Dima Bolane – Le Ry-co Jazz

Edamise Oh! – Lola Martin

Chombo Meringue – Les Aiglons de Basse Terre

Son Tambou La – Les Gentlemens

Chonga – L’Ensemble Abricot

Fileo – Francisco

Panty – Monsieur Dolor et Les Guitar Boys

Jean Fouillé, Pie Fouillé – Robert Loison

John Fahey "Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You (The Fonotone Years 1958-1965)" (4.5*)

There are times when the digital download just isn’t enough, and this five disk, 115 track box set is one of them. As a certified Fahey fan who’s in the process of acquiring everything in the man’s acoustic back catalogue (I’m not so sure about his later, more confrontational electric explorations, though no doubt I’ll be sampling some of them in the future) the chance to get back to Fahey’s very earliest work seemed like a no-brainer when I spotted these titles in the iTunes store, even at $16.99 a throw. We are, or rather were, looking at the formative years of one of Hughesy’s favourite musos.

With something like this, however, it’s not just the what when it comes to the recording, it’s the where, the when and the why, which explains why I’ve been forced to shell out for a hard copy. The hard copy comes with an accompanying hard cover 88-page book, and if I’d investigated first I wouldn’t have gone down the digital path at all.

Checking the possibilities at Fishpond alerted me to the presence of Vampire Vultures, the sequel to How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life (still need to track that one down, but it won’t be long before I do) and with Vampires marked down from $21 to $13.25 and Your Past around half price ($154 into a tad under $76) the catch-up exercise wasn’t as heavy on the hip pocket as it might have been.

Most of the music, at least in this incarnation, is available in a digital format for the first time, remastered from reel-to-reel tapes recorded in a basement in Frederick, Maryland for Joe Bussard’s tiny Fonotone label. That in this incarnation bit is the key here, because much of this material was revisited in later sessions.

Appearing a decade after Fahey’s death, the hard copy comes in a cardboard slip case, with two inserts.

One, a gatefold portfolio lined with period photographs, contains the five disks with 115 tracks sequenced chronologically, apart from a 1967 interview snippet that sets the scene for what follows as Fahey does his best to veer attention away from the rough hewn emulation of Charlie Patton and Mississippi John Hurt as Joe Bussard rolled tape and provided strong drink. The results were manually cut onto 78, 45 or 33 rpm disks from the master tape, each slightly different from other renderings of the same piece of tape.

The other, the aforementioned book, is where the real difference between the digital download and the hard copy comes in, and it comes in big time. If you’ve had enough of those CD booklets with fonts that require the use of a magnifying glass, this one’s for you, folks.

Formatted to the same size as the good old fashioned 12-inch album, the core of the book is Malcolm Kirton's exhaustive 40-page analysis of every track on the six-hour set, bringing together Fahey's take on the material, along with his tunings and playing techniques. It’s a detailed portrait of a scrawny white kid from the outskirts of Washington, D.C. who has somehow become fascinated by obscure songs from obscure black bluesmen ignoring contemporary rock’n’roll and canvassing door to door in poor neighbourhoods looking for old records.

The recordings here were the other side to that coin, since Bussard was a noted collector and, in return for the playing while the tape rolled Fahey got booze and spare copies of folk, blues and bluegrass 78s from the twenties and thirties that were surplus to Bussard’s requirements.

Kirton is also involved with The Fahey Files, an authoritative online archive of  Fahey’s extensive discography maintained by the International Fahey Committee.

Apart from Kirton’s Notes on the Recordings the book,contains co-producer Glenn Jones’ Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You: The FonotoneRecordings of John Fahey, 1958-1965, which sets the scene for what follows, and his description of Nuts and Bolts of the Set. Italian researcher Claudio Guerrieri contributes The Transillumination of Blind Thomas, a guide to the hand-written labels Bussard attached to the individual hand-cut recordings, which leads into Kirton’s An Orchestra in Miniature: Fahey’s Guitars and His Emerging Techniques, Fahey’s childhood friend R. Anthony Lee’s “The Wolves are Gone Now”: The Early Musical Life of John Fahey, a Byron Coley poem, Douglas Blazek’s 1967 interview with Fahey, published here for the first time and Eddie Dean’s In Memory of Blind Thomas of Old Takoma - John Fahey, 1939-2001 add extra dimensions to what is already a wealth of detail.

