TIKI CULTURE

Music Lovers: Check Out “This is Vintage Now”!

This is Vintage Now

There’s a kool kat out there who is devoting his life to bringing some of the swingin’est, jumpin’est and absolutely best music of the past and present to the masses. His name is David Gasten, and he’s just produced an album of tunes from some very hep kats and kittens.

“This is Vintage Now” is a collection of ten tunes geared toward today’s retro lovers…a GREAT combination of easy swing, jump blues, Exotica, bachelor pad and hard rockin’ blues. The tunes span the decades from the 1950s through today, with some artists you probably know well (Waitiki 7, Big Jay McNeely) and others you may not (Beverly Kenney, with a sweet voice that would have made her a star to this day had she lived past 1960).

This quote from the website really says it all: “THIS IS VINTAGE NOW introduces Vintage Music as a thriving, forward-moving musical movement. The musicians on This is Vintage Now tap
into the spirit of the original Vintage period, and bring its
“anything can happen” excitement forward to today’s listeners.”

Ilana Charnelle, one of the artists on This is Vintage Now. Photo by Sarah Walker.

This is the kind of album that serves a dual purpose. For retro lovers, it’s a great combination of rarely heard old tunes and new tunes that fit that elusive retro mood. For people who don’t dig the retro scene but want to get into it, it’s got the perfect mix of tunes both old and new, just right to ease into the scene.

The artists on this album are all top notch. Gasten himself even plays one of the tunes with his band David Gasten and The City Kids, a hard-swingin’ bluesy riff entitled “The Deacon Don’t Like It”. Gasten calls the style “Heavy Jump Blues”, and indeed it is the kind of music you’d want to hear at a smokey club in Memphis, while drinking Wild Turkey neat while sitting across from your tattooed, ex-stripper girlfriend.

One of the best parts about this album, besides of course the kool music, is the website that goes along with it. Gasten obviously spent a long time researching each of these artists and the tunes before laying the tracks down, and a lot of what he’s learned has gone into info pages on his site. I had some fun going through the pages, and was surprised by some of what I learned. (For instance, being an old jazz and swing musician, I always heard the style of music he calls “jump blues” as either “jump tunes” or boogie woogie. I looked up the term, and today even bands like Louis Jordan’s Tympany 5 are referred to as “jump blues”. Learn something new every day.)

David Gasten, Producer & Artist, This is Vintage Now. Photo by Bryce Boyer.

The album, which is currently available only as instant download from the site, is only $9.77, and will include two bonus tracks for a limited time. You can listen to each of the songs on the site to make sure you dig it…but I’m sure you will. Here’s the info:

This is Vintage Now Homepage (and purchase info)

The Artists:

Beverly Kenney
Big Jay McNeely
Caro Emeral
Ilana Charnelle
The Pharohs
The Waitiki 7
David Gasten & The City Kids
Carole Creveling
Blake Jones & the Trike Shop
The Necro Tonz

So if you dig vintage tunes mixed in with some swingin’ new riffs, check out This is Vintage Now. I think you’ll flip for it, kids. I sure give it Five Coconuts!

-Tiki Chris P. reporting from the music room at Tiki Lounge Talk, the place for Tiki news, events, music and more from South Florida & beyond.

Your Weekend Tiki Cocktail: Lots of Rum, and a fun video

Sometimes just throwing together some stuff can be a really good thing. This week we are featuring a rum drink that came about by literally throwing five rums together with coke and lime. There’s probably a drink out there with the same ingredients, but I’ve already had two of these so I’m making up a name myself, which alzo acounts for any typos, dammit…

Five Rums Named Moe

Get it? Like the old song? Ok, anyway, I came up with this because I have been building a nice collection of rums over the last year, and was too lazy to mix something difficult this afternooon. Soooo, here’s what I did…

1/2 oz each of:

Seven Tiki Rum
Eldorado Dememara Rum
Appleton Estate
Meyers Dark
Ten Cane

Throw all the rum together in a shaker with ice and shakkkke. strain ovEr rice in a large Tiki mug, and fill with Coke. Thenn add about 2-3 teasppons of fresh lime juice an stir. MMMm. Strong stufff.

I’m sure some of yoos guys will want to play around with the amounts of each rum to get the flavor just right. Me, I just want to go float in the pool. Somebody bring me some sunshine…

Bring Me Sunshine
by The Jive Aces with Ian Clarkson on vocals (and Ukulele)

If this video doesn’t make you smile, Jack you’re dead.

