No, Sammy never replaced Eric Burdon, nor did he ever mimic the lyrics to ‘House of The Rising Sun’, but he did appear on the TV show ‘Hullabaloo’ with the Brits to do some show tunes…

Imagine Sammy and friends doing a medley of “Chim Chim Cheree” and “The Rain In Spain Falls Mainly On The Plain.”

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A Jazz performance on regular TV? Say it isn’t so?

Here we have a 1961 performace of ‘Take Five’, the most notable hit single from The Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Not only is it my favorite candy bar in the world, its by far the most recognizeable jazz song for just about any set of ears. You’ve heard it in countless films, commercials and TV shows.

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Now comes my first foreign post. I only recently became fascinated with French Pop music in the past couple of years. I had a Serge Gainsbourg CD since I felt his music was good bachelor pad stuff, and it worked. Soon I was into more traditional French musicians like Edith Piaf and Yves Montand. However, only recently did I stumble upon Jacques Brel after some reading up on Scott Walker and how Brel was a huge influence.

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Since I couldn’t do a post for Wednesday, what better than another duet. 2 for the price of one.

This time its Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim performing a medley of duets on a tv show from November 1967. I especially love Frank’s Intro as he’s fiddling with a cigarette in his hands and says:

The instrument – guitar
The beat – Bossa Nova
The artist – One of the inventors of this exciting, all new sound, Antonio Carlos Jobim.

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I’ve searched far and wide for the most interesting stuff on wax, and this has to be one of my favorite recent discoveries. After several searches on every possible corner of the internet, the only place I’ve found this record is when someone’s selling it on eBay because of its “cheesecake” cover that looks like Penelope Cruz from the 1960’s. The artist isn’t listed in Allmusic.com and as far as I know, the record hasn’t been released on CD anywhere. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you Pancho Purcell and his Bambuco Players!

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