The American medicine show came into its own shortly after the Civil War with the rise of so-called patent medicines and the almost complete lack of regulations concerning the ingredients that went into them, and any number of noxious tonics, elixirs, and nostrums with trumpeted healing powers were hawked by silver-tongued pitch doctors to the audiences who flocked to see the various acrobats, dancers, fire-eaters, snake handlers, comedians, and musicians who entertained at these free extravaganzas. As a cost efficient way of merging entertainment with merchandising (and where manufacturing meant mixing ingredients in a bathtub), these medicine shows successfully traveled the so-called “kerosene circuit” of rural and small-town America until the dawn of the 20th Century, when the rise of radio and movies and the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act combined to render them obsolete. The medicine show blueprint of offering free entertainment to attract audiences and then using intermissions to push products on them has hardly gone away, however, and is still the driving force behind radio and television in the 21st Century, and it’s the basic elixir for commerce all over the internet, too. The musicians working these colorful traveling medicine shows were professionals, at least professional enough to leave their home communities and take to the road, and luckily several of these musicians were still active in the 1920s and early 1930s when the fledgling recording industry was just getting off the ground, and numerous commercial 78s by former medicine show entertainers were issued in the prewar era.
A few years ahead of its time, “Jovenes” was one of the year 2000’s most unfairly neglected dance tracks. Released in November on a three-track 12″, its “wind chimes in the Arctic” title-track counterpart was given much more attention, emphasized by the accompanying press blurb and placed on Kompakt’s first Pop Ambient compilation, issued four months later. Most of the label’s best dancefloor material is herded into the CD versions of the annual Total series, but “Jovenes” did not make it onto Total 3, despite being as emotive, shimmering, and expansive — if not as direct or polished — as anything from the Field, who showed up nearly five years later with his own dream-pop/shoegaze-informed productions and instantly became Kompakt’s most indie-friendly artist when he released From Here We Go Sublime.
Cecil Gant did a lifetime’s worth of recording in six scant years between the release of his first single, the lovely “I Wonder,” in 1944 and his death by heart attack in Nashville in 1951 at the age of only 38. In between he assembled a ragged legacy of ballads, piano boogies and urban blues numbers (most of them with Gilt-Edge Records) that exhibits a distinctly modern awareness of how much personality contributes to record sales. Gant wasn’t a particularly gifted singer, but he exuded fun and confidence (and sincerity, as well, on the ballads), and his piano skills often sacrificed technique for energy and power, attitude traits that make him, in many ways, a prototype figure for rock & roll. His best singles, 1944’s “I Wonder,” which started it all, the back-to-back 1945 singles “Grass Is Getting Greener Every Day” and “I’m Tired,” and the song that may well be his finest, 1949’s “I’m a Good Man But a Poor Man,” eventually released in 1952 on Bullet Records, are all obscure classics that deserve a wider audience. But most of what made Gant so charming was how much fun he seemed to be having, and he made joyous music—even if it got sloppy at times. His personality could pull off musical miracles, as is the case with the hipster anthem “Hit That Jive Jack,” which sounds a bit like Nat King Cole trying to do a Louis Armstrong impression and-wonder of wonders-pulling it off in style. Gant exuded winning charm, and he sang well enough, and was adept enough at the piano, to put it all over, and it is a true pity his career was cut so tragically short. His work so deserves another listen.
There was a time in the mid-to-late 90’s when the resurgent cocktail culture met up with the newly expanding wave of electronica and produced some truly lovely, soothing sounds. There’s something incredibly right about the mashed-up sound of warm and cheesy easy listening exotica spread over the top of cold and slick electronics. Lots of people tried it, and though many failed miserably and managed to capture the worst of both worlds, quite a few succeeded and created some truly wonderful records. Here’s a quick mix of some of our favorites:
Working at a Miami club in 1963 with a merged band that included guitarist Cliff White and drummer Albert “June” Gardner from Cooke’s regular touring outfit and saxophonist King Curtis and his band, Sam Cooke delivered one of the most fiery and emotionally direct live soul performances ever recorded. Each song burns with an insistent, urgent feel, and although Cooke practically defines melisma on his single releases, here he reaches past that into a deeper territory that finds him almost literally shoving and pushing each song forward with shouts, asides, and spoken interactions with the audience, which is as big a part of his set as any member of the band. “Chain Gang” is stripped down to a raw nerve, “Twistin’ the Night Away” explodes out of the gate like a runaway rocket, and Curtis’ sax breaks on “Somebody Have Mercy” make it sound like the saxophone was invented for this one song alone. Throughout Cooke’s voice is a raspy laser.
Harry Nilsson was always a maverick artist, following his own sense of style down the hallways of pop, turning out carefully crafted, sometimes baffling songs that shared no direct affinity with any other artist of his day, although in some ways he resembled Randy Newman, even recording a wonderful album celebrating Newman’s songs. Both men drew on American Tin Pan Alley and Broadway traditions, but while Newman used them to craft his own ironic view of the little cruelties and kindnesses of the human condition, there was a part of Nilsson that always wanted to actually live inside that tradition, making him, in some ways, a singer stuck sadly out of time.
