Since the old lady moved out I've been trying to get things back the way I like them. It's taken three plus years but I finally rescued a bunch of records from temporary banishment in the basement back to their rightful spot on the first floor. So far I've moved about 2400 LPs and several boxes of 45s, so this time around I thought I'd spotlight a couple of my favorite picture sleeves. Enjoy!

Steve Martin used to be the funniest comedian out there way back in the 70's. I first remember him from early appearances on the 'Mike Douglas Show' where he played banjo with a trick arrow through his head while spouting non sequiturs. Even though his act left Mike and his audience more baffled than tickled, Martin persevered, and by the time I got to college he was playing university campuses across the country and selling more records than Elvis.

Born in Waco, Texas and raised in southern California, Martin studied philosophy in college before dropping out to pursue comedy full time. He worked as a writer on the 'Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' (the staff of writers there won an Emmy in 1969), Glen Campbell's show and on Sonny and Cher's show, where he also appeared occasionally in skits.

After polishing his own routine in local comedy clubs, Martin moved up to opening for musical acts like The Carpenters and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. (Ironically, when I saw him at EMU in the late seventies, Lovin' Spoonful founder John Sebastian was opening for him and the audience could barely sit through the music, shouting 'We want Steve!' until the poor bastard finally sang the theme from 'Welcome Back Kotter' and exited stage right.)

Steve worked his way up to an appearance on the 'Tonight Show', and, along with appearances on SNL and 'The Gong Show', picked up enough steam to get a record deal. His first album 'Let's Get Small' garnered Martin a national audience and the punchline from one of his bits, 'Excuuuu-uuuse me!' became a catch phrase that swept the nation.

The single 'King Tut' came from Martin's second LP, 'A Wild and Crazy Guy' (which also became a basis for a recurring bit on SNL featuring himself and Dan Aykroyd). Both of his first two albums won Grammys for Best Comedy Record and 'Wild and Crazy Guy' shot to the #2 position on the Billboard charts, propelled by 'King Tut' , which went all the way to #17 on the Hot 100 in 1978.

After conquering the recording industry and stand up comedy, Martin set his sights on Hollywood, writing and starring in his first film, a short called 'The Absent-Minded Waiter', which won an Oscar nomination in 1977. From there he went on to be directed by Carl Reiner in 'The Jerk', Martin's first starring vehicle and probably still the funniest of all his movies.Since then, Martin has appeared in and/or written and/or served as executive producer for dozens of films, including 'Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid' (1982), 'The Man With Two Brains' (1983), 'Little Shop of Horrors' (1986) and 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' (1988). He even made it to mainstream pictures, playing straight roles in tamer stuff like 'Parenthood' (1989), 'Father of the Bride' (1991) and 'Bringing Down the House' (2003) - which also featured Queen Latifah, and recently starred alongside Beyonce as Inspector Clousseau in the 2006 'Pink Panther' remake.

An accomplished banjo player, Martin shares a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance (along with several other banjo players, including the legendary Earl Scruggs) for their 2001 recording of 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown'.

Steve's also authored several books, ranging from his 1979 comedy release 'Cruel Shoes' to last year's autobiography 'Born Standing Up'.

To this day, Martin remains a regular host of 'Saturday Night Live', and is running neck-and-neck with Alec Baldwin for most appearances as host of the popular late night comedy show, and rumor has it there will be a second 'Pink Panther' movie some time next year.

I have to be honest, though, I think Steve 'jumped the shark' with 'Parenthood', and I couldn't bring myself to even watch 'Pink Panther' (even with Beyonce in almost every frame) because the trailer for it made him look so bad compared to the late, great Peter Sellers. But you gotta love this guy! He just keeps plugging away!

Speaking of plugging away, my comedy records (including copies of Martin's LPs) are still in boxes sitting on the kitchen floor while my back recovers from moving my 78s, my jazz vocals, my country and western, my R & B and several hundred miscellaneous records last weekend. Unfortunately, all the first floor shelves are full and the comedy records have to go up one more flight of stairs.

