So without further ado, lets get back to the audio. This time its Scott Walker performing ‘Mathilde’ from Jacques Brel.

Yeah, call me a repeat offender since I’ve already posted these tunes before, in a way. However, the performance and the stylings show how Brel is an influence to many people.

Also, don’t you just love a performance that’s being introduced by the Queen of Blue-Eyed Soul herself?.

Here we have a hit song featuring a duo that only plays drum and bass. No, its not Dillinja or Goldie because these are actual instruments. Also, its not Local H or The White Stripes because the time period is the late 1930’s.

Now, I’m not sure which Winnteka they’re talking about… either the droll suburb of LA or the suburb of Chicago where Laurie Dann did that killing spree that motivated their cops to regulate Uzi machine guns for their officers after that tragedy. Maybe that explains the “big sound.”

I bring you Bob Haggart & Ray Bauduc!

Bob Haggart & Ray Bauduc were part of the rhythm section for a band called The Bob Crosby Orchestra who did some swing stuff from the late-thirties into the fifties. He was especially known for a Dixieland Jazz group called The Bobcats which featured these two backup men, one on bass and the other on Drums.

Bauduc is very well known for his drumming style, and this song was even a radio hit. His colourful style, making full use of woodblocks, cowbells, the Chinese cymbal and tom-toms, marked him out from most drummers of the swing era, and made him one of the few white drummers (George Wettling, Dave Tough and Gene Krupa were the others, but they were not so obvious) to be directly influenced by Warren “Baby” Dodds.

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

I don’t know what’s funnier. When the lads speak in their Newcastle Northern-English accents, or the great translation in Swedish. Especially when Sammy says “Ni driver med mig!”

Something I realize about Tom Jones is while people pigeonhole him as a lounge singer, throughout his career he really wanted to get his rock out, and this performance from 1976 on The Midnight Special shows another aspect of this ambition.

I love how Sly Stone starts impersonating Tom’s accent while TJ introduces him and we even get an exclamation of ‘nigga please’ before Chris Rock made it famous.

Dig Sly and Tom in a match made in heaven - at Midnight.

You can’t miss Scott Walker’s baritone and how singers like Jarvis Cocker, Morrissey and David Bowie have all been influenced by his unique voice. I just liked the fact that when he went solo, he released 3 albums simply titled “Scott.” Whats the hurt in that?

What some people may not realize is that The Walker Brothers were not even real brothers. It was all marketing, kinda like how all of The Ramones weren’t related. But like The Webb Brothers (who are related), the band had more chart success in the UK than the US. Maybe its because you had other bands like The Everyl and Righteous Brothers over here who some may have thought were similar, but the songs here are more moody and better in a lyrical sense.

Dig this early music video from the guys and don’t giggle when Scott makes emotional hand gestures.

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.

Wikipedia notes that Take Five was released on The Dave Brubeck quartet’s 1959 album Time Out. Composed by Paul Desmond, the group’s saxophonist, it became famous for its distinctive, catchy saxophone melody and use of quintuple time, from which the piece gets its name. While “Take Five” was not the first jazz composition to use this meter, it was the first of any mainstream significance, becoming a hit on the radio at a time when rock music was in fashion. “Take Five” is also known for the solo by noted jazz drummer Joe Morello.

I think its one of the few jazz songs I can think of that has a 45 pressing used for jukeboxes.

Regarding the show, Jazz Casual, For National Educational Television (now known as PBS), a gentleman named Ralph Gleason produced a series of twenty-eight programs on jazz and blues that featured B.B. King, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Sonny Rollins, among others. The series ran from 1961 to 1968. He also produced a two-hour documentary on Duke Ellington, which was twice nominated for an Emmy. Other films for television included a four-part series on the Monterey Jazz Festival, the first documentary for television on pop music, Anatomy of a Hit, and a two-hour performance and documentary on San Francisco rock, Go Ride the Music and A Night At The Family Dog.

Unfortunately, in my honest opinion, this isn’t one of Dietrich’s finer moments, but you can see where the legend one stood.

But I digress…. Andy Williams (another classic singer who I’ll focus on in later posts) had a show that lasted from 1962-1967 which was kinda like those Bob Hope specials we used to watch as kids. You had some comedy sketches, some singing and some whatever else. Its a “Variety Show” for a reason.

I have a feeling you won’t see shows like this ever again now that Bob Hope is no longer with us. Sure, there may be the over-produced Christmas Special with (insert underwhelming entertainer here), but I can’t really see these coming back anytime soon. Stuff like this makes me want to pick up those DVD copies of ‘The Andy Williams Show’, ‘The Dean Martin Comedy Hour’ and of course, ‘This is Tom Jones.’

Now that we have the internet, MTV and our short attention/multi-tasking culture, variety shows like this where the talent is full and the activity is limited don’t have much of an audience as once the act repeats itself, you change the channel or skip the program on your Tivo. However, now that you have the internet, and great sites like YouTube, you can enjoy the special moments like this as they sing ‘The Language of Love’ for The Andy Williams Show.

In any case, music shows like Hullabaloo gave him a chance here in 1965 with the song “I Love Being Here With You.”

I can sorta understand why he went back to acting after going through this performance, it sounds like talking more than singing. In any case, he has a spot in my book for some record-hunting at some point. Here’s to George!

NOTE: You may have to go directly to YouTube to watch this as the uploader asked the video to not be embedded in blogs. Respect.

Here comes another somewhat foreign post, but its Petula Clark. Yes, the woman who brought us the tune ‘Downtown’ also sang songs in French. In fact, you could call her the “British Nana Mouskouri.”

After the success of her French recordings, she ventured into German, Spanish and even Italian songs that garnerd her worldwide acclaim. She even did some songs penned by Serge Gainsbourg. I wonder what would have happened if she took the place of Bridgit Bardot or Jane Birkin? Maybe songs like ‘” or “” would have sounded a bit mroe innocent.

In any case, soon after the success of her European tunes, a composer approached her with an English song that was originally intended for The Drifters, that song soon became her signature hit, ‘Downtown.’

Let’s take a look back at this scopitone of Ms Clark performing one of those French songs.