Dig Deep: Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Domino – Mercury (1962)

Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Domino
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Meeting On Termini’s Corner
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – A Stritch In Time
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – 3 In 1 Without The Oil

I may have missed our Anniversary by a day, but never ever will I forget to pay tribute to our patron saint on his birthday, today August 7th, Rahsaan Roland Kirk.  This year’s selection is his debut for Mercury records, where he would record for most of the 1960s, Domino.  At this time, Rahsaan must have been flying pretty high. He’d just been in Charles Mingus group, immortalized on the album Oh Yeah (and later on the album of outtakes from that session, Tonight At Noon), and while he had been seen as almost a sideshow artist previously, his skill and his talent was winning more and more converts. 

It’s fascinating listening to Domino, and realizing that it’s actually the album that premieres some of Rahsaan’s hallmarks during this early period.  We Free Kings, released later that same year, might have truly been his breakout, especially with it’s iconic, “Three For The Festival,” but listening to the selection of tracks here, particularly “3 in 1 Without The Oil,” you see that Rahsaan was already on a different level right from the start.  When you think about later iconic songs, like “Serenade To A Cuckoo,” again, you hear so much of what Rahsaan would be working on then, here right at the start.  It’s a lovely, largely brisk album, as Rahsaan, on flute, tenor, manzello & stritch, is accompanied by Andrew Hill on the first six tracks, including all of the ones I’m sharing, and then backed by Wynton Kelly and Roy Haynes on the final four tracks of the album.  Bassist Vernon Martin does stalwart work throughout, as of course also does Rahsaan. 

I know this copy I currently have of Domino, which I’m fairly sure I bought during a birthday week jaunt to Groove Merchant years ago, isn’t as minty in terms of sound quality as we all might like, but at the same time, none of those minor issues with the vinyl can take away from the brilliance of these performances…Bright Moments!

Melting Pot At 15…Movin’ On Up To Year 16!

Foto © ShutterStock Images

For the first time since I started this blog, I neglected to do an anniversary post on the actual birthday of the Melting Pot, 7/7…Now, in a way, 7/8 works just as good, since this was our 15th year (7+8=15!), and I wish I could say that was the plan all along, but plans going awry or not being put in place when they needed to be was very much the theme of the past year. Took a bit of time, but the website now looks more or less how I always wanted it to look. All of the posts are integrated once again on a single site. Our 14th anniversary mix by the one and only Cut Chemist was more than even I could have imagined, and despite never being able to find the time to post regularly (though there was a major reason why that was the case over the past year, which I’ll talk about in a separate post), Melting Pot remains, as does my desire to share music. We’ll see what year 16 brings, not gonna make any promises or any predictions. It will be what it will be, and we’ll just see what it will be as the year unfolds…Onwards & Upwards my people, Peace & Bright Moments to you all.

Dig Deep: Eclipse – S/T – (1976)

Eclipse – Vision Interieure
Eclipse – Le Reve De John W.
Eclipse – Honey #36

Despite not having posted much of anything for four months, there was no chance that I was going to pass up the opportunity to post about a band called Eclipse on the same day that there was a total solar eclipse here in the Americas…Picked this LP up on my first visit (and perhaps still only visit, though I’ll change that in the Summer) to Sonido Del Valle in Boyle Heights. I’d gone to get a cumbia record they had posted about on IG (back when I had social media), but I always make sure to spend a fair amount of time in a new spot and love to hit up parts of the store that aren’t the specialty of the shop, just to see what oddities there might be.

With the cover you see above, and some barely legible computer like writing on the back, this record caught my eye. I’d originally thought this band was French, but then I noticed from the rather snazzy insert that almost all of the band members were originally from Montreal or Quebec (and oddly, at least to me, Manitoba), so French Canadian instead.

Thankfully Sonido Del Valle had some turntables for listening so I could drop the needle on the album instead of just taking a flyer. As you’ll hear, Eclipse definitely have some Dark Side era Floyd influences, and at the moment I was heavy in a moody, slow, psych kind of mood, so that style was music to my ears. Somewhat strangely, at least in comparison to the other tracks, “La Reve De John W.” is a straight funk track with a super long drum break at the start. It seems on later releases, the band ditched the Floyd-isms and just went straight disco. But here on this record you get both sides, without one eclipsing the other (sorry, had to do it!). I’d been meaning to post this one up for some time, but thankfully it’s here now, on the absolute most perfect day to post it. We’ll see if I can track down more eclipse related music by the time the next one, in 2026, comes around…