I figure I should have everything where it belongs by the time Barack Obama starts his second term. What's that you say? I'm lazy? YOU think I'M lazy?

Well, excuuuuuuu-uuuse ME!

Love it or hate it, the 'Batman' television show was a ground-breaker in many ways. Airing on ABC in prime time, the series consisted of twice-a-week, half-hour installments instead of the traditional one-hour format, the first episode leaving the Dynamic Duo in some sort of predicament sure to get you to tune in for part two. Sort of like a miniature version of the old adventure movie serials. The show was also heavily influenced by Pop Art, the most public art movement of the Twentieth Century, and since it aired in the mid-sixties, right at the height of Pop Art popularity, 'Batman' became a sort of parody of itself. A goofy, illogical, extremely colorful romp through the pages of DC Comics' second most popular comic book, complete with flying sound effects brushed right across the screen.

More comedy than adventure, the show still worked on a lot of levels. The villains came to life thanks to wicked portrayals by some of the great character actors of all time... Eartha Kitt as Catwoman, Burgess Meredith as The Penguin, Frank Gorshin as The Riddler and Cesar Romero as The Joker. Oh, and one of my earliest crushes was on the curvy and succulent Yvonne Craig, who added some sex appeal for the good guys with her perky portrayal of Batgirl. Let's not forget the stars - Adam West and Burt Ward, who were unfortunately typecast as Batman and Robin for the rest of their careers. West continues to bank on his 'Batman' appeal as a recurring character on the FOX series 'Family Guy' and also appeared as himself on an episode of the underrated but extremely funny 'King Of Queens' television show.

And then there was the music. Neal Hefti's catchy score for the series included what may be the most recognizable television theme song ever. You even know the words I bet. Let's all sing!

“Da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da BATMAAAN!”

Today's featured LP isn't exactly what it looks like though. A quick perusal would lead you to believe that it's pretty cut and dried, cheaply recorded kid's stuff, pressed to take advantage of the popularity of the show. A knock-off. The only credits on the cover are for the Sensational Guitars of Dan and Dale (not to be confused with the Sleepwalk Guitars of Dan & Dale, also from the sixties). The music here is actually recorded by a work-for-hire band made up of members of The Blues Project and Sun Ra's Cosmic Arkestra, including Danny Kalb and Steve Katz on guitars and the great Sun Ra himself on the Hammond B-3! And it rocks, in a twisted, sixties, surf/garage sort of way. But, aside from the Batman theme, little else here resembles anything Hefti ever penned, the majority of it sounding like a psychedelic jam session that the cats made up on the spot. There's even one song, 'Batmobile Wheels', that is simply a thinly-disguised instrumental rework of the Lennon and McCartney hit 'She Loves You'. My research didn't turn up a name for the female vocalist who appears sporadically amidst the instrumental madness, but she ably adds some serious soul to the rocking 'Robin's Theme' which opens side two.

The great Sun Ra is a story unto himself and richly deserves his own Five Star, but briefly...

Born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, Ra played the role of jazz prophet, living an enigmatic life while fronting his 'Arkestra' for decades, pressing and selling his records himself and often contributing artwork for the covers. A bi-polar Renaissance man, Ra composed most of the music, booked the band's dates and was a virtuoso keyboard player as well. The mythology of Ra tells of his abduction by aliens when he was a young man, how the aliens whisked him off to Saturn and deeply changed his outlook on life. It was after that, in a frenzy of twisted logic that Ra renamed himself after the Egyptian god of the sun. Somewhere in this mess I call home I have a copy of Ra's biography, 'Space Is The Place: The Lives And Times Of Sun Ra' by John F. Szwed. It follows Ra's kooky life (including a brief account of the 'Batman' session) in great detail and I recommend it highly.

