Get Involved blog

The Fireballs – Quite A Party

I found this scruffy-looking 45 among a huge stack of equally scruffy bits and bobs whilst having a dig in the basement of Flashback (see London Record Shops) earlier this year. I knew The Fireballs had done some instrumentals on a similar vibe to The Champs (of Tequila fame) so grabbed this in the hope it might be worth checking out. And when I got home I played this side about 10 times consecutively: I love it! Turns out Quite A Party is an urgent rockabilly instrumental from 1961 and this copy, despite looking like it has been used as a doormat for twenty years, actually plays great. A great addition to my collection!

This Saturday I’ll be babysitting Dean Chalkley’s fantastic SHAKE! night up at The Boogaloo. There’ll be a whole heap of rock’n'roll, twisted soul, boogaloo and psyche to keep toes tapping and hips twisting all night long.

I’ll be joined behind the decks by Harry and Mikyla from The She Set and together we’ll conspire to drop the hottest tracks (mainly on wax) from the 50s and 60s.

Wear a smile and don’t forget your dancing shoes. It’s gonna rock!

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Oscar Boyd – When Things Get A Little Better

Good tune for the current economic climate… Oscar Boyd’s 1962 ditty When Things Get A Little Better hits all the right notes - with handclaps, backing singers and the kind of groove that gets under your skin. Things are looking up already!

Bobby Marchan – Rockin’ Pneumonia

In 1957, a 23 year old Huey Smith - who’d been cutting records since he was 15 and who played piano for Little Richard’s first band - formed Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns with blues singer Bobby Marchan. The pair signed up with Johnny Vincent at Ace Records. They had a top ten hit with Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu that very year and followed it in ‘58 with Don’t You Just Know It which was also a hit record. This week’s slab of old gold is Bobby Marchan’s 1967 solo version of Rockin’ Pneumonia released on Cameo Parkway in which the words “Boogie Woogie” are replaced with “Boogaloo”. It’s very New Orleans. It’s very, very nice. Enjoy…

The Furys – Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart

Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart is a song about falling in love. Head-over-heels, butterflies in your stomach, full-on naive, puppy-dog, swoon time shit. Over the years it’s been recorded by Chet Atkins, Judy Garland, Charlie Byrd, The Coasters, June Christy, Bob Brookmeyer, Billy Eckstine, Donald Byrd, Frank Sinatra… I mean I could go on.

This version by The Furys, from 1964 honestly makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up - you know when you hear something so wonderful that you basically get a rush? That’s what I’m talking about. Normally, a song gets me with the tune and lyrics are, for me anyway, secondary. But The Furys’ vocal delivery on this gives this gentle profession of love real presence and right now it’s a real favourite of mine.

Dear when you smiled at me, I heard a melody
It haunted me from the start
Something inside of me started a symphony
Zing! Went the strings of my heart

I still recall the thrill, guess I always will
I hope ’twill never depart
Dear, with your lips to mine, a rhapsody devine
Zing! Went the strings of my heart

The Titans – Don’t You Just Know It

Yes, this is a cover of Huey “Piano” Smith’s classic ditty, Don’t You Just Know It – but as covers go, this 1958 effort is pretty darn good - although it is almost identical to the original and came out only a few months later so it was never going to cause a sensation…

The Titans, despite selling fuck-all records, are actually an interesting bunch to read about. The founder of the band, Larry Greene started his working life as a cab driver and ended it as a record company executive. One of the band, a certain Curtis McNair, could blow a mean tenor sax and had a good voice on him. By 1965 he’d changed his name to Curtis Knight and formed a band called The Squires. In October that year he hired a guitar player called Jimmy James who’d played on a Lonnie Youngblood session and who had recently been fired by Little Richard. James only played with The Squires for about three months before signing up to play with King Curtis. In 1966 James left King Curtis, travelled to England and changed his name to Jimi Hendrix. It was Curtis McNair/Knight (of The Titans) that wrote Jimi: An Intimate Biography Of Jimi Hendrix in 1974…

All this information (and more!) was gleaned from the enlightening Marv Goldberg’s R&B Notebooks.

Little Johnny Taylor – Sometimey Woman

Well, it’s exactly a month since my last blog post. I’ve actually been on a two week holiday in that time – after spinning some discs with my good pal Leo the Amateur at a spectacularly soggy Bestival on the Isle of Wight. The sun came out for a substantial time of our DJ set and everyone danced and whooped - and the holiday was ace so all in all, it’s been a great month.

So here I am, back infront of a computer and it’s time for a long overdue slab of old gold from my record box – in the form of Little Johnny Taylor’s Sometimey Woman from 1968. I’m a big fan of what I’ve heard thus far of Little Johnny Taylor (not to be confused with Johnnie Taylor, previously featured on this blog) and have a growing stack of his singles but this was the first one I found.

The Moody Blues – Lose Your Money

This is another record I picked up in Hastings the other weekend from Rick’s Records. I know this song because the Ron-Dells covered it - and I first heard their version on the brilliant It’s Great Shakes blog. So when I saw this, the original version of Lose Your Money by The Moody Blues from 1964, I had to grab it. I’ve never actually seen this London middle before either… The song was originally released on Decca F11971 as the B-side to Steal Your Heart Away. It sounds a bit like Van Morrison hooked up with the Rolling Stones and got really drunk in the studio…

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

So there are a few of us with a groaning spare room full of vinyl. I heard that DJ Andy Weatherall has a spare HOUSE full of his records. I’d imagine that Mr Scruff, Gilles Peterson and Norman Jay and various other longtime DJs and collectors have similar record collection scenarios…

But these guys aren’t putting their entire collections up for sale. Unlike a certain Paul Mawhinney from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the owner of, allegedly, the world’s largest record collection. Mawhinney is putting his treasure trove of around two and a half million records up for sale for a very cool $3 million. A paltry sum compared to the whopping $50 million his collection is estimated to be worth.

Mawhinney’s been collecting most of his working life and when he’d acquired around 60,000 records, his wife told him he either sold them / got rid of them or set up a shop (to sell / get rid of them). So, he set up Record-Rama and traded records, making sure to keep a copy of everything that came into the shop – meaning he actually acquired more records at a faster rate than ever before - DOH! Check out the above film by Sean Dunne of Mawhinney’s incredible record-collecting story.

(Link: hypebeast - thank you Mr Huglife for bringing this to our attention)

I was recently perusing some online record stores for some new sounds and came across this 45 from Scorpio Sounds. I’m not sure who’s behind this label but I do know that this isn’t the only 45 they’ve put out with slept-on nuggets from back in the day. They seem particularly interested in that country-got-soul sound and highly sample-able drum sounds. This record’s got two great tunes on it (Alan Shelly’s funky organ monster, Dance Together is on the A side) but, for me, it’s all about Bobby Darin’s Song For A Dollar on the flip, which originally appeared on Direction 351 in 1969.

Here’s a sample for your ears:
Song For A Dollar sample

I grabbed a copy from Fat City’s website.