From the Vaults

Ma Rainey: Toad Frog Blues (1924)

7 Apr 2025 | 1 min read

Few would have described Ma Rainey (1886 - 1939) as one of God's finest creations. Her pianist Thomas A. Dorsey said charitably, "I couldn't say that she was a good looking woman". In Francis Davis' The History of the Blues; the Roots, the Music, the People from Charlie Patton to Robert Cray he writes, "everyone else who knew Ma Rainey described her as pug ugly, a short and... > Read more

Van Morrison: On Hyndford Street (1991)

31 Mar 2025 | 1 min read

By the time Van Morrison released his double album Hymns to the Silence in '91, many of his longtime followers had moved on -- some disappointed by so many uneven albums, some just having enough Van in their lives. Over two discs, Hymns to the Silence was just too much Van, and even the most generous reviewers had to note many songs were not a patch on the Celtic soul he had previously... > Read more

Maxine Brown: Funny (1961)

24 Mar 2025 | 1 min read | 1

There's something very satisfying about don't-care-anymore songs. The world is awash with the luvvy stuff but every now and again a song comes along which says, "Yep, but I'm over you". An Elsewhere favourite is Solomon King's exceptional Happy Again which really put that grand passion into perspective. Yeah, I loved and I lost and am hurt. But jeez, life goes on and I'll get... > Read more

Bob Dylan: Positively 4th Street (1965)

17 Mar 2025 | 1 min read | 2

When you have guitar, a voice, a studio and an expectant audience -- and some degree of vitriol to be delivered -- why would you not fire off this bitter salvo at former friends you might feel (rightly or wrongly of course) who have betrayed you? Not many songs begin with such an arrestingly confrontational lines as, "You got a lot a lotta nerve to say you are my friend, when I was... > Read more

Mavis Rivers: Farewell Samoa (1950)

10 Mar 2025 | 2 min read | 1

Because her career as singer was mostly in the United States -- where Sinatra apparently called her the purest voice in jazz -- Mavis Rivers was for many decades after 1953, when she made the first move from Auckland, more respected in New Zealand than actually heard. Yet in her brief period in Auckland -- the family originally from Apia, Samoa arrived in Auckland in 1947 when she was in... > Read more

Judy Henske: Wade in the Water (1963)

3 Mar 2025 | <1 min read

One afternoon somewhere in the early Nineties a terrestrial TV channel played the 1963 movie Hootenanny Hoot, a lousy film cashing in on the folk music phase but full of cameo performances by the likes of Johnny Cash, The Gateway Trio, George Hamilton IV and . . . Some forgettable others. I walked out of the room at one point to make a cup of tea but was pulled back by the most... > Read more

Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy: Thriller (1987)

24 Feb 2025 | <1 min read

The late Lester Bowie (who died in '99 age 58) was very serious about some things -- he was part of the politically and socially active AACM, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians -- but also had a sense of humour. In a profile/obituary at Elsewhere -- under a title borrowed from Frank Zappa, "Does humour belong in music" -- we noted one of his pieces (designed... > Read more

The Blue Stars: Social End Product (1966)

17 Feb 2025 | <1 min read

This country may not have a great tradition of protest songs but there have always been songs of dissent, anger and, from the late Fifties onward, teenage rebellion. One of the first – a punk single 10 years before punk -- was this by Auckland's Blue Stars. The angry young man who won't fit in with society's plan. These days one line needs some explanation: “I don't... > Read more

Paul McCartney: My Valentine (2012)

14 Feb 2025 | <1 min read

For the past many years on this day (February 14), it has been Elsewhere's habit to post the lovely Valentine by Nils Lofgren (with help from Bruce Springsteen) but this time . . . Paul McCartney's 2012 album Kisses on the Bottom was a classy, beautifully produced album of (mostly) covers from the Great American Songbook and beyond. Yes, it was slightly patchy . . . but for songs like... > Read more

Anna Russell: Folk Songs (1952)

