Doonesbury's Jimmy Thudpucker: Greatest Hits

From superstar Jimmy Thudpucker (a.k.a. James "Jimmy" Brewer) comes this album on John Denver's Windsong label which existed entirely to support the proposition that the character Jimmy Thudpucker, featured in Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury comic in the 1970s, was a real person. Of course it was a put-on, but the songwriting and production values were not. For more background on this trompe l'oreille slab of soft rock, see Martin Schneider's great post on the Dangerous Minds blog. Meanwhile here's a fresh scan of the LP, the inner sleeve, and the 8-page comics booklet included inside each copy.

You Can't Fight It
Take Your Life
I Don't Know My Love
Stop
Indian Brown
Where Can I Go
I Do Believe
Fretman Sam
Ginny's Song
So Long / Overture '73

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Peter Cook & Dudley Moore: Decca singles 1965-1967

Here are four of the five singles that Peter Cook & Dudley Moore released on Decca between 1965 and 1967 (I've omitted the Bedazzled-era single featuring "Bedazzled" and "Love Me", since those songs are available on the 2010 Dudley Moore CD Bedazzled Revisited on the 101 Distribution label, which is a thing you should get because it is awesome).

Not Only But Also
Goodbyeee
The Ballad of Spotty Muldoon
Lovely Lady of the Roses
Isn't She a Sweetie
Bo Dudley
The L.S. Bumble Bee
The Bee Side

Audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Peter Cook & Dudley Moore: Not Only...But Also

File under "That's Not Confusing At All": Cook and Moore's first album for Decca was Not Only Peter Cook...But Also Dudley Moore (1965). This, their last album of original material for Decca, was called simply Not Only...But Also (1971). This one's awfully scarce on the used merch internets, so I was particularly glad when I finally scored a copy, and the contents did not disappoint.

Dud Dreams
In the Club
Lengths
This Is Ludwig Van Beethoven
The Making of a Movie
0 0 Dud

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Peter Cook & Dudley Moore: Once Moore with Cook

Cook & Moore's second LP for Decca, released in 1966. This one's gold from start to finish.

Dud and Pete on Sex
Father and Son
The Frog and Peach
Six of the Best
The Music Teacher
A Bit of a Chat
Dud and Pete at the Zoo
The Psychiatrist

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Peter Cook & Dudley Moore: Not Only Peter Cook...But Also Dudley Moore

Cook & Moore's first LP on Decca, compiled from their television show. "The Ravens", in which Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling explains how he's spent the last forty years trying to teach ravens to fly underwater, is pretty much the closest peek straight into Peter Cook's gray matter this world ever got.

The Ravens
Superstitions
Tramponuns
Art Gallery
Initials
Religions

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

David Carroll: Percussion in Hi-Fi (stereo version)

And here's "Percussion in Hi-Fi" once more, in stereo this time. This brings to the fore how, aside from the content of the music, this record exemplifies its era: The mono and stereo LP releases don't just feature different artwork, the records contain completely different performances. There was no "fixing it in the mix" in 1957: the mono version was recorded in one location with one set of mikes in a single-speaker mix captured to one track, while the stereo version was performed in a different place with different mikes and captured on two tracks (even the arrangements changed between sessions: "Controversy" features a full extra minute of material). I have no idea in what order the sides were cut or which performances the producers found preferable; this stereo version seems to have a fuller bass response, though.

Hell's Bells
Bali Ha'i
The Chimes of Swing
Malagueña
Discussion in Percussion Part I: Quiet Talk
Discussion in Percussion Part II: Chatter
Discussion in Percussion Part III: Controversy
The Cricket
Jungle Drums
Spanish Symphonique No. I: The Pyrenees
Spanish Symphonique No. II: Madrid
Spanish Symphonique No. III: Bullfight
Spanish Symphonique No. IV: Finale - Flamenco

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

David Carroll: Percussion in Hi-Fi (mono version)

Nutty exotica sounds from conductor David Carroll. Piano, bass, guitar, and harp join six percussionists as they bang out some truly manic arrangements. "Hell's Bells" and "The Cricket" will make your day, and "Chimes of Swing" features an improv jazz chimes solo, which I was not heretofore aware had happened in the annals of music. The next blog post will feature this album's interesting twin...

