Featured Album:
Alternative Liner Notes 066
Roy Eldridge
Happy Time
Pablo 2310 746
1975
There’s that superb footage of Billie Holiday performing ‘Fine and Mellow’ for TV audiences back in the 1950s, where the singer surrounded herself with the cream of the crop for one night only and viewers got the distinct impression that these key players were giving it their best shot just for Lady Day. All the great sax men were there, including Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan and Lester Young of course, but there was also a performance by a trumpet player, who at one point in his solo, blew a note scarcely ever reached before, which took every ounce of energy in his body. That man was Roy Eldridge, and some of that same magic can be found on this much later LP from 1975. Happy Time not only features Eldridge’s fine chops as a first rate trumpet player, but also showcases his vocal prowess, with a selection of fine performances in the same sort of vein as Louis Armstrong. He makes it sound easy, almost as if he’s just having fun, a happy time indeed. Helping him out are Oscar Peterson on piano, Joe Pass on guitar, Ray Brown on bass and Eddie Locke on drums. The ten selections feature one or two well-known standards such as ‘Makin’ Whoopee’, ‘The Sunny Side of the Street’ and ‘Stormy Monday’, but also one or two not so familiar numbers, such as ‘Sweet hearts on Parade’ and ‘Let Me Off Uptown’, whereupon Eldridge takes both the male and female part, better performed perhaps by Anita O’Day.
Playlist:
Pairing Off
Phil Woods
Pairing Off
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On the Sunny Side of the Street
Roy Eldridge
Happy Time
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Basin Street Blues
Miles Davis
Seven Steps to Heaven
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J&B
Billy Mitchell
This is Billy Mitchell
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Willow Weep for Me
Roy Eldridge
Happy Time
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Mystic Journey
Azar Lawrence & Al McLean
Frontiers
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Let Me Off Uptown
Roy Eldridge
Happy Time
***
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Featured Album:
Alternative Liner Notes 375
Richard and Linda Thompson
Pour Down Like Silver
Island ILPS 9348
1975
In the mid-1970s I distinctly recall wandering into the Rare and Racy record shop on Devonshire Street in Sheffield, and with my limited budget, held up and compared two LPs, the first being the Beatles’ so-called White Album, which I’d heard quite a lot about, the other, not so. Richard and Linda Thompson’s third album together featured extreme close up portraits, Richard on the front and his wife on the back and both suitably attired in their Sufi garb. On that occasion I came away with the Beatles album, complete with all the freebies that came with it, yet I returned shortly afterwards to pick up this obscure folk record (to me at any rate). I’ve confessed before to having a slow burn rection to Richard Thompson’s singing voice and only really came around to it with the release of Hand of Kindness a few years later, though no such reservations marred my appreciation of the voice of Linda, one of the true greats when it comes to warbling folk songs. The title Pour Down Like Silver comes from the lyric of ‘Night Comes In’, one of the best songs on the album, though that accolade must surely go to the album closer ‘Dimming of the Day’, a superb performance by both husband and wife, a song rooted in the Sufi tradition. If there is a spiritual theme to this album, then it’s due to the fact that Thompson, a recent convert to the that religion, was instructed by his Mullah to put down his electric guitar for good or to use it for the purpose of God. Other notable songs here include ‘Streets of Paradise’, ‘For Shame of Doing Wrong’ and ‘Beat the Retreat’, the couple joined by several equally notable musicians including a couple of fellow Fairporters, Daves Mattacks and Pegg, both Nic Jones and Ali Bain on the fiddle and the ever-present John Kirkpatrick on accordion.
Playlist:
Sweet Lorraine
Uriah Heep
The Magician’s Birthday
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No Matter What
Badfinger
No Dice
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Streets of Paradise
Richard and Linda Thompson
Pour Down Like Silver
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Ohio
Neil Young
Journey Through the Past
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Deportees
Byrds
Ballad of Easy Rider
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It Don’t Bother Me
Bert Jansch
It Don’t Bother Me
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Dimming of the Day
Richard and Linda Thompson
Pour Down Like Silver
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This Time Around/Owed to G
Deep Purple
Come Taste the Band
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Oh England My Lionheart
Kate Bush
Lionheart
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The Poor Boy is Taken Away
Richard and Linda Thompson
Pour Down Like Silver
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Ballad of Hollis Brown
Nazareth
Loud ‘n’ Proud
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