Of Admirals and Duchesses

On the way to the Vortex Jazz Bar in Dalston on Monday night, Mister F and I popped into a Nigerian grocers round the corner in Bradbury St. On the back wall were hundreds of bootleg Nigerian CDs going for £2 each. Inevitably I snapped a few up in a half-crazed frenzy.

When I got them home I found that the number of tracks on the CD often bore little resemblance to the track listing on the sleeve. And in some cases the sound quality is pretty rough where it has obviously been ripped from a battered vinyl copy. But at £2 each you can't really complain, and the music is pretty good.

As a sample, here is some juju music from Admiral Dele Abiodun and His Top Hitters Band. This is from their album "Abanije" and it may be the title track. Then again it may not. The album cover lists ten tracks, but their are only two on the CD. Any help identifying it will be gratefully received.

"Track 1 on Abanije" - Admiral Dele Abiodun and His Top Hitters Band

Dele is in the news in Nigeria at the moment, but sadly not for his music. He is currently standing trial on charges of fraud relating to his Presidency of the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria.

We had gone to the Vortex to see Mike Heron and the Trembing Bells (yet again), and a very enjoyable evening it was too. The Bells in particular were in fine form, although I do wish they would drop the overly wordy acapella number about the inebriated children of the Mediterranean. They performed some songs I had not heard them do before, including a track from a forthcoming album with Bonnie Prince Billy which sounds highly promising. Another "new" song was a cover of Scott Walker's "Duchess". It occurred to me about half way through that I could video it to share with you all, and here are the results - sorry it is not complete.



As a bonus, here is the original and a very nice rendition by Neko Case.

"Duchess" - Scott Walker

"Duchess" - Neko Case

We wrap things up with a seamless move from Duchesses to Dukes.

Pity The Fools

How many fools are there at loose in the world? Kevin and Yossy - or Mr. Coyne and Ms. Noise Weaver as we should call them if we are being formal - represent the two extreme views, but most people come down somewhere in between.

"Fool" - Yossy Little Noise Weaver

"Fool, Fool" - Buck & The Sixteenth Movement

"Fool, Fool, Fool" - The Clovers

"Ship of Fools" - Grateful Dead

"The World Is Full Of Fools" - Kevin Coyne

On the subject of fools, here's a treat for all you Elkie fans.



And here is Hank Snow in an unusually self-deprecatory mood.

ReviewShine Round-Up

It's time for our monthly round-up of some of the goodies I've received courtesy of ReviewShine. The standard has been particularly high over the last weeks, and I should apologise to all those who I haven't got space to feature today. As well as the four acts below, I would recommend checking out the likes of Bare Bones, Grainne and Jessi Robertson.

The four we are featuring could be described as a bunch of blokes doing proper rootsy songs - you know, the old-fashioned virtues like good words and good tunes, not all that bang bang bang and knob-twiddling stuff. Two of them are familar names, two of them new (or at least they were new to me). We'll start with the new boys.

First up is Stephen Simmons, whose album "The Big Show" is out now on Lower 40 in the US and Blue Rose here in the UK and in Europe. There are twenty songs on the album with a much higher hit rate than you would think spread over so many tracks - there is a consistently high quality throughout. This is probably just about my favourite.

"Parchcorn Falls" - Stephen Simmons

I know we have some readers in Knoxville. According to his website Stephen is playing over your way in a couple of weeks, so you might want to pop down and see him. I was in Knoxville once about twelve years ago and had the great pleasure of seeing Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown play. What a show that was.

Enough of that rambling, back to business. Next we have Donal Hinely with his new album "The Famous Rocket Cage", out now on ATOM Records. As I said, what you get is proper songs of a very high order, with a level of insight that might be explained by the life he has led. I would like to dedicate this one to my friend Jeni, who occasionally calls herself Pauline for some perverse reason that only she knows. 

"Saint Pauline" - Donal Hinely

On to the artists I was familiar with with now. Slaid Cleaves had his big breakthrough in 2000 with "Broke Down". That album featured a tribute to Auston's Horseshoe Lounge, and he has gone back to the Horseshoe Lounge to record his first live album (or double album to be precise). Called "Sorrow and Smoke", it comes out on 6 September on Music Road. To be honest, for some reason I have never really got into his studio albums, but this is excellent from start to finish. It is mostly original material, but there are a few choice covers as well, including this Karen Poston tune.

