Poppydisc News

Les Baxter The Passions (1954) featuring Bas Sheva is an experimental, avant-garde, exotica masterpiece with Bas Sheva"s dramatic vocals, ranging from moans, grunts, and shrieks to melodic singing...portraying intense emotions like "Despair" and "Lust," paired with Baxter"s complex, orchestral, and percussive arrangements. Dark, intense, and highly theatrical, it is often described as a cross between a 1950s film score and avant-garde music.Bas Sheva"s voice is like another instrument, wordless, anguished, or ecstatic shrieks abound, and blend well with Baxter"s usual adventurous scoring. Solid Purple colour LP:

Joe Harriott"s High Spirits (1965), is a post-bop album featuring the British/Jamaican saxophonist"s quintet playing interpretations of tunes from the Noël Coward musical of the same name, this album is characterized by its melodic, swinging, and accessible nature, featuring strong, lyrical work from Harriott and trumpeter Shake Keane, with arrangements by pianist Pat Smythe. Unlike the more "free-form" experiments Harriott was known for at the time, High Spirits sticks to a more traditional hard-swinging, post-bop style, the quintet"s arrangements and, crucially, their improvisational skills, rescue it from being a commercial or bland effort. Transparent Violet colour vinyl pressing.

1956 album from the 'King of Mambo'. Perez Prado and His Orchestra "Havana, 3 a.m."

Hear the most wonderful sounds beautifully remastered by Mr. Nick Robbins at Sound Mastering...

* Super cute, lovely, Mambo-Tastic yet Rock n Roll artwork by Mr. Allan NoMan

Imagine..if you will...a world in which your dreams of a HOT crazy, sexy, dancing Havana 3 A.M in 1956 come to outrageous life? Try here then my friends, a recreation in studio Hi Fi blaring horns-tastic percussion heavy sounds, as perhaps the first ever concept album (fighting it out for the honour with Frank Sinatra’s Songs For Young Lovers) blasts from your system, taking you in a personal Tardis with Mambo King Perez Prado, to dance the night away….large Mojitos and giant cigars are optional….dance is not…..the other super sexy dancers are in YOUR mind!

Sylvie Vartan's most wonderful songs beautifully remastered by Mr. Nick Robbins at Sound Mastering... Super cute, lovely, yet Rock n Roll artwork by Mr. Allan NoMan

Detailed liner notes by M.Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe, author of the acclaimed, beautiful, and definitive book "Ye-Ye Girls of '60s French Pop"

Imagine..if you will...a world in which your dearest chic girl pop singer guests a couple of humour records, goes on to have hit after hit, is all over TV and media, with the coolest radio shows and magazines for youngsters being almost fanzines for her. Then she gets her own TV shows and um, marries Elvis, and does a multi-night stand at the Paris Olympia where The Beatles are supporting HER! That world existed, it was early 1960s France, a marvellous, self contained world of music, film and art, where Vince Taylor was not a weird guy in leather pants who never really clicked with the kids,but the major star he was in his own head! And..Well, obviously, it wasn't really Elvis, but the French-World analogue Johnny Hallyday (handsome, good hair, and a great dancer!), so..in France it WAS!... But the hits? The TV shows? And the magazines and radio? Yes! Those really happened....and The Beatles did support her (and it was a big and lucky night in their career!)...Now, don't you wish we were there, in that world? A bizarro technicolor mix of....I don't know, Viva Las Vegas/HELP!/Les Demoiselles de Rochefort? I certainly do...or maybe pop this record on and let's pretend? Oh, I think so, yes...