El Pussy Cat is an excellent lp from Mongo Santamaria, released in 1965 on Columbia. It was his first LP after the the smash hit Watermelon Man! (45 and LP of the same name) in 1963. Much as I love Mongo’s version of that Herbie Hancock classic – I have the 45 on Battle, and play it regularly – overall, I’d rate El Pussy Cat as the better LP. There is more of an Afro-Cuban feel and more of a jazz vs pop-boogaloo sound.

The title track is a bit goofy, with fake cat mewling, but the groove was striking enough that it was covered by a couple of noted ska artists: Roland Alphonso (1965) and Bad Manners (1980). The prolific session drummer Sandy Nelson also covered it in 1965 on the Drum Discotheque lp, but then Sandy Nelson covered just about everything.

The cuts are all originals from various members of the band, including Bobby Capers (alto/baritone sax and flute), Marty Sheller (trumpet), Hubert Laws (flute and tenor sax) and Carmello Garcia (timbales and drums).

Afro-Cuban music was a big influence on pop music and jazz in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, from “Louie, Louie” to “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” to the great hits produced by Bert Berns (e.g., “My Girl Sloopy” by the Vibrations, “A Little Bit of Soap” by the Jarmels, “Twist and Shout” by the Isley Brothers, “Tell Him” by the Exciters).

There is an excellent bio/documentary out now about Bert Berns, which is disappointing only in its failure to highlight by name such great Afro-Cuban artists as Mongo and Teacho Wiltshire, the latter of whom arranged many of Berns’s records.

Here is a link to the trailer for Bang! The Bert Berns Story.

https://bit.ly/2Ib2XIW

With Charles Lloyd, are we more in the mainstream of jazz than with Mongo? I guess you’d have to say that, but as with many great artists, Charles Lloyd has covered so much ground that to label him at all is a mistake.

Listening to this made me realize that I need to seek out more of his work. The quartet is outstanding – Lloyd on tenor and flute; Keith Jarrett on piano; Ron McClure on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums, and the four extended pieces give them all room to stretch out.

Lloyd blows hard at times, and beautiful at all times on this record, often evoking Coltrane and Ornette Coleman on the tenor. The bio on his website says that “at the height of his career in 1970, Lloyd disbanded the quartet and dropped from sight, withdrawing to pursue an inner journey in Big Sur.” This was his last record before that period began.

Lloyd returned to the jazz world in the early 1980’s and is still touring today.

With apologies to Wynonie Harris, a true R&B pioneer, this 45 release of his 1946 78 RPM single “Dig This Boogie” b/w “Lightnin’ Struck the Poor House” is all about the debut of a young pianist named Herman Blount, soon to be known to this, and who knows what other, worlds as Sun Ra.

“Dig This Boogie” is a hard-swinging number, with Sun Ra leading the intro over Harris’s propulsive drumming. The B-side is a more laid-back tune, with sax and trumpet complementing the vocals.

This reissue was created by Modern Harmonic for Record Day 2017 on red vinyl with an initial pressing of 1000. What makes this even sweeter is the cover art by Cal Schenkel, the Philadelphia area native who is most noted for his work on the covers of Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention recordings.

Cal is still very much active as an artist, and you can see more of his artwork and purchase it here. http://www.ralf.com/galerie/

The record is a bit of a curiosity, but it is just one more element in the amazing mosaic of Sun Ra’s work. Some may view him as an eccentric or an outsider, but for someone who charted his own path more than perhaps any other jazz artist, he had a deep grounding and appreciation for the music that went before him, whether R&B, big band jazz or bebop.

His live shows were legendary, and a free jazz brawl with someone dancing in a chicken costume (there were always costumes) might be followed by a stomping and faithful rendition of a Fletcher Henderson chart. (I saw that show). He was a hell of a pianist and a constant composer.

From the late 60’s to the early 90’s Sun Ra (or Sonny, as his friends called him) and the core of his Arkestra lived in a house in Germantown, Philadelphia. I remember looking him up in the phone book around 1977; there was the listing “Ra Sun GE8-9007”.

Around the same time, I was working as a substitute teacher in the Philadelphia School System and met another sub who had played oboe with Sun Ra for a while. He said it was great, because there weren’t too many gigs for a jazz oboe player; though he left as the scene was a bit bizarre at the Germantown house.

I promise there will be only one more Xmas music post, but it is the one you have been waiting for, featuring that great artist….Napoleon XIV