LUCY ROBERTS, Great Gosh, Mr. Willerkins, 1956
Posted: July 29, 2013 Filed under: 50s, Rock´n´Roll Records, USA 2 Comments
Great Gosh, indeed! What a great swingin´ tune! Lucy Roberts recorded another 45 for Vik in 1956 (Leap Year Red/Supper On The Table) but that´s about all I could find out about her.
Great Gosh found its way on a Belgium bootleg compilation LP called “Rock´n´Roll Collection Vol. 15” in 1986. The generic cover of the series simply donned a Confederate Flag indicating to what type of listeners the bootleggers had in mind. Apart from this appearance the song has never been reissued legally and hence is not to be found digitally anywhere either.
After 57 years it´s about time…
LUCY ROBERTS, Great Gosh, Mr. Willerkins, 1956
RIO GREGORY – HIS PIANO AND HIS RHYTHM, International Piano Medley, 1955
Posted: July 27, 2013 Filed under: 50s, Instrumental Records, Jazz Records, Switzerland 3 Comments
This record has puzzled me for years. Who was this guy with the colorful name ? Only recently a German Wikipedia article appeared that cleared things up. This is my translation of the German article:
Rio De Gregori (* September 22, 1919 in Zürich; † May 22, 1987 in Munich) was a Swiss jazz pianist and singer.
De Gregori learned to play the piano at age 7 and at fourteen started to collect jazz records by the likes of Duke Ellington and others. Although his parents wanted him to become a classical pianist, he started to perform professionally as a jazz musician. He worked with Willie Mac Allen (1939-40), James Boucher (1940- 41), Jo Grandjean (1942) and up until September 1944 with René Weiss and his orchestra. Then he got a job in Fred Böhler´s big band and stayed with them until 1945. The same year he founded his own big band, that included some of the best Swiss jazz musician like Stuff Combe, Bob Jaquillard, Jean Pierre Dupuis, Luc Hoffmann, Raoul Schmassmann, Kurt Weil and guest soloist Glyn Paque. After the breakup of his band he continued to work in a trio and as a soloist and also managed a bar in Ascona, Switzerland. He then settled in Munich, opened a night club and henceforth called himself Rio Gregory. He named the club Bar Ascona. Later he discovered pop singer Suzanne Doucet at Bar Ascona.
Rio Gregory recorded another four EPs worth of material for the Varieton label and some more records for Columbia, Elite and Harlekin. Despite the Wikipedia article, not one of them has ever been reissued.
Simple but nicely designed one-sided plastic Varieton company sleeve and red vinyl for the jazz collectors of 1955!
Enjoy:
Bolle Bietet Bestes 1965
Posted: July 19, 2013 Filed under: 60s, Berlin Records, Flexible Records, Promotional Records | Tags: Karl Dall 4 Comments
In 2007 the Bolle Beatet Bestes flexible 45 inspired the name of this blog. Berlin bietet Bestes means “Berlin offers the best”. The record was issued by Bolle, a local chain of supermarkets. Bolle had a very long history in Berlin. Initially the company developed out of the C. Bolle dairy farm that was established in 1879 by Carl Andreas Julius Bolle. The last store closed in 2011.
There were some other 45s put out by Bolle but these two are the only flexi discs. The Bolle Beatet Bestes flexi from 1967 is the more interesting one. I put the MP3s back up, so check out the songs if you missed the post in 2007.
Until recently I never even thought about buying any of the other Bolle records, because Finnish Yenka and bogus 1960s Dixieland seemed way too boring. I´m not a completist but when I saw this one a while ago for 50 cents, I finally picked it up.
Well, it´s not a particularly noteworthy record, but it definitely is a very local Berlin artifact.
Überall in Berlin – Dixieland – Die Let-Kiss Schaffe an der Spree
Bolle reiste jüngst zu Pfingsten -Gustchen geht zum Tanze heut´, 1965
Der Gorden-Hit
Posted: July 18, 2013 Filed under: 60s, Flexible Records, Germany, Instrumental Records, Jazz Records, Promotional Records 4 Comments
Today´s best offer: an anonymous jazz band, a flexible advertisement record, a defunct brand of cigarettes and the original envelope that it landed in peoples post boxes in.
