FRITZ TRIPPEL TRIO, Boogie, 1960
Posted: March 28, 2012 Filed under: 60s, Cartoon Sleeves, Jazz Records, Switzerland 2 Comments »
Fritz Trippel was a Swiss jazz pianist. This EP was recorded August 28, 1960 in Stuttgart with Rolf Cizmek on bass and Henry Owen on drums.
FRITZ TRIPPEL TRIO, Boogie, 1960
JEAN COUROYER ORCHESTRA, Midnight Twist, 1962
Posted: January 14, 2011 Filed under: 60s, Switzerland, Twist Records, World | Tags: Midnight, Montreux, Music For Old People 5 Comments » 
“A popular melody is as international a language as you will find anywhere in this world of ours. You don´t have to know the text to hum or whistle a happy tune – no matter what country of origin.
It is therefore little wonder that dance band leader Jean Couroyer roams musically across many borders in gathering material for his recording and makes sure of the widest possible acceptance by selecting the most popular dance rhythms.” (J.H. Watson from the liner notes to International Hit Parade)
This is another Swiss Varieton LP that I bought together with the Aprés-Ski in Kitzbühel album. Varieton was a sub-label of the main Swiss label Ex-Libris, used for budget releases like this one. The production is not so bad though, using thick cardboard and slick printing. It looks almost like an american album. The illustration on the sleeve however looks like it was drawn in five minutes by somebody who was not into the job at all. And it probably was. Regrettably I have had similar experiences in the past. The customer doesn´t really care or know the difference and I don´t really care or have the time either. So I rush a job. But receiving some product weeks later that reeks of all the reluctance it was crafted with feels bad. It´s embarassing to do poor work. Luckily those jobs are the exception, but at least for some reason they are always the best paying.
The raw and bold brush work and the combination of the innocent big girl dancing with the bald little man stands out though. He´s hanging in mid-air and she´s missing an arm but there´s a primitive charm to it. Most certainly the rest of the album´s design was done by other people than the guy who did the sketch. The Ad Lib font used for the title of the album was designed in 1961 by Freeman Craw for the American Type Founders (ATF), so it was pretty hip at the time. When I see the font I think of Crypt Records, because they have used it excessively on their album covers and for their catalogues since the 1980´s.
Sure, all this analysis is redundant considering that apart from three twist songs the album is pretty forgettable, at least to my ears. But I buy some records for other reasons than the music and I do enjoy this restrained orchestra rock´n´roll that was made for old people. Maybe because I am old. Not a lot of information on the Internet about Jean Couroyer, but I guess he is from Switzerland.
JEAN COUROYER ORCHESTRA, Midnight Twist, 1962
JEAN COUROYER ORCHESTRA, The Boogie Twist, 1962
JEAN COUROYER ORCHESTRA, The Twist, 1962
BETTINA RAY, Bongo Cha-Cha-Cha, 1959
Posted: January 7, 2011 Filed under: 50s, Switzerland, World 2 Comments »
Last week my girlfriend and me returned safely from our snowboarding trip to Austria. Exhausted from the 12 hour bus ride but also energized from all the activity and the pure air way up in the Alps.
Here´s aprés-ski music from 50 years ago. Kitzbühel is still one of Austria’s best known and fanciest winter sport resorts. Of course the kind of music they play there today is much different. We were not in Kitzbühel but in another town, but I guess all these Austrian ski places are similar. Whatever the music would be like, we´re never doing any after-ski-partying anyway. It´s lame, but we´re too old. For us it´s all about snowboarding and hanging out with nice people. Having a hangover from too much alcohol and losing a day of snowboarding would be super lame.
About the record: I couldn´t find information about Luc Hoffman or Bettina Ray but I suspect they were from Switzerland. The Varieton label was a sub-label of Ex-Libris, the main Swiss record label. Luc Hoffmann and his Quintet recorded a twist record for the Swiss GPK label and another for the French Gala des Varietes label. (If you´re quick you might want to grab that 8-song twist EP on Ebay. I bet it´s great. If you win it please let me hear it).