Blind Thomas, for the uninitiated, was Fahey’s fictional ancient black bluesman alter ego on the sessions, the predecessor to Blind Joe Death who allegedly played a guitar made from a child's coffin and was struck blind and dumb for refusing to learn barre chords.

But, regardless of the packaging (and it’s very impressive packaging) it’s the musical content that counts and while there’s material here that arguably justifies Fahey’s less than favourable assessment of it as a whole it’s a remarkable collection that shows the development of a self-taught guitarist who fused Appalachian string band music, Delta blues, Indian ragas and the hymns sung in his local church into steel-string fingerpicked tone poems.

Running through the set sequentially there are occasions where you’ll be inclined to reach for the fast forward button, particularly when Blind Thomas vocalises and collaborates with a flautist, but persevere and by the final disk a dedicated fan will be in familiar Fahey territory, having had a fair chance to get a sense of the musical terrain along the way.

Transferred from original tapes, with speed correction you’re looking at a remarkable collection that’s a must have for any serious student of finger-picked guitar and every long term Fahey devotee.

The set was released with the support of Joe Bussard and the John Fahey Estate, and dedicated to John’s mother, Jane C. Hayes and musician Jack Rose.

Various Artists "Return of the Mac - In the Studio With Mac Rebennack AKA Dr.John 1959 - 61" (3.5*)

Head into this little collection expecting something along the lines of the regulation Dr John and you’ll more than likely be disappointed.

Not that there’s actually a single recognisable entity you can clearly label Dr John once you remove the characteristic Rebennack drawl from the mix, but if you’re looking for the something in the familiar New Orleans seventies fonk groove, you won’t find too much of it here. Some pretty good R&B tinged rock’n’roll, sure, but light on for the fonk.

When Rebennack dropped out of Jesuit High School in New Orleans in 1955 he already had around a year’s involvement in the New Orleans music scene as a member of the Spades (later the Night Trains). He’d been taught guitar by Walter 'Papoose' Nelson and Roy Montrell, both of whom played guitar with Fats Domino and went on to die of drug overdoses. Rebennack, of course, had a lengthy involvement with narcotics.

He had, however, started writing songs with Leonard James of the Spades, and later with Seth David and had started to pick up the occasional sideman gig at Cosimo Matassa's studio before he was tempted over to Johnny Vincent’s Ace Records as a session muso and producer for the not-inconsiderable sum of of $150 a week in 1957. The gig gave him the opportunity to work with Huey 'Piano' Smith, Joe Tex, Jimmy Clanton and Frankie Ford, and by the end of the decade he’d been accepted as a peer by the likes of Lee Allen and Red Tyler, something that had a fair degree of bearing on his later career.

Kicking off with five instrumentals credited to Mac Rebennack (Storm Warning (Long Version), Foolish Little Girl, Good Times, Sahara, Feedbag and South Of The Border Town) all of which rock along pleasantly enough without doing anything to attract your undivided attention the vocal contributions kick off with Ronnie And The Delinquents’ Bad Neighbourhood (a little essay on the petty side of juvenile delinquency) and veer off into B Movie land with Morgus And The Ghouls’ Morgus The Magnificent, an off the wall oddity that’s not quite Mondo Bizzarro but is approaching the neighbourhood.

From there, Lonely Boy (Frankie And Mac) is a fairly average teenage slow drag smoocher, Roland Stone reworks Junko Partner territory in Down The Road and there’s a one-two combo from Big Boy Myles as he revisits the Gary U.S. Bonds New Orleans and invites his girl to (Put On Your Old) Gray Bonnet. Chuck Carbo is Out On A Limb, Gene And Al's Spacemen are back in instrumental territory for Mercy while Ike Clanton needs someone to Show Me The Way (to your heart, of course), another bit of teen romance. Enough said.

Better is Bat Carroll’s Aw! Who? which at least has a bit of character to go with the schmaltz, Joe And Ann’s Gee Baby (Baby You're So Fine) is pretty much as you’d expect the title to sound, as is Sugar Boy Crawford’s Have A Little Mercy, though there’s a tad more oomph in the vocal and the backing chorus.

Gerri Hall’s I'm The One is another lightweight ballad that doesn’t hit any great heights and The Ends pick things up slightly with It Ain't No Use, Jerry Byrne is pretty much going through the motions when he fears You Told Me You Don't Love Me, Jimmy Donley’s fairly subdued about his Forbidden Love and Big Boy Myles might claim I Still Care but doesn’t seem to be doing much to convince anyone.