Back to the LP... This baby's available on CD now, too. Wouldn't you know it? It was just too cool not to be, I guess. I turned up my playable copy for a single buck about a month ago and it hasn't been off my turntable since. I had been looking for a clean copy of this album since my buddy Greg played it for me in a drunken frenzy one evening, and the LP is pretty tough to come by. I'm sure you can find it on Ebay, but go out and get the CD if you have to. Just get it, get it?

I have to admit that when I first picked this LP up way back in the mid-eighties I wasn't particularly impressed by it. First off, This Cat was going through his beatnik hard-bop phase, which kept me from appreciating the rolling funk grooves, the repetitive soft jazz vocals and the electric instrumentation. I was more used to Byrd's acoustic sound from the fifties and sixties, and at the time was spending most of my nights away from the real world watching black and white television, reading and listening to older jazz, immersing myself in the past and pretending I was living in that era. To be honest, I still pretend that I am sometimes, only it's much harder these days, what with cell phones, HDTV, the World Wide Web, those Blue Ray Tooth things and such.

Shoot, even the eighties were better than it is now, ya dig?

Of course I loved the cover, and the fact that it was a wraparound gatefold made the paltry $2.99 I spent on a used copy seem worth it for the cover alone. But I pulled the album out recently and have given it a few spins along with a long-overdue second chance. And you know what? It holds up just fine.

Not really jazz and not really fusion in the same sense as those ground-breaking Miles Davis sessions, the sound here is more semi-funk and R&B, and comes off closer in feel to some lost soundtrack to a Pam Grier film that never got made. When I listen to it now, I can almost see her sashaying down the big city sidewalk in summer heat, wearing skin tight leather pants and sporting a round afro. Hang on a sec... I'm gonna flip it over and listen to side one again...

Recorded in 1973, 'Street Lady' didn't exactly set the world on fire with the critics and it didn't produce much in the hit department, either, although the album did climb the jazz charts in 1974, the same year Byrd broke through with a charting single. 'Walking In Rhythm' was recorded by a group (aptly named The Blackbyrds) that Byrd put together right after 'Street Lady' consisting of himself and a handful of his best students (Byrd has taught music and theory at Rutgers, Howard, Oberlin College and NYU, among others), and it was with this group that he finally achieved mainstream success.

Seen as a bridge between jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd of the sixties and Byrd as leader of the Blackbyrds, 'Street Lady' was a logical transition and an important step in that direction. Solo artist became completely secondary to the group sound. You can hear some Chuck Mangione in Byrd's flugelhorn playing and there's lots of soaring flute (provided here by Roger Glenn) that fits well with the wah-wah guitar and the insistent funky punch of clavinet that helps drive the rhythm. So what if it's just a bunch of lengthy, feel-good groove jams. So what if it's not particularly hook-oriented. Just sit back, turn on the black light, burn some incense and let your neck go loose. You'll be head-bobbing in no time.

Byrd was born in Detroit in 1932, graduating from Cass Tech and moving on to the Air Force (where he played in a military band) before earning degrees from Wayne State and the Manhattan School of Music. On his way up, Byrd played with almost all the heavy hitters of jazz, including Coltrane, Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk, just to name a few.

By the time the sixties rolled around, Byrd was a star at Blue Note, where he recorded a number of LPs in the traditional hard bop vein before making the transition towards funk fusion in the late-sixties (his 1969 LP 'Fancy Free' was the first of his to feature electric piano). Often under-appreciated in terms of virtuosity, Byrd has not only survived the test of time, but carved out a nice little niche for himself in jazz history and continues to be active to this day.

Oh, and if you happen to be a fan of acid jazz, you just might recognize some recycled stuff from 'Street Lady' STILL being played in clubs and on college radio.

I have to tell you that the biggest surprise I got when I pulled this LP out after so long was when I checked to see what it was going for on the almighty Internet. I found a sealed original copy with a corner cut on Ebay for $79.99! And it wasn't unusual to see other sites selling used original copies in the neighborhood of twenty to forty bucks! Ha ha! My copy is stone cold mint, cover AND disc!

