YouTube Channel: MusicMasters

I created a YouTube channel that I titled "MusicMasters" and I will be publishing obscure and/or forgotten music on there from my personal collection. My intent is to cover 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's music that is not already on YouTube. There is so much music that is readily available on there. I started going through lists of songs I wanted to upload but most of the ones I checked are already there. This might make things a bit difficult as I wanted to do a song a day. I could easily accomplish this by uploading any song that is not already there but I only want to add my favorites and share music that I consider must-be-heard.

I uploaded my first one today and here it is:

Thrift Store Record Treasures

I've been finding a good selection of LP's at the thrift store lately. Now mind you I am no vinyl purist nor am I a collector of lp's. I only look for records from the 1960's and 1970's that look good enough for me to convert to wav files & mp3 so that I don't have to purchase them on cd. Many of these records I will attempt to sell at either a garage sale or on eBay after I've converted them. To me lp's are just big and bulky and take up more space than I can afford to spare. Additionally, I don't want to keep things around that I don't use much. After converting them they just sit there gathering dust, never to be used by me again. As I said I am not a collector. I just want the music. There are certain lp's I will keep, however, such as the brand new ones I have bought over the years and ones by artists I really like. But the used ones I have been buying at thrift stores have no emotional attachment for me.

Here is the most recent batch of records I found which was just last week. First up is "2 Hot" by Peaches & Herb from 1978:

The 5th Dimension "Reflections" from 1971:

"Soft & Soulful" by Bill Medley (1969):

Paul Mauriat & His Orchestra "Gone is Love" (1970):

Bobby Goldsboro's "Greatest Hits" (1970):

Various Artists "Family Portrait: 16 Outstanding Selections Rrom A&M Records" (1967)

And finally, "Close To You" by The Carpenters (1970):

More findings to come!

Blue-Eyed Soul of Steve Colt

I uploaded this really cool song by Steve Colt from 1970 titled, "Please Please Please (Tell My Mind to Stop Teasing My Heart)." For those of you who aren't familiar with Steve Colt, he had some mid-to late-60's songs where he sounded like the white version of James Brown. In particular he had a song called "Dynamite" which just brings the house down. Check the song out on YouTube if you don't already know it. There are several uploads of the song there along with others. I decided to upload the lead-off track from his Paradox album because no one else has done so on YouTube and because it is my favourite song on the album.




The sound here is a little different from the 60's singles. A little less soul/R&B sounding and more along the lines of blues rock. But the voice is undeniably blue-eyed soul. Absolutely a great vocal performance and solid instrumentation. My only criticism is the horribly weak-sounding snare drum. I realize this was from 1970 but there had been better sounding recorded snare drums up to that point.

Steve Colt died at the age of 62 at a nursing home in 2005. An amazing musician indeed.

I Can't Handle It!

A shout out to Northwestern IL University for playing this song on their weekly R&B Flashback program:




An absolute jewel! Has that classic mid-60s sound which includes, electric guitar, bass, organ, drums and a horn section. And I just love the reverb on the vocal. Gives me chills.

This is one of those songs that once I come across I play it non-stop and annoy everyone around me with it. Sounds so great straight from a scratchy, mono 45. Thanks again to the program host and to the individual who made YouTube even better by uploading it.

Some of My All-Time Favorite Christmas Albums

It's officially Christmastime and I'm going to list a few of my all-time favourite Christmas albums. Now mind you, I'm not one of these collectors of obscure holiday music nor do I have an extensive collection of Christmas albums. I have plenty of mp3's of shows I have recorded over the years on radio stations and special podcasts that people have put together. But I really don't spend time shopping around for them, especially since the best stuff is from the 50s, 60s and 70s and nothing made recently or nowadays will ever compare.

So here is a short list of some of my favourites and ones definitely worth checking out if you're not familiar with them. In no particular order:

The Anita Kerr Sings - Spend this Holiday with Me (1969)

This is a wonderful album. The music arrangements are very typical (and great) late 60's/early 70's sounding for pop music of the time. Sounds very much like The Free Design from the music to the vocals. I caught two songs off the radio many years ago from this album--the title track and Jingle Bell Rock--and was never able to find out who the artist was until a few years ago when I ordered a copy of this album on cd from Brazil! Anyway, this is a 5 star album and it stays on my iPod all year round.

Glen Campbell - That Christmas Feeling (1968)

Another hard-to-find album. And another I keep on my iPod all year long. This one is very mellow and some may even consider it a bit too melancholy for the festive season. But I love it cause Glen sounds so good on it and the arrangements are top-notch. His rendition of Roger Miller's "Old Toy Trains" is my favorite and I've never heard a better version yet. Other standout tracks include "Little Altar Boy," "Christmas is for Children" and "It Must Be Getting Close to Christmas."

The Partridge Family - A Partridge Family Christmas Card (1971)

If you like the sound of the Partridge Family--aka L.A. studio musicians known as 'The Wrecking Crew'--then you'll love this album. Ok, we all know the Partridge Family was not a real band. They were just actors with a storyline based upon a real band known as The Cowsills. But 'Keith Partridge' and 'Shirley Partridge' really did sing and they contributed their vocals to this album. The rest of the fictional family did not contribute at all to the music and albums. That being said this is a great early 70's pop/soft rock offering featuring the West Coast sound. Most of the numbers here are upbeat and you can't go wrong with any that Keith sings on.

                        

Elvis Presley - Elvis' Christmas Album (1957)

This is not only one of my favourite Christmas albums of all time, but it's one of my favourite albums period. This was the first time Christmas music met rock & roll. Oh sure, Elvis kept the traditional songs modest and low-key but he totally rocked out on the contemporary ones. The arrangements here are very simple and basic. Nothing more than piano, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drums, double bass, organ and background vocals. Just like his non-Christmas music of the same era. Standout tracks include all of them, but in particular 'Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me,' 'Santa Claus is Back in Town' and 'I'll Be Home for Christmas.' This album happens to be the best selling Christmas album of all time and for good reason.