Ronnie And The Delinquents have a problem with something that Keeps Dragging Me On, Carl Greenstreet rocks out a bit on Hey Mama, Joe And Ann have a slight problem with their Curiosity, Al Reed is checking his dog’s health on Roll Over Rover and a lively run through The Honeydripper Part 2 credited to Mac Rebennack winds things up.

Not, perhaps, essential listening but there’s enough of interest to justify buying if you’re into fifties rock and R&B and want to explore some of the obscurities...

Various Artists "Sound System Scratch" and "Return of Sound System Scratch" (3.5* for the general public, 4* for reggae fans, 5* if you’re heavily into dub)

Well over thirty years after the time frame in which these sides were recorded, and given the non-proliferation of roots reggae outside diehard fan circles Down Under, the average Australian listener is going to feel a little, um, lost when faced with these two collections of dub plates from the legendary Black Ark studios and the hands of producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry a.k.a. The Upsetter.

After all, if you’re not familiar with the originals, how, you might ask, are you going to handle the dubs?

Well, boys and girls, before we answer that question maybe we’d better fill in a little background, like, first, who on earth is this Scratch the Upsetter dude and what in the name of creation are these things called dub plates?

Well, taking the second one first.

A dub plate, in its original context, was an acetate disc used as part of the recording process (a ‘test pressing’, if you like) before the studio moved on to a final master and subsequent commercial release of the recording in question.

As such, they were used all over the world, and you’ll find the odd collectible here and there containing an unreleased version of an album or single that has subsequently been retracked or remastered. Here’s a well-known one from Neil Young.

In Jamaica, on the other hand, in a dance hall scene dominated by disk jockeys and sound systems rather than live musicians, the dub plate takes itself off into an entirely different universe.

For a start, different sound systems were aligned to rival studios, and while they might play something from a rival studio there was a predictable tendency to stick to the sponsor’s product, particularly when it comes down to a sound clash, where rival sound systems compete to out do each other. Sure, it’s fine to play the hits, and to have your selection of tracks that are guaranteed to pack the dance floor, but when it comes down to a competition, you want an exclusive, compris?

Now, one way of getting your exclusive is to take a well known song, or more particularly a well known rhythm (or, in Jamaican patois riddim) and drop some of the vocal or instrumental passages out to give the DJ something to rap or toast over.

In that sense, if you get hold of a nice little track, that’s a little on the nudge, nudge side like Breakfast in Bed, as done by Dusty Springfield or, in Jamaica, Lorna Bennett and with a little effort transform it into something like this.

That, coincidentally, was my introduction to the wonders of dub back around 1974...

Alternatively, with a little bit of studio wizardry you can transform the same piece of music into a number of one-off items where the ‘official’ lyrics are tweaked to name check the particular sound system, remark on the operator’s extreme good taste and cast aspersions on the operators of rival systems.

So, in that sense, it all comes down to the producer, who may or may not be the studio owner. If you’ve got some dude wearing both hats (as Lee Perry was with the Black Ark Studios) you’ve effectively got unlimited studio time to play around and churn out inventive and innovative rearrangements of well known tracks and the result has been described (admittedly on the record label’s website) as some of the greatest, most complex and seriously mystical music ever to come out of Jamaica.

Now, as you might expect, there’s a wealth of material along these lines out there, and any common or garden fan’s probably only going to scratch the surface. Personally, I’ve always had a weakness for the dub melodica stylings of Augustus Pablo and tend to steer clear of the rapping toasters, so Hughesy’s collection includes the likes of King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and a few other odds and ends without going too heavily overboard.

Yet.

Given the fact that Scratch and the Black Ark recording studio are widely held to have headed off in inventive and innovative directions that no-one else has, even now, thought to consider (and again, we’re quoting that website, but you’ll find plenty of opinion along the same lines) these exclusive mixes never heard outside of sound system dances will probably have a sufficiently high coolness factor to attract the devoted aficionado if, like me, you don’t mind a bit of this sort of thing thrown into your musical mix these two collections are close to essential listening.

If I was a more devoted fan I’d probably have been better off going for a hard copy rather than the $16.99 iTunes digital downloads since that version would deliver a treasure trove of rare photographs and informative sleeve notes by well-known reggaeologist Jeremy Collingwood.

