Leftover Explorers and Triples

Anchovies?  You've got the wrong man. 
I spell my name with VITRIOL!

Peter Lubin set a high bar for our American Explorers fantasy camp.  He wanted to make sure the tracks were representative of the artists’ talents and the ethos of the original American Explorers series, which featured legendary practitioners of many genres of popular American music:  blues, country, jazz, soul, gospel, zydeco, rock, and rockabilly.  

We combed Discogs, AllMusic and RateYourMusic for releases and appearances by the artists on Peter's list, and we “auditioned” about 70 albums.  Peter discarded a lot of his own nominees, and he suggested alternates for some of the tracks that we proposed. Some of the artists (like Marty Stuart, Rodney Crowell and Ray Wylie Hubbard) were dropped simply because they have thriving careers and didn’t need our “help” as imaginary A&R representatives.  We also had a surplus of blues and jazz guitarists, all of whom were deserving. We gradually whittled four hours of music down to two.  

The compilations are stronger as a result of this aggressive “pruning” – but there were songs I fell in love with that didn’t make it past the final round.  Even these discards are top quality tracks. Today (for my own listening pleasure, and for anyone who might be curious) I'm sharing some personal favorites that were cut from the project or replaced by other songs.

One of Peter's favorite musicians who we didn't get to include is Don Randi.  Peter highly recommends the early 60's albums by the Don Randi Trio.  Don is still an active performer, but hasn't recorded in years.  He would be perfect for an album in a revived American Explorers series.  Here's Don in action:

In addition to these Leftover Explorers, there's another trifecta of Triple Song Titles.  Many were sent in by Richard, as well as andreyud, Berni, CC, and Stinky.  I had no idea how many songs there were at the start of this thing.  It has gotten way out of hand, but (as with the Fantasy American Explorers project), it has also led to some truly wonderful artists and songs that I might not have heard otherwise.  Here's one cool example: Cool, Cool, Cool by The Clare Sisters (click on the song title for a cool-cool-cool animated video!)

If you're not exhausted by the triples, please enjoy Six Six Sixties (rock songs of the decade), Shame Shame Shame (funk, soul and disco), and Poing Poing Poing (schlager and chansons).  

Fantasy American Explorer Series

About one year ago we posted Exploring The American Explorer Series, an in-depth overview of an almost-forgotten Elektra/Nonesuch series from the 1990s which sought to shine a spotlight on some American musical artists whose contributions were under-regarded or near-forgotten. As usual, we got some feedback from our regular followers.

However one Anonymous comment stood out:

“The American Explorer Series of the early 90s at Elektra was the product of the best intentions of the label's leadership to revitalize deserving American artists coupled with the extraordinary skill and ability of the A&R staff at the time to deliver on the vision. Profit motives and the bottom line were NOT a factor in this mission!”

We were intrigued by this remark and queried the writer for more details, which subsequently did follow via email. It turned out that one of the actual people involved in the American Explorer Series, Elektra A&R man Peter Lubin, had reacted as he was pleasantly surprised to see that some people still remembered that series fondly!

During the year emails were exchanged and the idea of doing an interview with Peter started to grow and ultimately materialized in a Zoom meeting with Koen last December.  He somehow managed to convert the rambling but highly informative and entertaining chat into a more coherent text. The results were shared with Peter and after loads of emails and revisions a fully-illustrated 27-page PDF had become a reality!

As everyone involved was rather pleased with the results, we continued on to the next phase of the project: a brand new “Fantasy” American Explorer Series with full input from Peter!  He took this challenge very seriously and subsequently presented us with a massive master list of 84(!) potential candidates that could possibly qualify by meeting the criteria to ‘bring forgotten artists back into the spotlight’. Even so, that list scared the sh#t out of us. Where to start??!?

With Peter’s guidance, we began living out the "fantasy" of being hard-boiled A&R men making critical decisions for the good of the record label as well as for the benefit of the listening public at large. This too required plenty of time as we took the mission seriously indeed. Some of the artists hadn’t recorded anything in years and it seemed too far-fetched to “revitalize” them, while others were disqualified owing to their citizenship (this is the ‘American’ Explorer Series, after all!) or a variety of other factors. Some, sadly, passed on during the time it took to bring this project to fruition.

We then hemmed and hawed about how we could approach compiling the music to accompany the interview. Finally it was decided to simply find the most recent recordings by each artist on the list and choose an appropriate song from that material. This rule applies in many but not in all cases.

Jonder took the lead and presented us with compilations of potential songs. Unlike some Tesla dude who enjoys wielding a chainsaw, we very slowly fine-tuned the number of chosen songs.

Jon’s original concept for the blog still stands—we post CD-length compilations—so there was the task of paring the material down to two volumes. All that remained was the running order of the tracks, which we created with an eye towards offering the best possible listening experience.

Koen submitted artwork for the front and back covers, and capped it all off with this introduction. ;-)

We let Peter have the final word: “I think this evokes the spirit of the original undertaking as well as the fantasy that we set out to conjure!”

For your reading and listening pleasure (and musical education) we proudly present…

Fantasy American Explorers Volume 1: Staxability

Fantasy American Explorers Volume 2: Kentuckiana

A fully illustrated 27 page interview with Peter Lubin PDF

Exploring The American Explorer Series

Last month (Koen writes] Jonder came up with this question: "Are you familiar with the Elektra Nonesuch American Explorer Series from the 1990's?  It would be cool to do a sampler for that series.  Terry Adams from NRBQ produced two of the albums (for Boozoo Chavis and Chuck Berry's pianist Johnnie Johnson), and Ben Vaughn produced two others (Charlie Feathers and Arthur Alexander).  The label did release a compilation, but it came out in 1991 after only 4 of the 11 albums in the series had been issued."

Sheepishly I admitted being familiar with Johnnie Johnson’s and Arthur Alexander’s records, but never had been aware that they were part of an Elektra Nonesuch series…

These records covered a wide range of styles: rockabilly (Charlie Feathers), blues (Johnnie Johnson), country/Americana (Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Guy Clark, and The Kentucky Headhunters), zydeco (Boozoo Chavis), soul (Arthur Alexander, Fontella Bass), gospel (Vernard Johnson, The Five Blind Boys Of Alabama, and Fontella Bass), and Latin (Eddie Palmieri)…

And thus a new project was born!

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes hat and armed with a digital magnifying glass I dove headfirst in the murky depths of the World Wide Web.  Most of the albums weren’t too difficult to locate, either on obscure/forgotten blogs or through dubious file-sharing thingies.

The only one giving me serious headaches was The Five Blind Boys Of Alabama Featuring Clarence Fountain’s Deep River album.  Despite my considerable efforts, I found zilch…

Of course, there are some copies for sale available on eBay, but I always consider it a challenge to find them somewhere instead.  When the going gets tough, the tough get going to… YouTube! There I found 2 songs from the album of decent enough quality to be allowed into my project!

I rounded up some album art and reviews from various sources and mucked around with them a few times until they fit my PDF format.  Last part was coming up with a cover design and writing this piece!

The result is a 22-track sampler which sounds pretty good, although Eddie Palmieri is the odd one out. His Latin album is not bad at all, but very different style-wise from the rest of the series!  Anyway, hear the results and judge for yourself.