This set links to an exhibition of the same title in Paris, running from March to August 2014, but it certainly stands well in its own right, though as it attempts to cover music from North and South America, the Caribbean and Africa, there will inevitably be omissions, as the notes so readily point out. Consequently, they do also direct the reader/listener to other sets that can fill some of these gaps. The timescale involved means that it brings together ‘classic recordings made before the international pop music tidal wave of the 1960s’, and the three CDs are divided into the years 1927-1952, 1952-1958, and 1958-1962. The first CD stretches from Robert Johnson, Bukka White and Blind Blake to Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and Blind Blake (OK, from the Florida Blind Blake to the Bahamas’ Blind Blake – it was hard to resist), with the only – other than Blake’s – non-American recordings being 1939’s ‘Mbube’, by South Africa’s Solomon Linda & The Evening Birds, the tune being better known nowadays as ‘Wimoweh’ or ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, Perez Prado’s ‘Mambo No. 5’ and Brazilian Luis Gonzaga’s 1950 “forro”, ‘No Cearã Não Tem Disso Não’. As recording industries geared up worldwide, the proportion of non-north American material increases. The second CD therefore ranges across Dinah Washington, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and The Robins to Thelonius Monk, James Brown and Miles Davis, detouring into Puerto Rico, Cuba, Ghana, Jamaica, and Grand Kalle’s Congolese rumba. There is even the unique Sun Ra with a track called ‘India’, and we are also presented with Richard Berry adapting a song about a Jamaican sailor to an arrangement partially pinched from a Cuban number and coming up with ‘Louie Louie’. The third set spreads its net even wider, incorporating the New Yorker of Jamaican origin, Harry Belafonte, Bob Marley’s shufflz-ska with cane fife, Columbian “cumbia”, Cuba’s Mongo Santamaria and Celia Cruz, Haiti’s Nemours Jean-Baptiste, South African exile Miriam Makeba, Congolese rumba hero Franco and the late “soukous” pioneer, Tabu Ley Rochereau, Nigeria’s Doctor Victor Olaiya and Charles Iwegbue, and even Quincy Jones mixing it up with his well-known ‘Soul Bossa Nova’. Notable too – though that is not to dismiss the contributions of Howling Wolf, Little Richard, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, B. B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Solomon Burke, Reverend Gary Davis, John Coltrane or Eric Dolphy going way out – is the archaic-sounding spiritual, ‘Moses’, by John Davis of the Georgia Sea Islands. In short, an excellent set. I am surprised the idea has not been tried before!
Par Norman DARWEN – BLUES & RHYTHM
Par Norman DARWEN – BLUES & RHYTHM