Melting Pot Radio Hour: Top Digs Of 2023

{8-11-24: As you might have guessed, given the fact that I usually post up “Best Of” posts during the first week of the new year, 2024 hasn’t exactly gone according to plan…But the times they are a-changing, and I’m trying to get back into the swing of things…and that means a return of the “Melting Pot Radio Hour,” which of course has never once, ever, been only a single hour, in the very near future.}

Best Of 2023: Top 5 LPs

{8-11-24: As you might have guessed, given the fact that I usually post up “Best Of” posts during the first week of the new year, 2024 hasn’t exactly gone according to plan…But the times they really are a-changing, and I’m trying to get back into the swing of things…so, while there won’t be any 45s this year, I will break down why these 5 LPs made me oh so very happy last year, in the very near future.}

Dig Deep: The Orient Express – S/T – Mainstream (1969)

The Orient Express- Cobra Fever
The Orient Express – Dance For Me
The Orient Express – Azaar

{Update 8-11-24…Maybe I should have been more specific about when I’d tell you about this record in 2024, but thems the breaks folks…I will have more words to share about this in the very near future.}

I am not nearly of sound mind or body at the moment, so I’ll tell y’all more about this album, the last one I bought in 2023, in the new year…Peace

Dig Deep…For Matthew Africa: V/A – Wild Style Original Soundtrack – Animal (1983)

Grandmaster Caz and Chris Stein – Wild Style Theme Rap 1
Fantastic Freaks – Basketball Throwndown (with Cold Crush Bros) and At The Dixie
Double Trouble – At The Amphitheatre
Grand Wizard Theodore and Kevie Kev – Military Cut Scratch Mix
The Chief Rocka Busy Bee and DJ AJ – At The Amphitheatre

Today would have been Matthew Africa’s 52nd Birthday and every year around this time we pay tribute to Matthew, a singular influence on my musical sensibilities, here on Melting Pot. Given that this year celebrates 50 years since Kool DJ Herc set in motion Hip-Hop culture, it’s fitting to share this album.  As a DJs DJ, I wasn’t surprised at all to see that MKA had marked the label on both sides, just to make cueing up a cut just a little easier whenever he spun this one out.

Released only ten years after the birth of Hip-Hop, in 1983, and just a couple of years after the world came to know just what had been bubbling up in the Bronx and beyond for a decade.  Along with Style Wars, Wild Style holds a treasured space in the minds of most “true school” Hip-Hop heads, as many feel like its the best representation of what Hip-Hop was really like in the early years before it became more commercialized and there were only mixtapes to represent the culture.  To say that it’s a classic that all fans of Hip-Hop have to see is a understatement. 

Posting it today, I started thinking back to when I first saw the film, which must have been around 1997 at Daryl “G-Wiz” Felker’s spot, with a couple of other members of the WRAS’ Weekend Wrecking Crew also there. I thought I knew a thing or two about Hip-Hop history back then, but I’d never even heard of this film until Wiz played it.  I sat on the couch awestruck for the whole time, mouth agape, saying “how have I never seen this?” and “oh shit, THAT’S where that sample comes from?” on repeat, for pretty much the running time of the whole film. I can still remember Wiz exclaiming during the Fantastic Freak’s performance at The Dixie, “Damn, that’s when niggas had flows!” and being fully in agreement.  I can’t 100% be sure that by then I’d heard Jurassic 5, whose sound was so connected to this moment in Hip-Hop, but aside from them I can’t think of any post-Old School crew that could match the intricate back and forth in the performances from Fantastic Freaks and Cold Crush Bros. in the film.  Hearing these recordings in 2023, they still sounds revelatory to me in a way that much of what came after it just simply does not.

It was so hard to choose what songs to highlight off this legendary record, almost every song is a classic for those who know. I decided to share 5 songs, one for each decade Hip-Hop has existed.  Each one has been sampled multiple times, almost always in an iconic way.  So much amazing music…such an amazing period of time.  Happy to be able to share this one today on MKA’s bday, since this record came from his collection.  And in the sharing, Matthew Africa lives forever.  Peace and Bright Moments

Dig Deep: Raymond Guiot – Jazz Baroque Quintet – Tele Music (1970)

Jazz Baroque Quintet – Princess Mary Ellen
Jazz Baroque Quintet – Le Tambourin
Jazz Baroque Quintet – Les Petit Moulins A Vent

Though I’ve been a collector for close to 30 years now, I’ve never really delved too far into the world of Library records. I’ve featured a few choice ones here, but it’s a very small section of my overall collection and probably 90% of it I’ve bought post 2020. It’s always daunting to venture outside of your comfort zone into new territories, but I think the main thing that stopped me from really digging deep into these types of records is that I often find that the albums themselves rarely warrant the prices, especially when so many of the songs are brief, sometimes only a minute long. Additionally, the incidental nature tied to the purpose of these records, with music designed to be in commercials or in station breaks, etc., means that there isn’t generally a whole lot of listenability to the full album. None of those shortcomings are the case with this lovely record, generally listed under French flutist Raymond Guiot’s discography.