I have a second copy that I picked up for 99 cents recently, too. I don't really know why I bought it. It just seemed like too good of a deal to pass up, even if I already did have another one at home. I guess I thought I'd be able to put the cover on display or something, but damn, maybe I can sell it on Ebay for five bucks, huh? Anybody interested? No?

Anybody OUT THERE? ANYBODY?!

I have to admit that I don't remember too much about this flick. I saw it in 1982 while I was attending college at Western Michigan. One of the fraternities there sponsored a weekly Friday night movie that was held in one of the bigger lecture halls on east campus, and Andy's 'Dracula' was the second end of a double-header that also featured his 'Flesh For Frankenstein' as the opener. I'm sure I must have nodded at some point.

I do remember it being very slow.

I also kind of remember the premise: Andy's version of Dracula is sickly and can only drink 'wirgin' blood, so he sets his vampire sights on the three beautiful daughters of his landlord, played by celebrated neorealist Italian director and actor Vittorio De Sica in one of his last film appearances. Dracula (Udo Kier) finds out one by one that the sisters aren't as 'pure' as his health requires, vomiting up the results of his first two tainted meals.

Somehow, handyman Joe Dellasandro (a Greenwich Village street hustler who got his fifteen minutes appearing in a number of Warhol films) catches on to Dracula's plan and takes immediate action, bravely charging in to save the third sister - the youngest and the only one who truly is a 'wirgin', by ably nailing her before the big bad vampire can get there, all the while woodenly delivering his lines in a thick Bronx accent.

Roman Polanski has a cameo.

Directed by Paul Morrissey in 1974 right after he directed 'Flesh For Frankenstein', 'Andy Warhol's Dracula' (a.k.a. 'Blood For Dracula' and 'Young Dracula') features a fine soundtrack by a practically unknown Italian composer named Claudio Gizzi, who also cranked out the score for 'Frankenstein'.

The Main Title sequence has a haunting quality, almost Satie-like in its mathematical simplicity, and the balance of the music is a satisfying listen whether you know anything about the movie or not. Oddly, though, other than these two Warhol flicks, Gizzi's only listed film work was for Roman Polanski's 'Che?' from 1973.

I don't know how rare this LP is, but I have a ten-year old price guide that lists both 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein' for around ten bucks each in mint condition (which my copies are - so there). It also looks like both soundtracks were released in 1982 (on the incredible Varese Sarabande label), which was the same year these two flicks were making the rounds again with the theater re-release of 'Flesh For Frankenstein' when I saw them in Kalamazoo.

A quick Ebay search turned up just a 1995 import CD that included both scores and when I checked the seller's price I couldn't believe my eyes. Some fool thinks he's going to get a 'Buy It Now' price of $229.99 for it! One CD! And he's going to charge fifteen bucks to ship it! Ha! I love the Internet!

Anyway, I know it's still two weeks early, but Happy Halloween!

I got invited to a Halloween party a number of years ago and spent a lot of time and thought on my costume. I went to Value Village and bought a blue lab coat and a wig. I pinned a bunch of random buttons on the lab coat, punched a lens out of an old pair of sunglasses, trimmed my beard and waxed it to make it look like my goatee was really a fake one, and I'm telling you I looked exactly like the Ghoul. But guess what. When it was time to count the votes for best costume, I came in second to a woman dressed like a Christmas tree!

SPECIAL BONUS RECOMMENDATION SECTION!!!
I've never done this before, folks, but I got turned on to this CD over the weekend and it hasn't been out of my player ever since, so I'm using the Five Star to hip you to a brand new release out there that just hit the streets.

Last Saturday I was browsing the used LPs at my favorite local record shop, Street Corner Music, and they were playing what I thought was a compilation disc of some recently unearthed forgotten soul gems from the sixties. It turned out to be the new album by Raphael Saadiq.

