Crank up your horns and fasten your bibs, you are invited to tuck into a HOT PLATTER of disembodied dixieland, haunted music hall, dilapidated burlesque, and merry maladies. Please keep your thumbs out of the gravy. "Good for what ails you."
To thaw your pipes first of all, a heartwarming visit from Uncle Pecos, stopping by on his way to the big time. We're blessed! He's vocalled unpeckably by honeyed character actorrrrr Shug Fisher, whose other musical output, is a tricky lot to trace. But hold on, sugar! We’ve dug some up here, so fill your boots to brims.
HOLD UP THERE PARTNERDER AND REACH FOR SKIES ETCETERA, our merry way across the prairie has been brought to a clattering halt, by a hateful hatful of unruly sod children playing at cow-bers and in-juns, like we all should at least once a day. In the 'Rad' Injun corner we have, first up, Yma Sumac, popping up from her Peruvian hilltop hut (like what they all live in) to lend support to her fellow indigenous indignants. This is ‘Amor Indio (Indian Love)’ (1950) and it will chill your bones from t’other side of a mountain. Fighting right back comes Sol K. Bright with his very much hit wonder of the singular, Hawaiian Cowboy. (If that’s far too exotic a version for you, here’s a PG version, with Chris Langham let loose on a children’s TV show.) 
As promised, we say goodbye to such nonsense and get back to business. How about Henry Spaulding and, again, a single hit wonder, Cairo Blues (1929). No more info on this one. So, so-so, suck it up. But hey - If you’re one of the lucky ones not to have lost thumbs in some incident down a shaft implosion or in an ill-advised Spinning Gertie repair attempt (that’s what the kids and midgets are there for you dolt), well then, it is time to crack out your kalimba and get pianee-ing. First along, Kankolongo Alidor with “Kalenda wa muchombela”. Have a look at the Excavated Shellac blurb on this beef, it’s all you need to know about 1950s Belgian Congo field recordings. Let’s hang around in Zaire with a bit of seamless professional DJing (phwooar, thank ye, thank ye) drifting marvellously into a slice of Roots of Rumba Rock, it’s “Towuti Brazza Toye Kisasa” by De Malo.
Now you've turned your record over and ready for some more fun-time sing-along fun. That's going to mean a meanie slapdown from Singin' Sadie ('Let's Call 'er Lil'), followed by a 100% genuine far-eastern cultural dispatch from undercover field agent Shizuko Kasagi. Calling in backup from The Club Nisei Orchestra, 'Tokyo Boogie-Woogie" (1948) is the message we're getting. See, this is what happens when your un-kamikazied Japanese WW2 survivors hole up on a Hawaiian shore and start breeding off with disenfranchised left-behind GIs. It actually literally is. Steady now, a guiding hand rummaging round you from Al Duvall ('Dead Man's Shoes') – Just as a timely reminder of what awaits all of us. It’s a curiously comforting one for those of us that don’t get invited to parties during our be-cursed waking years.
What’s-a’-this, you really thought “My Baby Just Cares For Me” was a vaguely agreeable lounge-jazzy number writ-in by Nina Simone for Disc Twos of mid-market mothers day Here Come The Girls compilation albums on the eye-level supermart impulse shelf? Blimey, best keep that howler to yourself. Here’s one of the PROPER versions from 1931ish: step up, Ted Wallace and your Campus Boys Orchestra. Reeeeeverrrrbbbbyy, this is all making us feel a bit janitor-ish in a stranded mountaintop hotel here, so let’s have more snowy fun with Scandinavian horror-pedlars Eeva-Leena Sariola, Matti Kontio, and Martti Pokela, teaming and teeming to rasp out a hot toddy of Mörri-Möykyn action, this is “Peikkopiiri”. We shalln’t be held responsible, incidentally, for your children’s nightmares when you play them these kiddie tunes as nighty-time music. It’s the only way they’ll learn. Quickly, sir, after them with that axe!