"Lydia" - Slaid Cleaves

We finish off with Australian legend Paul Kelly. I have in my collection "Songs From The South", a greatest hits compilation released in 1997. Volume 2 came out in 2008. The two have now been brought together as a 40 track double album and are being released on 25 October. I believe this is the first time the two albums have been available in the US, and apparently the list price for you lot over there is going to be $13.98, and only $9.99 for the digital version. That has to be one of the bargains of the year, and you would be mad not to snap it up. And for readers in London, you might want to try to get to one of the gigs he is playing at Bush Hall next week.

Today's selection was originally released on "Ways And Means" in 2004.

"The Oldest Story In The Book" - Paul Kelly

 As for the clip, there was a clue in my earlier rambling (or, as I prefer to call it, my seamless linking). Here is the mighty Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, accompanied by a hot band featuring a fat saxophonist with a most unfortunate mullet.



And if you think he is good on the guitar, wait until you hear him on the fiddle. If there had ben a roof when I saw him in Knoxville, he would have taken it off when he did this little number. And his rendition of "Never on a Sunday", on which he gradually increased the tempo each time round until we were collapsing with exhaustion, had to be heard to be believed.

Addis Pop

Here is the Ethiopian pop I promised you the other day, courtesy of a young lady called Hibist Tiruneh. It has all the modern production techniques but retains enough of the old Addis funk sound of the 1970s to satisfy an old fart like me as well.

Judging by the cover of her 2008 album "Tetaltenal Wey?", from which today's selections are taken, Hibist is not just a fine singer but a bit of a saucepot as well. Or a Wat Pot as they are probably known in Ethiopia.

"Tagesegne" - Hibist Tiruneh

"Siebastopol" - Hibist Tiruneh

This is just a guess, but I think "Siebastopol" may be about a giant cannon rather than the town in the Crimea. According to Wikipedia, a 6.7 ton mortar of that name was built by Emperor Tewodros II in the 1860s. Or, rather more prosaically, it might be about this cinema in Addis Ababa.

We're going to pretend it is the cannon, so we can link to another mighty Cannon.

Jerry Leiber R.I.P.

We were going to feature some groovy Ethiopian pop today, but we'll put that on hold for a few days in order to pay our respects to the late, great Jerry Leiber, who died yesterday. He was one of the greatest writers of popular songs there has ever been, as this small selection demonstrates.

"Lucky Lips" - Ruth Brown

"Ruby Baby" - Dion

"If You Don't Come Back" - The Drifters

"Don't" - Elvis Presley

"Kansas City" - Wanda Jackson

"Jackson" - Johnny Cash & June Carter

"Girls, Girls, Girls" - The Cornell Hurd Band

"Baby I Don't Care" - Bryan Ferry

"Spanish Harlem" - Laura Nyro & Labelle

"On Broadway" - Jess Roden

I know there are a lot of Elkie Brooks fans out there who hang on my every word, so it would be remiss of me not to mention that Jerry had a hand in this smash hit as well:



Although if you could only choose one Leiber-Stoller cover version, it would probably have to be this one:

Sixty Glorious Years

A few years back Bear Family Records issued two excellent series of albums called "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke and Hillbilly Music" and "Blowing The Fuse", which respectively feature country and rhythm and blues hits from way back when. Each series includes a separate album for each year in the 1950s (and in the case of "Blowing The Fuse", the late 1940s and early 1960s as well). Many of them are available on eMusic and I would recommend checking them out.

Here a couple of selections from each of the albums covering 1951. I am dedicating one of these songs to my dear friend Lord Roper, who celebrated a birthday last week. I'll let him choose which one.

"Little Red Rooster" - Margie Day

"Tend To Your Business" - James Wayne

"Chew Tobacco Rag" - Zeb Turner

"Too Old To Cut The Mustard" - The Carlisles

Merle & Millie

It is all fairly straightforward today. We have a couple of tracks from the great Millie Jackson, one of which is a cover of a song by the arguably even greater Merle Haggard. So then we have a couple of tracks from Merle, including the original version of that cover.

"Angel In Your Arms" - Millie Jackson

"If You're Not Back In Love By Monday" - Millie Jackson

"If We're Not Back In Love By Monday" - Merle Haggard

"That's The Way Love Goes" - Merle Haggard

In completely unrelated news, I went to an excellent gig at the Buffalo Bar in Islington last night. It was a Frank Sidebottom fundraiser and a snip at £5 for four bands. With all due respect to Melt The Icecaps and Mr. Solo, the highlights for me were Dream Themes - groovy versions of TV theme tunes - and Proxy Music - you can probably guess what they do.

As well as the Roxy and Eno covers, the Proxies also did an excellent rendition of Lena Lovich's "Lucky Number", which they have just released as a single. Here it is.



But as good as that is, it isn't my favourite clip of the week. This is. Specifically from about 0:39 onwards.