The print is so small on the damned booklet that I had a hard time reading it, but it looked like Mr. Saadiq pretty much did the whole shebang - writing, producing and performing. One minute he's channeling Sam Cooke and the next it's Smokey Robinson... What? You say Smokey's not dead? Whew, that's a relief! One minute he's channeling Sam Cooke and the next it's... it's... Marvin Gaye. He's dead, right?

It's brand new, but it's as comfortable as an old shoe, as familiar as your mama's face, and I guarantee you that you will love it. At least until Jay-Z starts rapping on the last song. But hey, it's the last song. You can always just skip it, right? I'd give it a few listens, though. I got used to it.

What better artist to feature here this holiday season than the man who passed away on Christmas day just two short years ago?

That's right, I'm talking about James Brown.

Born James Joseph Brown, Jr. in the tiny South Carolina town of Barnwell during the Great Depression (soon to be known as the 'Not-So-Bad Depression' thanks to George W. Bush), the young Brown got the first of his many nicknames as a toddler. 'Junior' grew up dirt poor, and after his parents separated he lived with various family members before his father sent him to live with an aunt in Augusta, Georgia, where she worked as a whorehouse madame.

Seriously. You think I'd make something like that up?

Anyway, the young Brown soon found himself hustling to make whatever money he could get, shining shoes, washing dishes and dancing for dollars on the street. By the time he was a teenager he'd had his first brush with the law and wound up in reform school, where he acquired another nickname: 'Music Box'.

While behind bars, Brown honed his performing skills as part of a gospel quartet, and after he was released even tried his hand at boxing and semi-pro baseball before turning to music full-time. By the end of the fifties Brown and his group the Famous Flames were scorching the R&B charts with hits like 'Try Me' and 'Please, Please, Please'.

But it was during the decade of the sixties when Brown's fame and talent peaked. In 1963 Brown recorded what is still one of the best live albums of all time at Harlem's Apollo Theater, financing the entire operation himself and catapulting himself and his group to international stardom. By the middle of the decade, Brown's sound was also beginning to evolve into the groove-driven funky style for which he would forever be remembered, culminating in what many believe to be the first actual funk masterpiece, 'Cold Sweat' in 1967.

And the rest, as they say, is musical history.

Today's LP, 'A Soulful Christmas' came out in 1968, and along with James' not-so-usual Christmas fare, you also get his ground-breaking (and Caucasian-frightening) single 'Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud' - Parts 1 and 2. (For all you youngsters out there: the reason some songs had two parts was because back then, the singles were released on 7” vinyl records and you could only get so much song on one side, therefore it was necessary to split longer songs into two parts. These records also spun at a faster speed than LPs and were therefore often referred to as '45s'.)

I have to tell you that my copy is not in very good shape, but I only paid four bits for it, so what's the big deal if it skips and pops a little? (Again, for you youngsters: a 'bit' is a quarter, as in a quarter of a dollar. Remember that old high school cheer 'Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar'? No? Never mind then. Coincidentally, though, 45s often sold for four bits in the sixties. Plus tax, of course.)

When I ran a quick check on Ebay I was astonished to find clean copies listed for anywhere from seventy to a hundred bucks! I felt pretty smart listening to my fifty-center last night, even though I had to get up twice to move the needle after it got stuck on side one.

As to the music... well, it's vintage funk and the tunes are some of the best Christmas-themed music you could hope to hear. Several songs are just dirty, organ-driven funk grinds with a few bars of recognizable Christmas melodies thrown in, and the opener 'Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto' continues to get seasonal radio play to this day.

'Say It Loud' became a mainstay for Brown's live shows as well, with the 'Hardest Working Godfather of Soul in Show Business' calling out the 'Say it loud' part and the audience chanting back 'I'm black and I'm proud!'