Bettina Ray is copying Zarah Leander´s over-dramatic style of singing, which doesn´t really fit the swinging jazz band that is backing her. Not a lot of bongo in the cha cha cha either, but still kinda sweet how Bettina is trying to get all South-Amerikan…
BETTINA RAY & LUC HOFFMANN AND HIS STAR-QUINTET, Bongo Cha-Cha-Cha, 1959
Lass das sein (Stop it), a nice German mambo, was written by influential composer Michael Jary.
BETTINA RAY & LUC HOFFMANN AND HIS STAR-QUINTET, Lass das sein, 1959
Nice swinging version of this Bavarian standard:
LUC HOFFMANN UND SEIN STAR-QUINTET, In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus, 1959
LES PECHEURS, The House Of The Rising Sun, 1972
Posted: November 19, 2010 Filed under: 70´s, Religious Records, Switzerland, World 1 Comment »
I bought this Swiss EP in Zurich in the past summer. The record commemorates the International Jesus Festival Of Music held in Lenzburg, Easter 1972. The pop-art-meets-political-collage sleeve caught my eye, but I couldn´t listen to the record in the thrift store. So I had to take a chance. I was expecting the music to be somewhat dry and unfortunately most of these songs actually are, so I didn´t record them. However, the song House Of The Rising Sun by Les Pêcheurs (the fishermen), with lyrics changed to Oh Jesus Christus, Gottes Sohn, is quite charming.
LES PECHEURS, The House Of The Rising Sun, 1972
If you enjoy this song, you might like to go over to Ostberlin Beatet Besseres and listen to a German school choir singing House Of The Rising Sun with very funny German accents here.
ÜETLI-DUO, Schnaaggi-Schaaggi, 1962
Posted: August 12, 2010 Filed under: 60s, Advertisement Records, Cartoon Sleeves, Switzerland, World | Tags: Üetli, Schnaaggi-Schaaggi, Zürich 1 Comment »
Usually in the summer my girlfriend and I try to spend at least a couple of weeks on vacation somewhere where it´s nice and sunny. This time it was only one week in Zurich. And from every trip I bring back records but my girlfriend really hates thrift stores, flea markets and actually any old junk, so I try to keep the time spent with that to a minimum. Her dislike also shows me what a strange pleasure it is to dig though dark and dusty stores, instead of enjoying the sunny life outside. If it wouldn´t be for her, I´d probably spent my whole vacation getting my hands dirty in old boxes.
Thanks to her we spent the days exploring the city and swimming in the Zurich lake. We also went to see The Jackets, a great Swiss garage band, at the Rote Fabrik and met Lurker Grand, author of Hot Love, the most comprehensive book on the early Swiss punk scene (1976-1980). Hot Love, a coffe-table size book with tons of full-page photos of punk bands, records, flyers and even self-made punk clothing, really is a graphic masterpiece. Lurker is currently working on a follow-up book on the Swiss Post-Punk scene of the 80´s.
The Swiss equivalent to a charity shop is a Brockenhaus. These Brockis are great because, unlike a lot of stuff in Switzerland, they are cheap and, like everything the Swiss people do, very well organised. I always find lots of cool records there. Maybe not the rare punk material that is mentioned in Hot Love, but you can find that at the Good bad Music for bad, bad Times Blog here, here , here and here.
This record is a advertising for the new electrical train up to Uetli mountain, close to Zurich. The Schnaaggi-Schaaggi was the old steam train that operated until 1962. It´s running again in the summer months and I hope to make it up there the next time I visit Zurich.