In fact, since this record has become part of my collection, picked up from one of Cool Chris of Groove Merchant’s Rappcats sales last year, it’s become one of the albums that’s spent the most quality time on my turntables. Start to finish it is a thoroughly enjoyable experience, as Guiot and his jazzy crew (featuring Bernard Lubat, who will have an album of his own featured here shortly) make the most of compositions from the Baroque era. And, in true library record fashion, there’s even a track that’s just begging to be sampled by folks, the ultra-groovy “Princess Mary Ellen.”

After a bit of digital digging, I discovered there was also an earlier album, from 1968, first released on the UK Library outfit Audio and then also on Tele Music, called “Scarlatti Sounds,” with the same group plus a similar sound, that arrived to my casita this week and it’s also quite lovely. It’s highly possible I’ll spend many a weekend afternoon dropping the needle on both of the albums, and if you track them down, I bet you will as well.

Happy Hunting,

Michael

Jed Gould’s Freaky LACA Perv

Jed Gould – LACA Perv

As any one who has ever been to Groove Merchant knows, if Cool Chris puts a label on the cover to highlight a song, you should always check out that song. This collection from 1976, created by LA radio station KWST (which later on would become Power 106) as a fundraiser for public radio, features a number of LA bands that seemingly never amounted to much, and whose music I frankly don’t find particularly noteworthy…Except that is for this song, which is definitely appealing to these Hip-Hop ears, and was the brainchild of then 20 year old, Jed Gould.

While none of the others on this “locals only” collection seem to have made a name for themselves, Jed Gould is perhaps better known as Jed The Fish, the afternoon drive time host for 30+ years on KROQ. I don’t know how much music Jed actually recorded, but he packs a whole lot into the 85 seconds “LACA Perv” assaults your senses. There are dueling vocals split on both sides, banging drums, fuzzy bass or guitar, punchy synth lines and even a kazoo solo. I can’t really make out much about the lyrics, other than something both Goulds say about being “vagina oriented,” and when Jed on the right calls himself a pervert and then Jed in the other ear agrees and says “of course you are.”

I have no clue what the LACA in “LACA Perv” stands for. “Los Angeles County” is a solid guess for the first three letters, but it’s the “A” that I can’t sort out. Perhaps someone who knew LA in the 1970s can chime in, maybe “LACA” was a public spot where pervy things went down, maybe it was a fairly perverse section of LA government…No idea. But, the track is a weird, freakout and even though that album cover is certainly eye catching, I’m not sure I would have had the patience to needle drop through all of the songs, without Cool Chris’ always helpful note. But that patience to check out all of the music, and let you know what the best track is, is exactly what makes Groove Merchant such a mecca for us folks.

Catch A Groove – Hip-Hop At 50

Juice – Catch A Groove
Grand Wizard Theodore – Live Convention ’82 Excerpt

No one could have known it at the time, but on this day in 1973, for all intents and purposes, Hip-Hop was born.  It’s hard for me to quantify the effect Hip-Hop has had on my life.  I wouldn’t be a DJ without Hip-Hop. I wouldn’t be a collector without Hip-Hop. I wouldn’t hear music the way I do without Hip-Hop. I wouldn’t have my PhD without Hip-Hop, since my dissertation was on Hip-Hop. So, given that, I had to post something on this day and pay respect.  For, it was on this day 50 years ago, in the rec room of 1520 Sedwick Ave. in the Bronx, that Kool DJ Herc did something he’d never done before…deciding to just focus on the break beats of certain records, in some cases running that break between two records and that innovation, Herc’s “Merry-Go-Round,” is what started it all. 