It seems like Brown released hundreds of LPs, and this one, like most of his King releases, is a truly nice package. In addition to depicting Brown on the cover as the skinniest Santa of all time, the back shows James posing in several photos 'With His People' as though he were a minister and not just an entertainer. Gospel and funk singer Marva Whitney (who was performing with James at the time) is shown in one photo with the caption 'Dedicated Soul Sister' below it.

Now see, this is another argument for why LPs are better than CDs. When I bought this one I didn't even know if it would play. In fact, the price tag had 'skips' written right on it next to the price. But I bought it anyway, taped cover, scratches and all. Simply because it was a cool thing. Just the cover was cool enough to justify what I paid; hell I would have gone four bits if that's what they wanted.

Now, when was the last time you saw somebody buy a CD that had scratches all over it just so they could look at the booklet?

I'll tell you when: Never.

And don't even get me started on the mp3s!

So, in closing I'd like to wish a very Merry Christmas to all of you out there, and a special R.I.P. to the 'King of Funk'... 'Soul Brother #1'... the fabulous Jaaaaames BROOWWWNNNN!!!!!

Ahh, the 'Divine One'...You'll never hear a smoother singing voice than that of 'Sassy' Sarah Vaughan. Whether swinging to a jazz combo or crooning show tunes with a full orchestra as on today's LP, her unmistakable voice was like dark chocolate (the creamy European kind, not that waxy stuff they make in Pennsylvania), rich and comforting.

Born in 1924, Sarah, like so many of her peers, started singing in church, the Mount Zion Church in Newark, to be exact, where she doubled as the church organist. Those keyboard skills worked to her advantage later when she was hired by Earl Hines, who'd gotten wind of her winning an Amateur Night at the Apollo when she was a mere eighteen years old. Hines hired her to play second piano and sing the occasional song with regular vocalist Billy Eckstine, but her singing went over so well that she became a feature, and her piano playing duties were left to somebody else. It was in Hines' band that she first met Bird and Diz. Dig?

Sarah developed a lifelong professional relationship with Eckstine, moving to his band in 1944 and recording a number of duet albums with him in the years that followed. Although she never considered herself a jazz singer, 'Sassy' consistently won reader's polls in Esquire and Downbeat in the Forties and Fifties, while recording pop hits that sold to a wider audience, like “Misty” (one of my faves), “Whatever Lola Wants” and “Broken Hearted Melody”. By the late Fifties she was in a perfect position to record whatever she wanted, signing a contract with Mercury, where she put out several albums of pop tunes much like today's featured LP, along with recording classic jazz sessions featuring backing instrumentals by the likes of trumpet legend Clifford Brown and flutist Herbie Mann, all released on Mercury's sister jazz label EmArcy.

Sarah's career suffered from ups and downs, some of them financial, some personal. Not particularly lucky in love, she allowed lovers and husbands (three over the years) to run her business affairs and nearly always got burned. But she stayed the course and kept singing, her star rising through the Sixties and on into the Seventies. She sang for Presidents Johnson and Ford, won Grammys and got her own damn star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. She continued to record up until the Eighties, including a brief but notable appearance on Quincy Jones' 'Back On The Block' LP from 1989.

A lifelong smoker and drinker (and rumored pothead), Vaughan died in 1990 of lung cancer at age 65.

From 1957, “Great Songs From Hit Shows” is a double album with a gatefold cover and features more show tunes than you can shake a stick at, from Gershwin to Jerome Kern to Irving Berlin. Liner notes by jazz author and historian Leonard Feather and some nice studio snapshots of Sassy complete the package. Hal Mooney conducts an orchestra of elite Hollywood musicians.

When I bought this record some fifteen years ago it had been pressed up against another record in a stack, the lettering from the back of the other record transferring to the cover of this LP and marring the photo of Sarah in a less than desirable way. It was only two bucks. I took it home and tried several liquids to remove the mirrored lettering, beginning with water and working my way up to pure gum spirits of ever-loving turpentine, which did the trick without marring the heavily laminated, slick cardboard cover! It's worth thirty bucks in this VG condition!