So, in case you’re interested, and being fully aware no one’s likely to recognise anything listed below, what’s on these two collections?



Sound System Scratch:
Lee Perry: Dub Plate Pressure
Augustus Pablo & The Upsetters: Lama Lava Mix One
The Upsetters: Groove Dubber
The Upsetters: Groove Rider
The Upsetters: Jucky Skank
The Upsetters: Chim Cherie (the first use of a drum machine in Jamaican music)
Lee Perry & The Upsetters: The Rightful Organiser
Lee Perry & The Upsetters: Stagger
Lee Perry & The Upsetters: Big Neck Cut
The Upsetters: Zeal Of The Lord
The Upsetters: Dub of The Lord
The Upsetters: Returning Wax
Winston Wright & The Upsetters: Bushdub Corntrash
Clive Hylton & The Upsetters: From Dub Four
Junior Murvin & The Upsetters: Roots Train Number Two
Lee Perry & The Upsetters: Locks In The Dublight
The Upsetters: Moonlight Version
Carlton Jackon & The Upsetters: Dub History
The Upsetters: Groovy Dub
Keith Rowe & The Upsetters: Living Dub



Return Of Sound System Scratch:
Aleas Jube: Righteous Land (previously unreleased)
The Upsetters: Righteous Rocking (dub version of the preceding track)
Junior Murvin & The Upsetters: Get Ready (Bongo mix) (reworking the Impressions' People Get Ready)
The Upsetters: Natural Dub (reworking Bob Marley’s Natural Mystic)
Candy Mackenzie & The Upsetters: Long Enough
The Upsetters: Kiss Me Mix
The Upsetters: Strong Drink (Melodica version)
The Unforgettables: Time
The Upsetters: Longer Dub
Leo Graham & The Upsetters: Revelation Time
George Faith & The Upsetters: I’ve Got The Dub
The Upsetters: Deep and Deadly
The Upsetters & Lee "Scratch" Perry: Jah Jah Ah Natty Dread
The Upsetters: Mr Dubz
The Upsetters & Lee "Scratch" Perry: Enter The Upsetter (actually Enter the Dragon, but you catch the drift)
Jimmy Riley & The Upsetters: Darkness In The City
Jack Lord & The Upsetters: Economic Crisis
The Silvertones: Rejoice Jah Jah Children

"A Parcel of Steeleye Span: Their First Five Chrysalis Albums 1972-1975" (3.5*)

Well, here’s the third strand of Hughesy’s rediscovery of English folk-rock I was interested in way back in the dim distant past. As with many of these things, we’re in hit and miss territory here, and Steeleye’s fourth album (Below the Salt, the first of the Chrysalis connection) was the first of their material I knowingly ran across.

Of the three, Fairport Convention was, predictably the starting point, and the Shirley & Dolly Collins (as reviewed here) was something that had impinged on the consciousness without being listened to at the time.

The figure that runs through all three, of course, is Ashley Hutchings, originally the bass player with Fairport and subsequently married to Shirley Collins and, in between, founder of Steeleye Span.

To Hutchings, who’d played a major role in putting the Liege and Lief Fairport material together, things came down to a matter of traditional versus original material, and with Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbrick contributing original material in the lead up to Full House, Hutchings went off looking for an environment where he could pursue an all traditional agenda. There may, as Fairport cofounder Simon Nicol suggested in an interview on the band’s website, have been some ongoing issues from the road accident that preceded Liege and Lief, but a glance at the track listings for the first three albums recorded by his new project suggests an almost totally traditional agenda.

That environment came in the form of Steeleye Span, with an initial lineup of Hutchings, London folk club duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior and husband and wife Terry and Gay Woods. That lineup didn’t last, and after recording Hark! The Village Wait in 1970 split without performing live, largely due to tensions between the two couples. Terry and Gay left, veteran folkie Martin Carthy and fiddler Peter Knight came on board and off they went on the concert circuit, recording Please to See the King and Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again along the way.

A change of management saw a push towards a more commercial sound, and that, in a nutshell, was the signal for Hutchings and Carthy to depart for more purist pastures (Hutchings in league with Shirley Collins) and their replacements (guitarist Bob Johnson and bass player Rick Kemp) brought more mainstream rock and blues influences to a band in the process of changing record companies as well.