In 1973 he released A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, an album of pop standards from the pre-rock era done with the arranging and conducting help of Gordon Jenkins, who had worked in a similar role with such musicians as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong. This was Nilsson’s dream, the album he’d always wanted to make, but unfortunately it wasn’t particularly well received by his rock fans, and when a sort of sequel, A Touch More Schmilsson in the Night, was released in 1988, it was a whole different world by then, and hardly anyone noticed.
Formed in 1981 by the leaders of the incredibly influential British pop label Creation, Alan McGee and Dick Green, Biff Bang Pow! crafted emotionally powerful songs and delivered them wrapped in a jangly, guitar-driven style that touched on folk-rock, British Invasion, and psychedelic pop sounds. Waterbomb is the definitive collection of highlights from their decade-long existence. Produced and selected by the redoubtable Joe Foster, who along with many of British pop’s scenemakers like Andrew Innes, Ed Ball, and Phillip King spent some time in the band, this disc illustrates just how wonderful the group was.
Tenor saxophone player Tommy McCook was a pivotal member of Jamaica’s legendary Skatalites in the mid 1960s, a band that — although they were together for only fourteen months — completely defined the instrumental template for ska, mixing in big-band jazz sensibilities with Latin and samba rhythms and buru drumming to create the first of Jamaica’s many distinct pop styles. But McCook’s influence on the island’s music didn’t end with the disbanding of the Skatalites in 1965. He moved quickly on to Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle studio, where he assembled the Supersonics, a session band that had a big hand in slowing down ska and morphing it into Jamaica’s next rhythmic phase, rock steady.
The American medicine show came into its own shortly after the Civil War with the rise of so-called patent medicines and the almost complete lack of regulations concerning the ingredients that went into them, and any number of noxious tonics, elixirs, and nostrums with trumpeted healing powers were hawked by silver-tongued pitch doctors to the audiences who flocked to see the various acrobats, dancers, fire-eaters, snake handlers, comedians, and musicians who entertained at these free extravaganzas. As a cost efficient way of merging entertainment with merchandising (and where manufacturing meant mixing ingredients in a bathtub), these medicine shows successfully traveled the so-called “kerosene circuit” of rural and small-town America until the dawn of the 20th Century, when the rise of radio and movies and the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act combined to render them obsolete. The medicine show blueprint of offering free entertainment to attract audiences and then using intermissions to push products on them has hardly gone away, however, and is still the driving force behind radio and television in the 21st Century, and it’s the basic elixir for commerce all over the internet, too. The musicians working these colorful traveling medicine shows were professionals, at least professional enough to leave their home communities and take to the road, and luckily several of these musicians were still active in the 1920s and early 1930s when the fledgling recording industry was just getting off the ground, and numerous commercial 78s by former medicine show entertainers were issued in the prewar era.
A few years ahead of its time, “Jovenes” was one of 
Cecil Gant did a lifetime’s worth of recording in six scant years between the release of his first single, the lovely “I Wonder,” in 1944 and his death by heart attack in Nashville in 1951 at the age of only 38. In between he assembled a ragged legacy of ballads, piano boogies and urban blues numbers (most of them with Gilt-Edge Records) that exhibits a distinctly modern awareness of how much personality contributes to record sales. Gant wasn’t a particularly gifted singer, but he exuded fun and confidence (and sincerity, as well, on the ballads), and his piano skills often sacrificed technique for energy and power, attitude traits that make him, in many ways, a prototype figure for rock & roll. His best singles, 1944’s “I Wonder,” which started it all, the back-to-back 1945 singles “Grass Is Getting Greener Every Day” and “I’m Tired,” and the song that may well be his finest, 1949’s “I’m a Good Man But a Poor Man,” eventually released in 1952 on Bullet Records, are all obscure classics that deserve a wider audience. But most of what made Gant so charming was how much fun he seemed to be having, and he made joyous music—even if it got sloppy at times. His personality could pull off musical miracles, as is the case with the hipster anthem “Hit That Jive Jack,” which sounds a bit like Nat King Cole trying to do a Louis Armstrong impression and-wonder of wonders-pulling it off in style. Gant exuded winning charm, and he sang well enough, and was adept enough at the piano, to put it all over, and it is a true pity his career was cut so tragically short. His work so deserves another listen. 
There was a time in the mid-to-late 90’s when the resurgent cocktail culture met up with the newly expanding wave of electronica and produced some truly lovely, soothing sounds. There’s something incredibly right about the mashed-up sound of warm and cheesy easy listening exotica spread over the top of cold and slick electronics. Lots of people tried it, and though many failed miserably and managed to capture the worst of both worlds, quite a few succeeded and created some truly wonderful records. Here’s a quick mix of some of our favorites: 
Working at a Miami club in 1963 with a merged band that included guitarist Cliff White and drummer Albert “June” Gardner from Cooke’s regular touring outfit and saxophonist King Curtis and his band, 
Formed in 1981 by the leaders of the incredibly influential British pop label Creation, Alan McGee and Dick Green, 
Tenor saxophone player 