I would also like to thank Kelly Camille Patterson of The Velveteen Kitsch-en for the kookie cocktail stirrers. They’re tops! Look for a fun post on this crazy chick next week.

Have a Great Memorial Day Weekend! And to all the soldiers who are being remembered on this weekend, I tip my hat to you, where ever you are.

-Tiki Chris reporting from poolside at Tiki Island Resort

Miles Davis’ Birthday, May 26

A child was born in Alton, IL on May 26, 1926. No one realized that child would evolve into the cat known as Miles.

Skip the groove to 20 years later. Miles. Parker. Gillespie. Yeah.

He was bop. He was Jazz. He could swing or play it straight, hot or cool, but cool was his gig.

Then there was the horse, the big white horse galloping through his veins. It killed his friend, Bird. He quit cold turkey and never looked back.

Modern Jazz. Progressive. Funk-Fusion. He did it all.

Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, Seven Steps To Heaven, Miles Smiles. He swung with the times, but always came back to his true Jazz roots.

Miles left this planet on September 28, 1991, too soon, too soon. But he left plenty for us to dig.

Yeah.

Dig it…

Hard bop, Walkin’

All Blues.

So What.

Footprints, 1967…Times were Changin’.

One of my favorites, Bye Bye Blackbird, 1955 (no video)

–Zoot Jackson, from the lounge

Great Movie Idea: The Story of Ella Fitzgerald

Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald

I wish I lived in Hollywood. Hollywood CA, not FL…where I work…because there’s no one in the movie biz that does anything in Hollywood, FL. I’ve had a theater company, wrote a dozen plays, and have had a few really good ideas for flicks…but not a damned connection anywhere.

So here’s my beef: Hollywood has been churning out some really good flicks lately, but most of them are either re-hashes of old ideas (Avatar) or out-right remakes (Gone in 60 Seconds), plus a couple sequels made 20 years too late (Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull Thingy, Tron II). All good movies, but not really very original. Well, maybe the Crystal Skull movie. Maybe that one was a little too original.

Anyway, it seems that new ideas are at an all time low, except for those wonderful film makers who are lucky enough to get their indy films produced…and we all know 99% of the time, they (unfortunately) go no where. If only I had the ear of a big-shot movie producer (with some brains) for just a few minutes…

Ella Fitzgerald: Girl Singer

This wouldn’t be a documentary. This would be the story of how Ella first got hired by Chick Webb, back when she was just a kid. Web’s band was starting to lose popularity (his was the in-house orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom in NYC), and he sent out word for a “pretty girl singer” to front the band. This was a fairly desperate plea, considering the kat was extremely ill, knew he didn’t have long to live, and didn’t want to buy the farm as a failed bandleader.

Ella, Girl Singer

His manager, I think, found Ella singing in a talent show. Supposedly she had never sung in public before, and floored this guy. He brought her right over to Web, who proceeded to throw a fit (Ella was not the prettiest kid on the block…in fact, her looks were kind of…well, he didn’t dig her). But the other guy talked him into letting Ella audition, and Webb realized they had struck gold. And they did…in fact, Ella became the star that Webb never could on his own, and he died (at the young age of 30), from what I’ve read, pretty happy with his girl singer. Hell, the guy even adopted the 17 year old girl singer! Ella actually took over Web’s band, and had it for years before the turn of times forced her to go solo.

Benny Goodman, King of Swing

Along side this story you have the story of Benny Goodman, Chick Web’s nemesis. Goodman, being a well-to-do white guy, found it (relatively) easy to gain exposure and popularity compared to Webb…and get this…using the same charts by Fletcher Henderson that Webb used. Exactly the same. You could do that back then. Goodman favorites like Stompin’ at the Savoy, Don’t Be That Way and Blue Lou were first done by Webb’s orchestra, same arrangements, but with a somewhat different swing. That’s Jazz, baby. Anyway, Goodman’s band was the first that Billie Holiday recorded with (in 1933), produced by probably the major name of the big band era (that no one has ever heard of), John Hammond. You’ve got to remember what a big deal it was for a “white” band to play “black” music in 1933, let alone have a black woman record with them. Those records were banned in a lot of places in the South. And Goodman’s band refused to play anywhere that wouldn’t welcome his black sidemen, such as Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, and of course Holiday. Kats like Goodman did more to advance civil rights in the 30s than most people can imagine. Oh, and Peggy Lee was also singing with Goodman in the ’30s…a lot of people don’t know that, huh?

