Unless you have high tolerances for aural assaults and goofiness, you might want to sample “Musical Depreciation Revue: The Spike Jones Anthology,” a new 40-track double CD from Rhino Records, a few songs at a time.
Jones and his band, the City Slickers, made a career of musical mayhem in the 1940s and ’50s, lampooning familiar songs or playing originals with a carefully concocted sense of anarchy. Their raucous arrangements included hiccups, sneezes, whistles, cowbells, bad accents, bad jokes (“The Invisible Man is here, sir.” “Well, tell him I can’t see him”), chicken-cluck imitations and ooh-gah horns-as well as more standard instrumentation that incorporated large portions of banjo strumming and Dixieland swing.
They loved the absurd and irreverent, and their tweak-their-noses attacks on classical music (“Rhapsody From Hunger(y)”), opera (“Pal-Yat-Chee,” with guests Homer & Jethro) and romantic ballads (“Cocktails for Two,” “I’m in the Mood for Love”) no doubt exerted a kind of kindred-soul attraction for anyone who ever chafed under constraints of propriety or balked at pronouncements that some forms of entertainment (and their patrons) were culturally superior to others.
Some of this compilation sounds sophomoric and silly today, but a lot of it holds up. The material originally was released over two decades, however; listened to in one sitting, it can produce the same woozy feeling of overindulgence as too many Double Stuf Oreos. Included here are “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” a 1942 Hitler-gets-the-raspberry effort, and “All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth),” a 1948 million-seller that became a perennial holiday favorite. Also included: “Clink, Clink, Another Drink” and “Yes! We Have No Bananas.”
Other recent releases:
Wynona Carr, “Jump Jack Jump” (Specialty)-Twenty-three mid-to-late-’50s secular numbers and one gospel song from Cleveland vocalist Carr, who brings both emotion and accomplished technique to bouncy stylings and ballads-and makes you wonder why she didn’t appear more often on the top-seller charts. Also new from Specialty: Camille Howard’s “Vol. 1: Rock Me Daddy,” a 25-track collection of late-’40s/early-’50s blues, ballad and boogie-woogie recordings by pianist-singer Howard.
Ramones, “End of the Century,” “Pleasant Dreams,” “Subterranean Jungle,” “Too Tough to Die,” “Animal Boy” (Sire)-CD reissues of five albums originally released by the Ramones between 1980 and 1986, a period when the new wave/punk progenitors could be heard intermittently searching for a variation on the minimalist and deliberately mindless music that had launched the band in the mid-’70s but now looked on more and more as a stylistic trap.
Various artists, “Billboard Pop Memories” (six volumes, Rhino)-Rhino Records takes its Billboard top-hits series back to pre-rock days with the addition of six volumes (on CD or cassette) devoted to popular songs of the 1920s, the 1930s, 1940-44, 1945-49, 1950-54 and (overlapping the rock era a bit) 1955-59.
Various artists, “Hardcore Doo-Wop: In the Hallway, Under the Street Lamp” (Specialty)-As the liner notes point out, ’50s doo-wop tends to be associated with urban areas on the East Coast (New York City, New Jersey) or in the Midwest (Chicago and the northern Indiana region). This 25-track compilation consists mostly of R&B harmony material by West Coast artists, including a couple of songs with “kiddie” lead vocals by singers who must have scooted over to the recording studio just as soon as grade school got out for the day. Also included are songs by Jesse Belvin with the Laurels, Arthur Lee Maye and the Crowns, Eugene Church, the Hollywood Flames (their 1957 hit “Buzz Buzz Buzz”) and a couple of strong uptempo Ebb Records singles, the Jaguars’ “Mine All Mine” and the Ambers’ “Never Let You Go.”
Various artists, “At Midnight: T.K. Dance Classics Remixed” (Fader)-Disco oldies get a face lift as ’90s deejays/remixers update tracks from the vaults of T.K. Productions, the ’70s font of mirrored-ball material that included T.K. Records, Cat, Drive and other labels. “Get Off,” a ’70s hit for Florida band Foxy, gets three remixes, each sounding notably crisper than the original (while retaining-in two instances, at least-the original’s oh-so-disco “ooh-ooh-ooh” chant). K.C. & the Sunshine Band’s “Get Down Tonight,” Peter Brown’s “Dance With Me” and Timmy Thomas’ “Why Can’t We Live Together?” also get makeovers.