So, listen to the old steam train and take a Cha-Cha-Cha-Trip with the Schnaaggi-Schaaggi…
ÜETLI-DUO, Schnaaggi Schaaggi, 1962
ÜETLI-DUO, Nimm´s gmüetli uf de Üetli, 1962
HAWAII TRIO- HORST BUSCH, Aloha Oe, 1961
Posted: August 12, 2010 Filed under: 60s, Hawaiian Records, Instrumental Records, Switzerland, World 2 Comments »
Another record I bought in Zurich in August at a Brocki for 50 Rappen, about 40 Cents. In the early 60´s Hawaiian music was popular all over the world, even in Switzerland. The Horst Busch Trio played German Framus guitars, at one time the biggest guitar producer in Europe. Besides that I couldn´t find anything about this group at all…
HAWAII TRIO- HORST BUSCH, Aloha Oe, 1961
HAWAII TRIO- HORST BUSCH, Isle Of Bali, 1961
HAWAII TRIO- HORST BUSCH, Blume von Hawaii, 1961
HAWAII TRIO- HORST BUSCH, Tahiti Love Song, 1961
THE PERFID´S, Radio Continental, 1982
Posted: May 4, 2010 Filed under: 80s, Private Pressings, Switzerland | Tags: NWBHM, Zürich 7 Comments »
When I started this blog three years ago my ambition was to explore new territory and to only “publish” material that has never entered the digital world. As much as I like the cool music of fabulous record labels like Bear Family, Charly and Ace, it would be pointless to try to find obscure stuff in their field. They and many other re-issue labels went out of their way to re-discover lost music in the 70´s and 80´s. Posting (“re-releasing”) music that they re-discovered 30 years ago didn´t pose a challenge, so my focus was on material that is still too bad or strange to ever be considered for re-release by a proper record label. Music that seems to have no commercial value today: private pressings, advertisement records or just plain weird stuff. Mostly no rockabilly, rock´n´roll, garage or soul music. No cult stuff.
Over time I have gotten less strict about my posting policies because I felt that maybe people would like to listen to more “good” music and also posted single songs (albeit digitized from my original 45´s) that had previously been re-released. Basically I turned into a DJ again, something I wanted to get away from when I started this blog.
I also got softer, because nobody else seems to care about any kind of “music blogging ethics” anyway. Blogs are the new Napster and I´m in the same boat if I like it or not. Posting material that I do not hold a copyright of, no matter how obscure it might be, is just as illegal as posting a brand new CD.
Still so far I have only gotten supportive feedback from people involved with some of the records I posted. Some even said, that they´re glad I did, because they never had a digital version of their music. A lot of artist don´t hold the copyrights to their own music anyway and are simply glad that somebody cares enough to put it out there. Unless they were cult artists or played a cult style a re-release of their music is very unlikely. I don´t really care about the legal issues, but to make it a little more exciting for me again and to get a better conscience about blogging, I will return to my initial restrictive guidelines. So expect a lot of bad records to be coming in the future…
This private pressing of the Perfid´s from Zürich, Switzerland is one such record that has never been re-released. It most probably would have, if it was in a cult style like punk or metal, but it is neither and both. Not metal enough to be metal and not punk enough to be punk. That said, it´s not a bad record at all, in fact I like it a lot. The cool thing is that they sing in a Swiss dialect that I can only understand partially, like the intro to their theme song that states that they started the group in January 1981. Besides that, I don´t know anything about this group simply because there is nothing to be found about them on the internet. Check for yourself: if you´ll search for them, you´ll find this post.
THE PERFID´S, Radio Continental, 1982
HAZY OSTERWALD SEXTETT, Na Zdrowje, 1958
Posted: March 3, 2010 Filed under: 50s, Instrumental Records, Rock´n´Roll Records, Switzerland | Tags: Instrumental Rock´n´Roll, Switzerland 2 Comments »
Hazy Osterwald really needs no introduction, from the 50´s to the 70´s he was one of the most successfull Swiss musicians. Rebellen-Rock is a fine cover version of Duane Eddy´s Rebel Rouser but I like his own Na Zdrowje even better. Cool instrumental rock´n´roll from Switzerland.
Cheers! Na Zdrowje! Prost!
HAZY OSTERWALD SEXTETT, Na Zdrowje, 1958
HAZY OSTERWALD SEXTETT, Rebellen-Rock, 1958
About me:
My name is Andreas Michalke. I´m a cartoonist from Berlin, Germany and I like collecting records. Most of the records I find in thrift stores or at flea markets here in Berlin. I like a lot of music but I thought I`d focus on odd German records. Preferably with cartoon covers.
All my scans are high-resolution. If you double-click on them they will get much bigger.
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