                         

Vince Guaraldi Trio - A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

This is a jazz album that has transcended its exclusive genre to become a pop smash. The music is wonderful. Simple arrangements. Playful melodies. Tunes that stay in your head. Mostly instrumental but a few with children's choirs. Probably the most memorable and recognizable tune, 'Linus & Lucy,' has become a Christmas staple even though the song itself has little or nothing to do with the holiday, other than having been featured in the animated classic. Other than 'Linus & Lucy,' my faves on this excellent album include both versions of 'Christmastime is Here,' 'Skating' and Christmas is Coming.'

                            

Kenny Burrell - Have Yourself a Soulful Little Christmas (1966)

Another jazz Christmas offering. This one definitely not as well-known as the Vince Guaraldi one but equally essential. Burrell is a master guitarist and surely my favourite player of the genre. The arrangements here include piano, bass, drums, horns and strings. He mainly plays his hollowbody electric but there are a few songs where he plays a nylon string acoustic. This album is timeless and his playing is effortless and spellbinding. It is bebop jazz at its finest during a wondrous era of recorded sound. The most remarkable tracks include 'My Favorite Things,' 'Little Drummer Boy,' 'God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen' and 'Children Go Where I Send Thee.' Gotta love that 60's album cover, too.

So there are 6 of my favourite Christmas albums of all time. I don't want to make this post super-long and it's getting late so I may do a part-two at a later time.

Roger Miller Records

It's been over a year since I got my new turntable and over a year since I last blogged here. We'll I'm back and I'm going to write about some of the LP's I've come across recently.

I've been acquiring vinyl records over the last year from thrift stores and garage sales and found some pretty good stuff. Lately, I've become interested in Roger Miller's first few albums. (I show how to play the bass lick to his "King of the Road" song on my other blog.) I found out his early albums are not available on cd for some strange reason. I've seen other lesser known artists' albums get reissued on cd which is puzzling. I'm a Roger Miller fan, especially after having purchased the 3-cd collection, "King of the Road: The Genius of Roger Miller." I enjoy his unique style of country/folk/pop.

That 3-cd boxed set is obviously not comprehensive and I wanted to hear the other songs on the albums which did not make it to the boxed set. So I started looking around on blogs--which are a great source for sharing music--but no luck. Funny thing is, I was also looking around recently for some shared Sonny James albums on blogs but to no avail either. Seems there's no one out there blogging & sharing classic country music artists' music for some reason. I have my suspicions why but I will not get into it here.

So after having no luck on various blogs, I started looking on eBay for those original albums. Plenty of them there but I specifically wanted to find stereo versions. There were far fewer stereo editions than mono editions available. Oh, and the boxed set mentioned above features all the early cuts in pure mono. I've heard some of his songs in stereo and always liked those versions better. I saved the best ones I could find so I could decide whether or not to buy them later.

I had another idea; why not check out the records at a thrift store I had not been to in a while? That's what I did and guess what? I found a stereo copy in very good condition of "The Return of Roger Miller," his second album from 1965. For like a dollar or less!

I have a small stack of records I've been buying at various thrift stores over the last year and a half. I just recently checked them out and found out that I have 2 more Roger Miller albums there! I don't even remember buying them. But one of them is "The 3rd Time Around" from 1965 and one titled "The Tunes That Launched the Career of Roger Miller" from 1964 on Camden Records. The first 2 albums mentioned are on Smash Records.

Unfortunately, it's a mono copy of "The 3rd Time Around." So I have to keep looking around for a stereo edition of it as well as the next few that were released after this album.

The other album I discovered I already had was this one:

The sleeve has a copyright date of 1964 but after I recorded the album into my computer, created the individual tracks, burned them onto cd and then prepared to import them into my iTunes library, the year displayed as 1972. I can't find any info online about the precise year of this record. But it does have some of his earlier songs. Probably singles. I can't really say. But the songs are all in stereo and there are some on there that I was already familiar with because they happen to be on the boxed set. And a few others really stood out as some really good cuts.

Once I learn how to upload these LP's to a file sharing host I will make them available for downloading here. In the meantime I will keep looking out for more cool old records and digitizing the ones I already have.

New Turntable

Recently I purchased a new turntable and some software from www.dak.com. After seriously considering getting a direct drive type versus another belt drive one, I decided to go with the latter. I searched online for info and came across the DAK website where I was convinced to go with their package which included a belt-drive turntable.

I have had belt-drive turntables go bad over the years so I did not want to deal with the same problem again. The belts warped away probably from long periods of non-use. Though I have never myself attempted it, I understand that it is complicated to switch out belts. First of all, they tend to be a bit pricey--for a band-like piece of rubber. Second of all, if you do not have the proper tool to remove the special washer that locks the platter down in place you will have quite the time trying to remove it. And there is no other way around removing the platter.

Thus, I decided to buy a new turntable. This particular one came with a diamond stylus, a strobe light and adjustable speed control and a light to help you make sure you're placing the needle in exactly the right spot. Pretty good deal for the price. I'll have more to say about it and all that came with it in my next post.

For now, I mainly want to say that I can finally make mp3 files of the vinyl that I have, including the ones I have bought at thrift stores recently. I'm not a big fan of LP's. They're big and bulky and wear out a little each time you play them. And they damage easily. Ultimately I want to have them on cd's and on my computer so I will not have to deal with them anymore. I'm not one of these vinyl purists who believe that it is the best sound reproducing medium for music. I think it's psychosomatic anyway. I'm happy with cd's.

Until next time....