YOU MAY WALK THE STREETS AT SUNDOWN LOOKING FOR (1) TROUBLE OR (2) A NEW SWEETIE PIE AFTER LISTENING TO THESE TORRID SHAKERS BY THE SCARLETS FROM 1959.

 

Behold “Park Avenue” (above) and “Stampede” (below), two instrumental shakers recorded in 1959 by The Scarlets, a group that would release only one 45 before morphing into another group, or disbanding, or running riot. To be fair, it’s always possible they power-walked or jogged riot. “Park Avenue” is the B-side, but we present it first because we prefer it just a smidgen better than “Stampede.” We admit that “Park Avenue” is brighter; “Stampede” is more malevolent. Still, we prefer the B-side, slightly. And in case you haven’t noticed, we specialize in bands like The Scarlets, who poked their heads out for just one recording session in 1959 — during that fertile Shakers Era between the appearance of Elvis and the British Invasion of the Beatles et. al.

After listening to “Stampede” we feel like walking the hot summer streets at sundown just looking to heist — or hoist — an armored car. It doesn’t matter, heist or hoist, we’re just fairly jacked up. With “Park Avenue” on the other hand, we want to walk the hot summer streets at sundown and find us some new sweetie pies. We want to tell them all sorts of tales about ourselves — “we just heisted an armored car” — “we just hoisted an armored car” — before whirling them about a dance floor to the strains of that phat saxophone. O, we have torrid affairs with our new sweetie pies, and O, our new sweetie pies have torrid affairs with us. (For couple of minutes, anyhow. . . . . It’s all very innocent fwiw.)

As for you, Dear Readers, skip the heisting and hoisting and go right for the new sweetie pies. We suppose you can keep your old sweetie pies if you must. The key thing is to medicate yourselves (in moderation) and prepare to jump (knee high?) when that phat sax arrives.

Discography and Personnel:
“Stampede” b/w “Park Avenue.” Dot Records 16004, Hollywood, Calif. (1959). Also released on Prince Records PR 1207, Hollywood, Calif. (1959). Likely personnel: Tony Lepard (drums); John Sanzone (guitar); Pete Antonio aka Pete Antell (lead guitar); Bert Salmirs (piano); Howard Herman (saxophone); unknown additional musicians may include a second saxophone and upright bass. Composition credits: Wally Zober, Bert Salmirs, and Pete Antonio (“Stampede”); Wally Zober and Bert Salmirs (“Park Avenue”).

Earlier on, the band may have been known as Tony Leopard and the Spots before changing to other names such as the Escorts and the Scarlets. Antell, Salmirs, and Herman went on to have lengthy careers in music. Sanzone seems to have been a Vietnam Veteran who served in the U.S. Navy. Not much is known about Lepard and any of the other musicians who may have played on these tracks.


Sources of information:
Discogs page for The Scarlets
Howard Herman website
Pete Antell website
AllMusic page for Bert Salmirs’ composing credits
Blogpost with some biographical information on John Sanzone
John Clemente. Girl Groups: Fabulous Females Who Rocked the World. Author House, 2013
September 28, 1959 issue of The Billboard

THE TOP 25 MOST IMPORTANT AMERICAN MUSICIANS (+5) (+1 SPECIAL MENTION) TO WHOM YOU MUST LISTEN BEFORE YOU CAN HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH ME ABOUT MUSIC (played ca. 1870 to ca. 1970).

The only one for whom an instrument

—the Sousaphone (a tuba)—is named.

Consider the number of unrecorded musicians—like Buddy Petit—and the number of recorded musicians—such as Bunk Johnson—and the number of bandleaders—King Oliver, for example—who were important to Louis Armstrong, a Crescent City native who would become the most exceptional figure, indisputably, in the history of American music. Through cornet and trumpet playing that established his reputation as a soloist (and established the standing of the jazz soloist in general) and his swinging, gravel-sweet voice, Satchmo would eventually influence just about every musician on this list, but calling these men and women important doesn’t mean that they were first to play their instruments or first to hold a microphone close to their mouths. It doesn’t even mean that they were greatest in their genres, or sub-genres, although many of them, posthumously and otherwise, continue to be giants. (Only a few on the list live to play.) No, these musicians excelled at absorbing rich cultural threads and transforming them into performances, recordings, and inventions that attracted the attention of other musicians, or intensive critical acclaim, or the interest of a new and durable audience; or, of course, all three. Many of the artists on this list composed groundbreaking works of their own, but the list, alas, does not contain a host of seminal American composers—Arlen, Barber, Berlin, Bernstein, Brubeck, Cage, Carmichael, Cohan, Copland, Feldman, Gershwin Bros., Glass, Hammerstein, Ives, Q. Jones, S. Joplin, Kern, Porter, Reich, Rodgers, and Strayhorn, among others—who shaped a variety of American idioms, as well as the playing, at times, of these very 25 (+5) (+1) performers. Nor does this list necessarily contain the blogger’s personal favorites, such as the soprano saxophone jazz-man, Steve Lacy, for instance, who may have been a great musician, but whose greatness may have derived from the importance (and greatness) before him, of Thelonious Monk. This gathering of artists ends circa 1970, a point by which every musician contained herein had demonstrated his or her indispensable value to American music, but leaves off, more or less, before other acts—Captain Beefheart, Sonic Youth, Michael Jackson, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, et al.—would push into, stagger, and re-ramify the vessels of music and musical commerce. The writer Michael Ondaatje fantasized about the psychological undoing of legendary (and unrecorded, hardly celebrated) New Orleans trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, in his novel, Coming Through Slaughter, but Bolden’s contribution may have been to inspire a very young Louis Armstrong, ‘round about nineteen ought seven, who may have been, himself, offering brassy announcements on his cornet, in the same streets, as part of a job riding atop a junk cart. Undoubtedly, there have been numerous other isolations and obscurities in the development of American music—Appalachian banjo pickers, coal mine protest songs, funeral marches, marches, fife and drum corps, and migrant jug bands are just a few that come to mind—but we should offer thanks for the collective energy that has led us toward these 25 (+5) (+1) important musicians, in A, B, C order:

(Top 25)

Louis Armstrong

James Brown

Johnny Cash

Ray Charles

Ornette Coleman

John Coltrane

Bing Crosby

Miles Davis

Fats Domino

Bob Dylan

Duke Ellington

Dizzy Gillespie

Woody Guthrie

Jimi Hendrix

Billie Holiday

Robert Johnson

Thelonious Monk

Muddy Waters

Charlie Parker

Elvis Presley

Frank Sinatra

Bessie Smith

John Philip Sousa

Velvet Underground

Hank Williams

(+5)

Count Basie

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers

Coleman Hawkins

Sonny Rollins

Lester Young

(+ 1 Special Mention)

Roy Brown, for “Rockin’ at Midnight.” [For more on Roy Brown, and other musicians like him, please see the Jump Blues post.]