Cigarettes and Summertime! They work well together. Sitting outside enjoying the sun, the body bursting with energy, there´s nothing like inhaling and wasting some of that excess power. And then there´s still beer and lemonade…
Gorden – So frisch wie das Leben von heute
Rauchen sie gorden! Machen Sie mit – tanzen sie den gorden-hit!
KID ORBIS AND HIS SWING-SEXTETT, Jumpin´ With Anthony Dvorak
Posted: July 17, 2013 Filed under: 50s, Flexible Records, Germany, Jazz Records Leave a comment
A while back I found some more flexible 45s by Kid Orbis, alias Wolf Gabbe. Although my other posts of his music, like his swingin Nutcracker Suite, have left even the small remainder of readers unfazed, I have to do what I have to do. I dig Kid Orbis´ take on Antonín Dvořák. Sure, Jumpin with Anthony Dvorak could be more jumpin´ but it´s still a nice little tune. Kid Orbis recorded specially for Delta-Ton out of Düsseldorf-Büderich. But Delta Ton also took over material from real labels.
J.P.´s Blues by James Williard Parks and the Bucktown-Six first appeared on an EP of the same title on the German Climax label, a small jazz specialty label. Written by J.W. Parks, an Afro-American US-soldier stationed in Wiesbaden. J.P.´s Blues is probably the most authentic sounding blues song recorded in Germany in the 1950s. It was recorded on February 22nd 1957 in the Robert-Schumann-Saal in Düsseldorf.
The line-up features: J.W.Parks, voc; Dietrich Geldern, cl; Manfred Stapput, tp,voc; Herbert Koleczek, p; Dieter Kauffmann, bj; Hermey Kopp, dm and Heino Ribbert, b.
(Cover image from the 45cat website)
Judging from the front sleeve of the Climax EP J.W. Parks must have been a sight to behold in Germany at the time. His flashy getup was certainly in contrast to that of most German jazz musicians and Pop stars.
KID ORBIS AND HIS SWING-SEXTETT, Jumpin´ With Anthony Dvorak
J.W. PARKS AND THE BUCKTOWN-SIX, J.P.´s Blues
KARL-HEINZ HANSEN, Das Wäsche-Miederwaren-Mannequin
Posted: July 15, 2013 Filed under: 60s, Berlin Records, Promotional Records Leave a comment
A record by Karl-Heinz Hansen and his friend, cartoonist Hans Joachim Stenzel, was my second post in December 2007. New to blogging and even more to the Internet, I was still a little naive. I didn´t think that anybody would read what I wrote. And at first actually pretty much nobody did. Then in 2009, when I posted a second record by Hansen, a flexible record on the local Okay Exquisit label, I got a little carried away and couldn´t help making fun of the music and the artists. I will not repeat what I wrote, but let´s just say that it wasn´t nice.
A short while later I got a brief but very angry mail from Hansen´s son.
Immediately I apologized and deleted the post and the download links.
Hansen´s son replied forgiving: “No hard feelings”. His teenage nephews had found the post when they were doing ancestry research about their unknown grandpa. He even gave me an okay to to re-up the post and the download link, if I would “trash his father a little less”.
But I was still ashamed. I felt really bad about carelessly writing bad stuff about somebody I didn´t even know. Especially a dead person. Since then I´ve gotten a lot more careful with what I write. And with the records I pick. As odd as they may seem, the records I post here, are records that I like.
So here´s another Karl-Heinz Hansen 45. The two songs, written by Hansen, advertise for Berlin department store Kaufhaus des Westens (“Department Store of the West”, usually abbreviated to KaDeWe, the second-largest department store in Europe; trumped only by Harrods in London.) (Wiki)
Released on the small local Kaskade label, Hansen is backed by the Kaskade-Studio-Ensemble, led by Henry Bly.
Wäsche is undergarmets/lingerie and Miederwaren is corsetry and Manequin is model.
“I´m going to marry the lingerie-model…”
KARL-HEINZ HANSEN, Das Wäsche-Miederwaren-Mannequin
Tina and Karl-Heinz Hansen sing the Tauentzien-Song, about the Tauentzienstrasse, where KaDewe is located…
TINA UND KARL-HEINZ HANSEN, Tauentzien-Song
Im Juni 2010 schrieb ich über Karl-Heinz Hansen in der Jungle World einen kurzen Text: Sei nett im Internet!
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.
Berlin Beatet Bestes 
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