A disciple of Ustad Faiyaz Khan and Ustad Ata Hussain Khan – A great vocalist from Agra Gharana. His approach towards music was always to expand the Raga. Take any Raga-s and Ustad-ji would sing these Raga-s at length. For example Raga Malati Basant, Raga Raisa Kanada, Raga Maluha Kalyan to name a few – He could and would sing them for about an hour plus, on an average. He was always open to greater development of his music and so he was never shy to adopt something from other musicians or their respective styles. And almost always, he was successful in blending those so called foreign elements into the musical structure of Agra Gharana that he used to prefer and perform. And then the concept he would sing would be his own “Khayal”.
Bit of nonsense kicks us off, from men's best friends over a the Dogville Shorts collection to warm a singular cockle. Suiting us up and booting us off properly, we shall commence this whole endeavour with some dancing music, as implied. Tap dancing counts, yes. In a totally appropriate move, we thwack on the swoonsome Singin' Sadie . We must be careful and handle the album sleeve delicately, as it still has the big pink lipstick kiss on the back of it planted from the lady herself ff f fff f This causes funny feelings and must be put away to enable things to continue smoothlee.
We’ll shift attention across to the welcoming bosom of Amanda Randolph, with "I’ve Got Something In My Eye" (1920). AND I THINK IT’S YOU, Meatcutters Dance fans! A hot tune from the days when jazz were still half-decent, before all those dreadful farty bastards got involved with their trumpets and ruined it (gurning in your direction, Coltrane, Davis, all that mob – yeck.) But never mind those awful thoughts, here’s some more real music: it's the incomparable Yma Sumac. For the sake of avoidance of doubt, "incomparable" is the opposite of "gocomparable". You live a little, you learn a little! Yma, winner of Peru's Got Talent 1951; Inca princess if you believe the hype and not the backwards name thing; Jack of 17 octaves, master of all. There'll likely be something from this frisky momma in every show, so get yourselves used ter' it. This song is called Zana (Moises Vivanco), for your fyi."Part vaudeville rapscallion, part historical satirist, part straw-suited banjo minstrel, and very possibly one of the most engaging songwriters of recent years, Al Duvall is a bona-fide treasure. In a vintage-music setting, his painfully funny (sometimes painfully sad) and deceptively catchy songs draw on 1930's jug band music, folk-song, sea shanties, ragtime and olde English music-hall... and his laugh-out-loud lyrics -- which address topics as disparate as mermaids, shoemakers, sexual reassignment, kleptomania, bare-knuckle ballerinas, foot fetishes, raw capitalism and that olde chestnut, unrequited love -- will quietly blow your mind. He has just released his six-and-a-halfth album "Recluses Unite!" on the legendary Australian label Dualplover (Deerhoof, Justice Yeldham, Toxic Lipstick amongst many, many others)." - RADIO FREE
If Al is your trusty tour guide down the dark hollers, marshes and slack back alleys, then you might as well dry your boots here a while and get some grueltastic slathers of American Primitive laid ‘cross tongue. Taking not a jot of note whether or not your silky ears feel mauled by proto-gangster rap linguistic reappropriation, it’s a double mugging here with Geeshie Wiley’s “Pick Poor Robin Clean” (1931) pinning you down, and Tommy Settlers rifling your watch pocket with “Shaking Weed Blues”. No-one said it would all be one long picnic up Plumperchum Hill. Just mop your lip and keep it stiff.
Via our fellow peddlars of the exotic oddity, Awesome Tapes From Africa, Hamid Al Mou with, well, whatever song that is on side two, and then his good Iraqi buddy Abdul-Wahad Ahmad with whatever that is. Going waa waa waaa waaa. Actually, sorry, this is really a blooming irritating radgey racket isn't it. Some of you will be delighted to hear that I've already got this sampled and mashed for a new DiW track which is set to be even more Please-God-Make-It-Stop-Won't-Someone-Ever-God-Please than normal. Ah, temper your tiny squawking, you loves it. Will a bit of a jiggle through a bit of the Pom Poko soundtrack settle you down? Here then.
Hope you're not too choc-full of beans, because we're keeping it continental and dunking straight into our rumba-linga-ding-dong section; first up, it's more pup-themed fun as Eduardo Davidson's rythm-based LP Le Chien gets flipped onto its back and tummy tickled - lo, out pops, lipstick-style, the party-souring ditty Con Sol Y Sal. (google translation: “With Sol Y Sal”. Cheers google translation!)
