MOON GAS.. MOOG MAGIC!

Like a Thai massage but better: this record really rubs me the right way! I discovered Dick Hyman (no, I'm not getting into any irony, on this blog we're all grown ups. Right?) via a Summertime recording* he did with Niels Henning Ørsted Pedersen. I have to admit that, at the time, I had never heard of Hyman. How could I? The man only made over a 100 albums, wrote scores for a gazillion Woody Allen movies and played with some dead dude named Benny Goodman. So obviously The Melvin cannot be faulted.

Initially known as a Bebop kid, Hyman has both speed and swing. But Cypress Hill sampled this song for something else: the magic that Dick jammed out of his Moog synthesizer. Because 16 years before Hansjörg 'Giorgio' Moroder made blue love to Dr. Robert Moog's machine, 11 years before Kraftwerk recorded the iconic Autobahn, and 5 years before Walter - later Wendy - Carlos introduced the moog to the greater public with Switched on Bach, Hyman recorded Moon Gas (above). That is just WILD.
As I post this, Moon Gas only has 2576 clicks on Youtube. A disgrace! Let's get this number up amigo's, spread the Moog and spread the Dick!

*Sadly deleted from Youtube, I'll try to get it up myself. Here's a version that is not too bad either.

TRANSFERRED COVER KITTEN

Melvin admits picking up this LP only because it looked soooo faux. Apparently, in 1983 it was considered a good marketing  using Dutch bodybuilding champ Marie-Jose van der Laan to promote a perfectly respectable bop record. Do I love the eighties! 

Chicago born saxophonist and flutist Joseph Carl Firrantello (1937-1986), aka Joe Farrell, recorded with Charlie Mingus, Art Pepper and George Benson and featured in the original line-up of Chick Corea's Return to Forever. At the end of his life and - so I read - beat up by a rather nasty drug habit, he met drummer Louis Hayes and Dutchmen Rob van den Broeck (p) and Harry Emmery (d) in Studio 44 (Monster, Holland) to blow out some seriously tight tunes regardless.
The title track is my favourite, but each of the other 4 listings would equally justify the transfer from Melvin's section for Cover Kittens to the Jazz department. I checked out Marie-Jose: she's a career coach now, also giving workshops 'Dress for Success'. Sweet!

LET'S GET AWAY FROM IT ALL

Ray reminding us what to do on a sunny day. Walk out of the office, round up three fit birds in bathing suits and gear up for an afternoon you will remember. On Let's get away from it all (Columbia CL 1097), Ray Ellis (1923-2008) treats us on some 40 minutes of Big Band, not entirely unlike Quincy Jones' Soul Bossa Nova which, as any Snag* should know, is of course the soundtrack to the only white boy who could ever upstage James Brown: Austin Powers.  Now go and Behave!

* Not the Australian sausage but the Sensitive New Age Gentleman who, it cannot be stressed enough, is a completely different animal from the Sensitive New Age Guy.