Bob "Froggy" Landers w/ Willie Joe & his Unitar

It's time for the world to know about the meanest sounding guitar of the 50's.....Willie Joe & his Unitar!

Sure Link Wray's "Rumble" is the most sinister sounding 2:13 seconds R&R ever had! but Joe Willie Duncan listened to his woman when she said..."bigger is better, Joe Willie...!"

Willie's Unitar was a killer one-stringed instrument of atomic
proportions.....the Unitar. Made from an amplified 7 foot wood plank with one string [actually a wire] with a playing scale of over 4 and a half feet and wired with a DeArmond acoustic guitar pickup. Duncan didn't "pick" the string but instead used a hunk of leather to flog the string as he played it.

Specialty records' head honcho Rene' Hall flipped his first name and recorded him as Willie Joe & his Unitar and put Unitar Rock on the flip side of Bob "Froggy" Landers killer "Cherokee Dance".

Listen to both of these classic 50's hookie-lau's!!!

Bob "Froggy" Landers Cherokee Dance
Willie Joe & his Unitar Unitar Rock

Jerusalem - Kamakazi Moth

Jerusalem - Kamakazi Moth [Deram 1972]

I figured since my tastes range from blues, r&b, soul, garage, hard rock that I'd post something other that what I've been...having said that dig this pounding killer from a bunch of teenagers in the UK...

Jerusalem was an early 1970s British raunchy heavy rock five piece outfit, who released one self-titled album worldwide in 1972 on Deram, produced by Ian Gillan of Deep Purple. Their only other release was a 45 rpm 7 inch single, the non-album ‘Kamikazi Moth’ backed with ‘Frustration’ from the LP.

The band's raunchy, unpolished and brutal rock was "way ahead of its time" and therefore the band never "made it" in a true commercial sense at the time. They were very much a "live" band and whilst many other Rock bands were into getting their audiences to sit down and listen, Jerusalem were all about making their audiences stand up, move and join in. Gigging throughout Europe and shared the same stage as bands such as Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Status Quo as well as playing at some of the major Festivals in Europe to audiences of 50,000+, usually going down in a storm, because they were different, raw and uninhibited. It has often been stated within the music business that Jerusalem were a substantial influence on many of the 2nd generation Rock "metal" bands and Punk bands of the 80's. Although signing with Deram, Nick Mobbs head of the EMI Harvest label also wanted them; he later became head of A&R for EMI and was the first person to sign the Sex Pistols.

Keep in mind that these guys were all teenagers when they recorded.

Jerusalem Kamakazi Moth

Jimmie Raye - Hey Let's Dance

Jimmie Raye - Hey Let's Dance [Satan 1962]

Jimmie Raye Feagen was born in Alabama and raised in Niagara Falls, New York. His grandfather Abraham Singer was the voice that he listened to the most and being a minister, he introduced Jimmie to the bible. The family moved to Niagara Falls when he was eight years old.

At the age of nine The Junior Royal Gospel Singers was formed with Jimmie, his sisters Ina, Mae and Pearl. The Royal Gospel Singers were very popular in the Niagara Falls, Buffalo area and the Junior Royal Gospel Singers would often open the concert for them. Jimmie enjoyed singing the lord's music he learned growing up. In his home there were two types of music, Country and Gospel.....Rhythm and Blues was not allowed.

In 1962 Jimmie went to Washington D.C. where Bo Didley introduced Jimmie Raye to singer/producer Sylvester Steward [Sly Stone???]. Satan Records was the recording company formed and Jimmie recorded "Hey Let's Dance" b/w "Forgive Me."

Check out this slab of screamin' R&B & dance!! As it was recorded in D.C. in 1962 it's possible that Link Wray & the Wraymen might've had something to do with the hookey-lau goings on....sounds like it could be.

I dare anyone to not wet their pants as Jimmie gets into it toward the end of the record.

Jimmie Raye Hey Let's Dance

Calvin Cool & the Surf Knobs - El Tecolote

Calvin Cool & the Surf Knobs- El Tecolote [C-R-C 1963]

Calvin Cool was really one of the leading figures of West Coast jazz, Shorty Rogers. He recorded 1-LP & 1 45rpm as Calvin Cool.

His decision to stop performing and switch to full-time studio work in 1962 marked the end of its golden era. Rogers played with a number of big bands in the late 1940s, and began to attract attention as an arranger while working with Woody Herman. Stan Kenton then hired him away from Herman and Rogers' compositions and arrangements for Kenton made him as much of a star as any of Kenton's soloists. Rogers left Kenton and pulled together a small group that included Art Pepper, Shelley Manne, Jimmy Giuffre, and Hampton Hawes to record Modern Sounds for Capitol. Rogers' tight and innovative arrangements on this recording are considered by many to be as influential as Gil Evans' for Miles Davis' small group on Birth of the Cool.

Rogers formed a small group he called the Giants and recorded a series of albums for RCA, including The Cool and the Crazy and Shorty Courts the Count. Marlon Brando wanted Rogers to provide the soundtrack for his movie, The Wild One, but the studio refused, hiring Leith Stevens to provide most of the score. Rogers was featured on screen, though, in Frank Sinatra's The Man With the Golden Arm, leading the jazz group Sinatra's character played with. Rogers also worked with Perez Prado on a concept album titled Voodoo Suite.

Rogers was a dramatic character but a thoroughly professional musician, and he moved to the financial security of writing for television and movies when the West Coast jazz scene began to fade in the early 1960s. He was a prolific contributor to television and to a lesser extent films through the 1980s. Among the series he scored or wrote incidental music for were "The Partridge Family," "The Mod Squad," "The Rookies," "Starsky and Hutch," and "The Love Boat." His tune "Chelsea Memorandum" shows up in the midst of Lalo Schifrin's cuts on the second "Mission: Impossible" soundtrack album. He also composed and conducted the music for a number of the innovative UPA cartoons featuring the work of Theodore Geissel (Dr. Seuss) and Stan Freberg.

During this period, Rogers continued to work occasionally on pop and jazz recordings, but primarily as an arranger. He and Claus Ogerman split arranging duties on Mel Torme's 1962 hit album, "Coming Home, Baby." Late in the 1960s, he was responsible for one of those assimilation-via-train wreck creations that incredibly strange music fans love, Bobby Bryant's "The Jazz Excursion into 'Hair'". He pops up as arranger in a variety of places, from Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass' Christmas album to Bud Shank's mellow album of Lovin' Spoonful covers for Liberty to Frances Faye's now sounds album, "Go Go Go." One of his ignominious credits is the arrangement for Wayne Newton's cover of "These Boots are Made for Walking."

Shorty or Calvin died in 1994......

Calvin Cool El Tecolote