Which brings us to Below the Salt, the first of ten albums recorded for Chrysalis, and the template for much of what followed. While the material was entirely traditional, the arrangements were steadily drifting towards the rock end of the spectrum with nudge nudge tales of milkmaids and gentle swains disappearing in search of lost cattle, a couple of lively jigs and reels and the odd familiar title (in this case John Barleycorn) among songs about sailors, foresters, shepherds and close encounters of the sorcerous jiggy jiggy kind (King Henry).

Maddy Prior took the majority of the vocal leads, Tim Hart made an impressive foil in the vocal department, Knight’s fiddle and Johnson’s guitar worked neatly in not-quite traditional but close enough to satisfy everyone but the most diehard purists tandem and the result was a template that worked well enough. Below the Salt sold better than the previous efforts (at least that’s my recollection) and delivered an unlikely seasonal hit in the form of Gaudete around Christmas 1973. That a cappella rendition of a medieval Finnish tune sung in Latin wasn’t quite the same as the album track, and only climbed as far as #14 in the UK Singles Chart, but was enough to indicate the presence of a degree of commercial viability.

If you’re not inclined to fork out the $25.99 for the five album package, the alternative for those who want a bit of this in their collection without going the whole hog lies in the fifth Steeleye Span album, Parcel of Rogues. If you need an indication of its place in the Steeleye Span catalogue, Hughesy would point you towards the Parcel of bit reappearing in the title of the current collection, and again in Another Parcel of Steeleye Span (Chrysalis albums #6-#10).

It’s more or less the same template as used on Below the Salt with the sound rocked up a notch right from the first notes of One Misty Moisty Morning. Bright, sharp and played with prog rock precision, Alison Gross worked the recurring witchcraft theme, and while Tim Hart’s lament for three brothers in The Bold Poachers slows things down a notch the nudge nudge bit rears its head again in The Ups and Downs, with a visit to the apple grove to tie up the girl’s garter. Fol de rol diddle ol-dey indeed.

The jigs and reels quotient is filled by Robbery With Violins, there’s a bit of the rural wizardry in The Wee Wee Man and the Industrial Revolution rears its ugly head in The Weaver and the Factory Maid before the album’s one-two highlight in the Jacobite era  Rogues In A Nation (that’s where the Parcel bit comes from) and Cam Ye O'er Frae France. Hares on the Mountain winds things up rather charmingly, and, as previously stated, if you’re not up for the $25.99 for the six albums but want some Steeleye in the playlist, the album will set you back $16.90 on iTunes.

Parcel of Rogues might have been the musical high point as fat as Hughesy’s concerned, but the commercial success path was headed firmly upwards, with Steeleye holding down a regular opening gig for Jethro Tull (Ian Anderson got to sit in the producer’s chair for Now We Are Six) and a recording formula that worked pretty well. They’d also recruited a regular drummer (Nigel Pegrum, ex-Gnidrolog, Small Faces and Uriah Heep) and with a six piece outfit recording album #6, Now We Are Six was always going to be an appropriate title.

Unfortunately, for me, this was where the wheels started to fall off. While the sound was a continuation of elements that had gone before, and there were a couple of tracks that matched the preceding albums (Thomas the Rhymer for starters), nursery rhymes sung by The St. Eeleye School Choir, and To Know Him Is to Love Him, complete with David Bowie on saxophone were definitely tracks I could have happily done without after an initial listen just to see what they were like.

Oh, and Bowie’s sax work definitely indicates his day job was absolutely safe.

The downwards trend continued with Commoners Crown, which worked well enough apart from the presence of Peter Sellers on electric ukelele and Goon Show voices for New York Girls and the Mike Batt (The Wombles) production All Around My Hat.  As happens so often, however, mileages vary when it comes to Hughesy’s ratings and commercial success.

While the album sailed as high as #7 in the British album charts and the title track, released as a single, hit #5, repeated listens in the course of putting this together suggests that Steeleye Span material that hits the Top 1500 Most Played in my iTunes will be from the earlier, more interesting, stage of the band’s evolution.

The problem, as far as I can see, is that while there’s plenty of traditional material out there, and only so many folk fans who’ll buy multiple renditions of the same material by different singers. Sure, you could have Maddy Prior working the same seam of traditional material as Sandy Denny and, say, Anne Briggs or Shirley Collins and have a small coterie of devotees dutifully buying everything but once you head towards the mass market and someone else has done that one it’s increasingly a case of hands off unless you can throw something different (like Peter Sellars on electric ukulele) into the mix.

