Googie Rene Combo - Wham Bam! The Best Of

Tuotetiedot

• Condition New
• Type CD
• Vendor Ace Records
• SKU 29667198721
• Artisti Googie Rene Combo
• Lyhyt kuvaus Sunday mornings in the early 60s would find a bunch of friends and myself scouring the racks of 45s in Petticoat Lane market. Not for us the Beatles and their ilk, it was the American R&B recordings we were looking for. What made our eyes gleam were platters on London, Top Rank, and the odd esoteric Parlophone or Columbia releases. There is an enthusiasm and inner warmth that comes from being a collector of vinyl, which no one outside your little circle has heard of. Even so, I suspect that on coming across a Googie Rene single we would have probably mentally consigned it to the same pigeon-hole as Edith Piaf and Sacha Distel - i.e. something vaguely European, and probably French. Wrong we would have certainly been. But it would still be a few years before Googie's name meant much to anyone on this side of the Atlantic - with the club favourite Smokey Joe's La La. If truth be told, although he was the backbone of Class Records, Rene has remained something of an "underground"" figure amongst the collector fraternity to this day. Compilers John Broven and Stuart Colman are determined to change that image with this fine offering of instrumentals running the gamut from 50s rock'n'roll, boogie woogie, jump, latin, to 60s soul-jazz. On some tracks, Googie stands out front on piano, then organ later on, while letting his cohorts take the lead on many others. Tough little R&B combos existed increasingly from the mid-50s onwards, till their ultimate demise in the disco era (although I suppose it could be said that Kool & the Gang and the Fatback Band were the natural outgrowth of those outfits). The musicians, who found a ready market for well developed riffs, usually contained the cream of the session men. Googie Rene's Combo is no exception. The cast list includes Plas Johnson, Clifford Scott, Earl Palmer, Johnny ""Guitar"" Watson, Jimmy Nolen and Rene Hall, who spent much of their working life in the West Coast recording studios-.-and, I suspect, many of their evenings playing for dancers and diners in more anonymous aggregations. Class Records was owned by Leon Rene, Googie's father, an industry veteran who had been writing and producing since the 1930s. Googie was given creative control at the label, which enabled him to develop his own songwriting, arranging, keyboard playing, and production techniques. As can be clearly seen from the progression of sides presented here, from the smooth 1956 West Coast jump of Wham Bam to the groovy 1966 Ramsey Lewis stylings, Googie had the latest chart hits and current trends always in mind when he went into the studio. The influences and inspirations are many and varied, and part of the fun in working through this compilation is to identify them. It was probably due to the usual marketing/ promotion glitches in a less-than-national operation that Googie had only three very minor hits. But as it was a family business, Class didn't turf Googie out when he failed to hit paydirt - he just kept on pushing out the singles (in excess of 20 of them over an 11 year period) plus three LPs. If airplay had been there, it's highly likely he would have had hits during the early years when instrumentals were a staple part of the Top 100 charts, for the recordings were right on the money tune-wise and musicianship-wise. The track-by-track notes by Stuart Colman, who has quietly established himself as a leading expert on the West Coast R&B musicians, are concise little essays of information. Often we are reminded of the musical context in which a cut was laid down, and perhaps more importantly to those coming to Googie for the first time, we are given word pictures of what's in the grooves. The booklet is beautifully illustrated, too. Even now, I still find Googie an odd choice of nom-de-disque, but at least it's memorable. There are, by contrast, absolutely no questions overhanging the quality of the music. It's superb, making it hard to believe this is the debut Googie Rene reissue, on LP or CD. If you thought the only instrumental albums worth collecting consisted of two guitars and fender bass and drums playing regurgitated Hank Marvin riffs, it's time to think again. By Roy Simonds (Ace Records) "
• Julkaisuvuosi 2,003