Voyage to the Great Attractor

Happy New Year folks! I am currently working on a special compilation project called Bring Out Your Dead that will feature some of the great talents who died in 2008. You can catch a sneak preview and hear yours truly on “Voyage to the Great Attractor”, hosted by Bill Whitehead every Saturday at 10:00 a.m. on CFRU, 93.3 FM (University of Guelph, Ontario). I should be on the air somewhere around 10:30, this Saturday, 10 January 2009. Visit www.cfru.ca for the live stream: 128-kbps | 96-kbps. If you cannot tune in on Saturday, or if you are just too impatient, you can listen to a 22-minute sneak-preview of Bring Out Your Dead in the player below:

Neal Hefti & Count Basie – “Shoutin’ Again” [1962]

Neal Hefti was a trumpeter and composer who is best remembered by jazz fans for his work with Count Basie’s “New Testament” band in the mid-1950s, but it was his TV theme songs that made him famous. He claimed that the “Batman” theme was the hardest piece he ever wrote. “Shoutin’ Again” was composed as the title track for Count Basie’s Verve label [V-8511] debut, “On My Way & Shoutin’ Again”, in 1962.

Harvey Korman – “Blazing Saddles” [1974]

Harvery Korman will be remembered for consistently cracking up while doing sketches on the Carol Burnett Show. His fellow actors had an ongoing pool where they wagered not IF but WHEN Harvey would crack up during the sketch. This scene from Blazing Saddles where Korman plays Hedley Lamarr is a classic.

Nappy Brown – “Don’t Be Angry” [1955]

Napoleon Brown Culp was a leader in the first wave of R&B that became popular with white audiences during the 1950s. Brown’s powerful voice and emotive style played a key role in the development of Soul music.

Paul Newman – Poker scene from “Cool Hand Luke” [1967]

Paul Newman appeared in several of the most revered films ever made, but it was Cool Hand Luke (1967) that became THE cult classic. The poker game scene is a turning point in the film where Luke Jackson’s character (played by Newman) begins to win over the hearts and minds of his prison mates. After winning the pot by bluffing, Luke says “sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand”, and from then on he is known as Cool Hand Luke.

Odetta Holmes – “Timber” [1957]

Odetta was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist who has been referred to as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement”. Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she was influential musically and ideologically to many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. This recording was taken from her Tradition label release, “The Gate of the Horn.”

Pink Floyd – “Remember a Day” [1968]

Richard Wright played keyboards for Pink Floyd and also composed and sang several of their best known songs. This recording from “A Saucerful of Secrets” features Wright on piano and Fairlight synthesizer, an instrument he started touring with again shortly before he died. The introduction to this track features a segment from a 1968 speech by William Frank Buckley Jr., an American author and conservative commentator, a member of Yale’s secret society: Skull and Bones, and a former employee of the CIA. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist.

Eldon Rathburn – “City Faces” [1967]

Eldon Davis Rathburn was a composer from Queenstown, New Brunswick. He composed Labyrinthe for a special National Film Board of Canada pavilion at Expo-67. The introduction to this track features Phillip Agee, a former CIA officer who exposed several CIA operatives and their aliases in the early 1970s.

Charlton Heston – Scene from “Planet of the Apes” [1968]

Charlton Heston was an actor best known for his heroic roles. In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. Initially a moderate Democrat, he later supported conservative politics and was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003. The “damned dirty ape” scene from Planet of the Apes (where Heston played Colonel George Taylor) is classic.

Jimmy McGriff – “The Bird Wave” [1970]

James Harrell McGriff was a hard bop and soul-jazz organist and organ trio bandleader who developed a distinctive style of playing the Hammond B-3 organ. He also played vibes, alto sax, drums and upright bass. “The Bird Wave” was recorded in 1969 and was released on the “Electric Funk” LP [Blue Note 84350] in 1970.