On top of that, when you’re increasingly headed towards a rock audience, you’re going to rework the on stage repertoire accordingly, which may account for the presence of To Know Him Is To Love Him, though an examination of a few set lists from American shows reveals a distinct lack of the old Teddy Bears single.

Still, for the price and the quantity of material here I’m glad I wandered down this particular road of reminiscence, and it’s interesting to compare and contrast what’s on offer here with contemporary efforts from Fairport Convention and Shirley Collins...

Disc 1:
Below the Salt 
Spotted Cow
Rosebud In June
Jigs (Medley)
Sheepcrook And Black Dog
Royal Forester
King Henry
Gaudete
John Barleycorn
Saucy Sailor
Gaudete (Single Version)
The Holly And The Ivy 

Parcel of Rogues 
One Misty Moisty Morning
Alison Gross
The Bold Poachers
The Ups and Downs
Robbery With Violins

Disc 2:
The Wee Wee Man
The Weaver And The Factory Maid
Rogues In A Nation
Cam Ye O'er Frae France
Hares On The Mountain
Bonny Moorhen 

Now We Are Six 
Seven Hundred Elves
Drink Down The Moon
Now We Are Six
Thomas The Rhymer
The Mooncoin Jig
Edwin
Long-A-Growing
Two Magicians
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
To Know Him Is To Love Him
The Wife Of Ushers Well (Live At The Rainbow)

Disc 3:
Commoners Crown 
Little Sir Hugh
Bach Goes To Limerick
Long Lankin
Dogs And Ferrets
Galtee Farmer
Demon Lover
Elf Call
Weary Cutters
New York Girls

All Around My Hat
Black Jack Davy
Hard Times Of Old England
Cadgwith Anthem
Sum Waves
The Wife Of Ushers Well
Gamble Gold (Robin Hood)
All Around My Hat
Dance With Me
Batchelors Hall

Heavy Sugar: The Pure Essence of New Orleans R&B

Various Artists Heavy Sugar: The Pure Essence of New Orleans R&B Parts 1, 2 and 3;
Various Artists Heavy Sugar Second Spoonful: More Pure Essence of New Orleans R&B (all titles 4.5* for New Orleans fans, 3.5 otherwise)

The casual visitor to The Little House of Concrete, where these four sets are on high rotation might counter Hughesy's enthusiasm for the joys of New Orleans R&B with well, Hughesy, that's all very well but deep down it's just old style rock'n'roll isn't it?

And the casual visitor would, in part be right. An awful lot of what we've come to know as old style rock'n'roll originated in recording studios located in and around New Orleans. If the casual visitor still isn't convinced I'd offer two names - Fats Domino and Little Richard.

Those two names say a fair bit about what happened as that first wave of R&B boomed out over the late night airwaves on stations like Nashville's WLAC where the  daytime playlist was aimed at white audiences, but after dark the station beamed rhythm and into thirty states from the Gulf of Mexico and across the Caribbean to Jamaica, as far north as Buffalo, New York,  and  west to the foot of the Rockies, reaching the ears of, among others, Bob Dylan, The Band’s Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Levon Helm. Mother Earth singer Tracy Nelson, growing up in Madison WI was another listener.

It wasn't long before Fats Domino was being firmly set in the mainstream, close enough to white bread to avoid being pushed to the sidelines (though one notes the frequency of white bread covers of Fats' material) and ending up as a fixture in Las Vegas. Those interested in pursuing the subject are respectfully pointed towards Rick Coleman's excellent Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll.

Little Richard may have grown up in Georgia and started recording for the Houston-based Peacock label (ironic, that, you'd be pushed to find a better descriptor than peacock when it came to Richard's stage presence) before moving on to Specialty (based in Los Angeles) but his biggest hits were cut at  Cosimo Matassa's J & M Studio in New Orleans with studio players who had worked with Fats Domino (drummer Earl Palmer and Lee Allen on sax for starters) rather than using his own road band. For both, recording for labels with a wider distribution brought success that wasn't possible for some of their Crescent City peers.