For me, so much of what really caused me to love Hip-Hop was the break, and how so much of the music was literally based on pieces of the past, used in ways that the musicians and the record labels never could have dreamed of.  Instead of taking the record as a final product, Hip-Hop DJs & producers created something brand new.  And in many cases, certainly the case with this record from Juice, the music itself just sounds like it was recorded with Hip-Hop already in mind.  If Hip-Hop wasn’t still so insular in 1976 when this 12” was released, a case could be made that the record had been made with Hip-Hop in mind, but the sound and the scene was still too young.  This record wasn’t made for Hip-Hop, it’s meant to be on Disco soundsystems, but once Herc lit the spark, it was only a matter of time before a record like this would find its way into DJ’s collections and in performance on the 1s and 2s.  The break itself is so long, and flows nicely into another instrumental passage, and there’s that mini-breakdown just before the drum break, perhaps the most iconic part of the song, that makes this is a rare double break, one that can be picked up in multiple places and extended in ways that you couldn’t with other songs. 

According to Davey D, “Everybody want to flow over Juice, ‘Catch A Groove.’  If you were rapping and that record came on, man, you’ve got to get a piece of it.  Everybody would be fighting over it.  You’d hear somebody saying, ‘Come on, finish that rhyme so I can get in there.’”  “Catch A Groove” became a staple in Hip-Hop circles in that period of time where Hip-Hop first became popular, after 1979’s “Rapper’s Delight,” became an international hit.  But there was a disconnect between what you might have heard in clubs and parks in NYC and what you heard on record.  The DJ was essentially removed, replaced by a band of musicians, who would recreate versions of the breaks that DJs spun (and in time become breaks themselves).  Just before Style Wars and Wild Style created a document in film of this moment in Hip-Hop, you had “Bee-Bop’s Live Convention ’82: #1 Cut Creators,” likely recorded live at T-Connection in the Bronx, and one of the rare places you can hear Hip-Hop as it existed in that first decade before the genre began to diversity and multiply into dozens of dozens of sub-genres in the 1990s. Hearing the original break from the recorded song (and kids, please remember, that drum break is only on the 12,” not, I repeat, NOT on the 45!), and then hearing all of the ways Grand Wizard Theodore cuts it up is amazing.  Just one of many examples of the creativity that was unleashed in the wake of Kool DJ Herc’s moment of inspiration. On this day, August 11th, 1973.  The day Hip-Hop was born.

Dig Deep: Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Here Comes The Whistleman – Atlantic (1967)

Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Yesterdays
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Making Love After Hours
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Here Comes The Whistleman

Started off the month of August on the good foot, with multiple posts thus far in this first week, and hope I’ll finally be able to get back into a routine rhythm sharing things, but…If there’s one day of the year you are guaranteed to get a post here on Melting Pot, it is today, August 7th, the birthday of our patron saint, Rahsaan Roland Kirk.  Kirk’s recorded output was so extensive and so consistently good, that there will probably be a few records that we don’t even get to before this blog’s days are done.  But, I was surprised that I hadn’t already shared this album previously.  “Here Comes The Whistleman” was Rahsaan’s debut on Atlantic.  You’ll notice on the cover that “Live” is in quotes, and that was to distinguish the record from a proper live concert, at a proper venue, when this was essentially a private concert at the Atlantic Records HQ with a select few lucky souls who were there to bear witness. 

And though it is a relatively short album, it does still showcase all of the things that made Rahsaan such a beloved musician.  More than the virtuostic playing, it’s the joy, especially the joy at doing new things and creating new sounds.  Whether in terms of what I think is Rahsaan singing through his flute or sax on “Yesterdays,” the combination of what almost sounds like a mix of “The In-Crowd” and “I’m Comin’ Home Baby Now,” on “Making Love After Hours,” or the complete reckless abandonment that marks “Here Comes The Whistleman,” where Rahsaan gave those assembled all manner of noisemakers and whistles so they could join in and make a joyful noise together.  Even Rahsaan’s sense of humor is here, such as when he jokes with long time producer Joel Dorn (though here, essentially their first work together) that he wouldn’t have got caught in turnpike traffic if he had left Rahsaan, who was blind, drive.

What a joy it is to have music from someone so special.  I think the liner notes, written by Del Shields, really hit the spot in describing how special Rahsaan was:

“To know the man is to know his music.  He is fantastic, not because he is blind, but because he is a beautiful human being. He is gifted with enormous talent and finds the crying need to search, probe, experiment and make music.  At last count he has mastered 45 instruments.  Music is his life, and life is his music.  When the critics stop being amazed and weigh his accomplishments objectively, they will admit that Roland Kirk is indeed one of the geniuses of our time.”

Peace & Bright Moments y’all,

Michael