Hell's Bells
Bali Ha'i
The Chimes of Swing
Malagueña
Discussion in Percussion Part I: Quiet Talk
Discussion in Percussion Part II: Chatter
Discussion in Percussion Part III: Controversy
The Cricket
Jungle Drums
Spanish Symphonique No. I: The Pyrenees
Spanish Symphonique No. II: Madrid
Spanish Symphonique No. III: Bullfight
Spanish Symphonique No. IV: Finale - Flamenco

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

The Burbank Philharmonic

Um, so, session musicians? Brief Dixieland popularity uptick? Perhaps only these two conditions, plus the existence of Los Angeles, were necessary in order that America should have produced this LP in 1970. This rush of blood to the head is all Dixie arrangements of pop tunes: just one of three known LPs from the Bravo label, which was active from 1968-1970. A Snuff Garret production, with liner notes by Gary "Pawned Tonsils" Owens. Don't miss "These Boots Are Made for Walking", which demonstrates the fact that they had a contrabass saxophone, and YOU DO NOT.

Big Noise from Winnetka
You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling
These Boots Are Made For Walking
Italian Village
Banjo City
Hey Jude
King of the Road
Spinning Wheel
Michelle
Light My Fire
The Happy Whistler
My Special Angel

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Don Bowman: Our Man in Trouble

Don Bowman, who died in 2013 at age 75, hosted “American Country Countdown” from 1973-1978. This is his first of five albums of comedy tunes for RCA Victor, featuring the top 40 hit “Chit Akins, Make Me a Star”. The opening cut “Wildwood Weed” became a #7 hit for Jim Stafford ten years later, and deserves to be a 420 anthem forevermore.

From RCA Victor’s 1963-4 series of seven “Our Man In” LPs by various artists (including Sonny Rollins, Our Man in Jazz; Henry Mancini, Our Man in Hollywood; Chet Atkins, Our Man in Nashville; Al Hirt, Our Man in New Orleans; Perez Prado, Our Man in Latin America; and Melachrino, Our Man in London).

Wildwood Weed

Breakfast Food Song

That’ll Never Sell Records

Hollywood Clothes

Anytime

Wrong House

500 Miles the Wrong Way

Chit Akins, Make Me a Star

I Don’t Hurt Anymore

I Never Did Finish That Song

Just Because

Red River Sally

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Douglas Adams: The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Part 2: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The second LP, as released in Canada on the Hannibal label in 1982. Like the previous Hannibal LP, this was released in the 1980s and has never been reissued.

Journey of the Sorcerer
The Story So Far
Breakfast at Milliways
Disaster Area
Reg Nullify in Concert
Apocalypse When?
Big Black Cars
How Are We for Time?
Ins and Outs of the Universe
Is There Life After Lunch?
Empty Vessels
"B" Ark Up the Wrong Tree
Poetic Circles
Origin of the Species

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Douglas Adams: The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Part 1

The first LP, as released in Canada on the Hannibal label in 1982. I prefer the BBC radioplay, but completists will definitely need this unique performance of the material. Includes two tiny bonus cuts – one revealing the name of the author of the worst poetry of all time (the name was censored on the record by reversing each word; I’ve un-reversed it), the other revealing who bruised his upper arm in the Heart of Gold attack (cut into the inner groove of side 3). The more expanded BBC version is still available for purchase, but this version has never been reissued.

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Ace Trucking Company

From 1970, here’s the only album from improv/sketch comedy troupe Ace Trucking Company, featuring Patti Deutsch, Michael Mislove, Bill Saluga, George Terry and Fred Willard. Recorded entirely in one late-night five-hour session in front of an invited crowd in RCA’s Studio A, the album’s first two tracks are the only prepared material; everything else was invented on the spot based on audience suggestions. Even a decade after Nichols and May’s all-improv album Examine Doctors, it was still damned audacious to devote most of a full-length album to completely unprepared material, and they handle themselves well; but the homophobia has aged poorly, and too many skits build only to fizzle like a missed sneeze. Highlights include “Paqua Velva”, “Othello”, and "The Honeymoon Night".

Paqua Velva

The Electric Chair

Psychiatrist and Patient

The Drugstore

10 to 5 to 5

The Soap Opera

Constipation

The Honeymoon Night

The First Buffalo Hunt

Othello

The Last Supper

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Lemming of the BDA