There are half a dozen offerings from each scattered through the hundred and fifty tracks here, and the enthusiast who wants to explore either man's extensive catalogue would be best advised to head elsewhere. There's an almost bewildering array of Fats Domino compilations out there, and Hughesy's copy of The Fat Man box set, acquired fifteen or so years ago is comprehensive enough to save me the effort of investigating those options further, and if I need more Little Richard there's always the ninety track The Complete Rock'n Roll Years '51-57 for $9.99 at iTunes.

But Little Richard and Fats Domino isn't what this series of compilations is all about.

There's a wealth of material out there, some of it bordering on the well known (Roy Brown's Good Rocking Tonight, Smiley Lewis' Little Liza Jane, Professor Longhair's Go to the Mardi Gras, Art Neville's Cha Dooky Doo and Zing Zing, Don't You Know Yockomo by Huey 'Piano' Lewis with His Clowns), but the real delights are the obscure gems that, for one reason or another, failed to hit the big time. Huey 'Piano' Smith's Beatnik Blues, for example.

New Orleans classics that are better known in other incarnations turn up in disguise. Junco Partner gets morphed into Roland Stone's Preacher's Daughter, with the junkie references neatly scrubbed out and replaced by knowing nudge nudge notions of undying love while Charles Brown delivers a lively run through It's A Sin To Tell A Lie.

Those of us who remember Judy In Disguise (With Glasses) will come across John Fred with and without The Playboys/Playboy Band and there's plenty more to explore if you've got the inclination to do so.

That inclination may well depend on how much of this material the enthusiast has already, but at $9.99 for the three volumes of Heavy Sugar: The Pure Essence of New Orleans R&B (25 tracks on each) and $14.99 for the seventy-five tracks on Heavy Sugar Second Spoonful, you're hardly up for an arm and a leg, and there's almost certainly a swag of stuff you won't have.

Those with an interest in New Orleans music could do far worse than this as a starting point, fleshed out with the four disk Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens: The Big Ol' Box of New Orleans (buy the hard copy, the booklet is wonderful), Rounder's four disk City of Dreams compilation and the Kindle version of Rick Koster's excellent Louisiana Music.

You'll need deep pockets and/or a substantial balance available on the credit card if you were going to do that, but these four titles aren't a bad place to start.

Neil Young & The International Harvesters "A Treasure"

Your mileage regarding the accuracy of the title may vary, and while I'm firmly in the anything Neil does is worth a couple of listens camp my personal reaction to A Treasure would be to relabel this live compilation from 1985 An Interesting Diversion.

Now, I may be wrong but my understanding of Young's modus operandi runs something like this.

He'll spend some time quietly going around his business on the yacht, the Broken Arrow ranch or wherever he happens to be, and in the process he'll come up with a number of tunes that'll be recorded some time around a full moon in a sort of see how these work in this particular setting approach.

From there he'll take a look at what he's got to figure out how it might translate into an album. When he's got the album together he'll do something about touring behind it, though there's no guarantee that the tour setting will reflect what happened on the album.

The touring bit, as far as I can see, is what pays the bills and keeps the wages bill around the place under control.

This sort of thing is, however, the almost guaranteed to give record company executives the screaming abdabs, particularly when they've got definite ideas about what their artists should be doing. That scenario had David Geffen suing Mr Young for his failure to deliver product that was recognizably Neil Young.

There's a fair chunk of the contrarian in Young's personality, and the threat of legal action to force compliance in a particular genre setting is almost guaranteed to deliver the exact opposite.

Calls for something along the lines of Harvest or an album of electric rock in other words, will result in statements of intention to record and perform nothing but country music.

That's not going to preclude anything from his earlier catalogue, of course, and setlists from the International Harvesters era would also include reworkings of songs like Country Home, Heart of Gold and Down By the River along with the Flying On the Ground Is Wrong and Are You Ready For the Country? that turn up here.

Apart from that, there's a substantial yee-haw factor in tracks like Motor City, Get Back to the Country and Southern Pacific and tracks that had turned up in other incarnations along the way, like It Might Have Been or candidates for a later reworking (Soul of a Woman, which subsequently turned up in The Bluenotes era).

Highlights include the opening Amber Jean, written for Young's infant daughter, and the closing six-minute Grey Riders but there's plenty of interesting listening along the way, though mileages on Let Your Fingers Do the Walking may vary. Young's albums rarely end up labelled as Essential, but there's almost invariably something worth investigating, as is the case here.

You may be inclined to Approach with caution, but it's definitely worth approaching (or giving an evaluatory listen).