Chick Webb, King of the Savoy

You see this movie taking shape? Paths cross…Ella, Goodman, Webb, Holiday, Hammond, Wilson, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw…and sidemen like Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, Gene Krupa and Roy Elridge, Charlie Parker and Ray Anthony who went on to define the styles of Jazz, laying the groundwork for swingin’ kats like Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie. Man, I’d pay for popcorn and a ticket to watch that flick! Wouldn’t you?

Lady Day

So if there are any big-shot movie producers out there who read Tiki Lounge Talk, please let me know if you dig the idea. We’ll draw up the standard ‘rich and famous’ contract.

-Tiki Chris P., reporting from the writer’s lounge

PS: I riff on the licorice stick, so I’ll be happy to play Benny Goodman. Call my agent. We’ll do lunch. And stuff.

Glenn Miller’s Orchestra Wives and Sun Valley Serenade for Mod Movie Monday!

Since it’s nearly the end of Jazz Appreciation Month, I thought it would be kool to spotlight one of the swingin’ kats that helped make Jazz (and Big Band music) as popular as it is today. See, when most people think of Jazz today, they think of the small combo bands of the 50s like The Modern Jazz Quintet or Dave Brubeck’s band. They think of Bop players like Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker, or smooth Jazzers like Stan Getz or modern swingers like Wynton Marsallis. Many people forget that these Jazz greats built on the styles that were created by early Jazz musicians including Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong…and that Jazz, as it evolved into the sounds of the Big Bands, was really made popular by the more commercial yet still fantastic legends of the era…Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller… So, here are both of Miller’s movies,  with plenty of 40s Jazz in its original Big Band form:

Orchestra Wives, 1942 and
Sun Valley Serenade, 1941

Orchestra wives is a funny little movie about…you guessed it…the wives of the guys in the band, and how they travel around with their musician husbands. The chicks are catty as hell, the music is hot and jokes are typical of the time, that is to say they’re good. The real actors include George Montgomery, Anne Rutherford, Harry Morgan and Cesar Romero. Songs include the original version of At Last, I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo, Serenade in Blue and Bugle Call Rag, among others. The plot is actually not bad for a movie made to showcase a band, and the added entertainment of The Modernaires and The Nicholas Brothers makes it a lot of fun to watch. What’s kind of funny is watching poor old Glenn Miller (his character’s name is Gene Morrison) try to act. He’s as stiff as a double bourbon.

Sun Valley Serenade

Sun Valley Serenade was the first of his two movies. This one features ice skater supreme Sonja Henie, John Payne and Milton Berle. The plot has something to do with the band taking on a Norwegian refugee as a publicity stunt…blah blah, watch it for the incredible music and fantastic dancing by Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers. In fact, this flick has the longest, swinginest ever performance of Chattanooga ever. In fact, it was this movie that song was written for…and became so popular it received the first Gold Record ever awarded. Additional songs include Sun Valley Jump, I Know Why and So Do You, and a very swingin’ version (better than the original in my opinion) of In the Mood.

What’s also great about these flicks is that all the music…for the first time for the Miller orchestra…was recorded on magnetic tape, not wax. So the sound is fantastic, full and vibrant, and all the songs from the movies are available on CD, sounding like they were recorded yesterday.

Orchestra Wives

Miller’s band was a big, swingin’, hard-hitting Jazz band that was almost never referred to as a Jazz band. His charts were made for dancing, and even sounded a little corny at times (on purpose…songs like “I want a hat with cherries”). But the real purpose of the band was to swing, and to do it in a very tight, very professional way, with plenty of open areas for soloists to show off their true Jazz chops.

Glenn Miller’s orchestra became, and remains, the most popular and well-loved band of the entire big band era. It’s Miller’s music you hear in any movie that harkens to the 1940s. Songs like In the Mood, Moonlight Serenade, Chattanooga Choo Choo (The world’s first million-selling gold record) and I’ve Got A Gal in Kalamazoo remain some of the most recognizable songs of the last 100 years.

Riding that wave of popularity, Glenn Miller was asked to do some movies in Hollywood, as was the custom at the time. Miller was able to make two full-length features before he signed up for military duty in World War Two. Unfortunately, his disappearance prevented any more movies with the Miller band to ever be made.

Here’s the full segment of Chattanooga Choo Choo, including the entire orchestra, Tex Beneke on vocals and solos sax, the Modernaires, plus Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers. A side note: It’s a credit to the movie’s producers and Miller that they had no problem with black and white performers in the same scene in a movie made in 1941. A number of southern states refused to show the film because of this, and only showed it after editing out the dance sequence themselves. Man, we’ve come a long way.