10 Feb 2025 | <1 min read

With her beautifully modulated tones and remarkable voice -- which went from a soprano squeal to a screech quite effortlessly -- Anna Russell was an enormously popular comedy-cum-classical act in the Fifties. She would poke fun at Wagner and contemporary classical music equally: of the latter she said it was music for the singer who was tone deaf, because in a contemporary song it's very... > Read more

Sister Lottie Peavey: When I Move to the Sky (1945)

27 Jan 2025 | 1 min read

It's always remarkable what you can discover on a cheap album. I bought this Lu Watters/Bunk Johnson record from Rough Trade in Bristol for ₤3 (about $6.50) and what bargain it proved to be. Unbeknownst to me at the time these recordings by cornet player Lu Watters and his band (on one side) and trumpeter Bunk Johnson and his band (on the other) were a goldmine of great playing... > Read more

Bugotak: Kon Togethy (2006)

20 Jan 2025 | 1 min read | 1

We could fill the bottomless black hole that is From the Vaults with just oddball versions of Beatles songs. (So far we have been restrained, just Laibach, cartoon character Elmer Fudd and the Beatles Barkers *). But this track is irresistible. Bugotak is a Russian group which plays Siberian instruments, guitars, Chinese flutes and fiddles, and has George "Father Gorry"... > Read more

Dread Zeppelin: All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth (1990)

23 Dec 2024 | <1 min read

Christmas is upon us. And in the spirit of the day here is one of the funniest bands ever. Whoever thought pulling together reggae rhythms and Led Zeppelin riffery was an odd fish . . . but then they went one step beyond and fronted the band with an Elvis impersonator. This was classic rock-comedy . . . and their shows were hilarious. For this B-side however they went even... > Read more

Bob Dylan: The Christmas Blues (2009)

20 Dec 2024 | <1 min read | 1

No one would ask why Bob Dylan does something -- shilling for Victoria's Secret comes to mind -- or can be surprised by whatever it is. That said, the Yuletide album Christmas in the Heart in 2009 did catch everyone by surprise. Dylan croaking through Here Comes Santa Claus, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Little Drummer Boy, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and other seasonal delights?... > Read more

Ernest Tubb: It's For God And Country and You, Mom (1965)

2 Dec 2024 | 1 min read

War always produces songs from all sides of the trenches and Vietnam was no different: a slew of patriotic and tally-ho songs in the early days then more cynical, anti-war sentiments coming through as the body count rises. Here Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadours deliver one from those early days of US military involvement when some saw the issue very simply: there was a line drawn to... > Read more

Steeleye Span: Cam Ye Oer Frae France (1973)

25 Nov 2024 | 1 min read | 1

As with Fairport Convention (which included Richard Thompson), Steeleye Span were in the vanguard of the British folk-rock movement of the late Sixties. Unlike Fairport however, Steeleye Span didn't move as often and as far from the roots of folk and frequently drew on Francis Child's text The English and Scottish Ballads for inspiration and source material -- a book which has more recently... > Read more

Chris Clark: I Want To Go Back There Again (1967)

18 Nov 2024 | 2 min read | 1

Of the few white acts on Berry Gordy's Motown label, Chris Clark -- with platinum blonde hair, pale skin and a kind of Marilyn Munroe appeal -- was undoubtedly the whitest. "Getting my singles played on radio was difficult," she said later. "Once [DJs] found out I was white they thought Motown had tried to trick them. "I always hesitate to say any of that, or that... > Read more

Geeshie Wiley: Skinny Leg Blues (1930)

11 Nov 2024 | <1 min read

Blues singer Geeshie Wiley -- probably not her real name, more likely a nickname because she was of the Gullah people of South Carolina and Georgia -- recorded even fewer songs than Robert Johnson. Just six known recordings and no photograph of her exists either. She may have been with a traveling medicine show in the Twenties but, other than her recordings in an 18 month period, not... > Read more

The Nu Page: When the Brothers Come Marching Home (1973)

4 Nov 2024 | 1 min read

The Nu Page were a one-single group signed to the Motown subsidiary label MoWest which released songs by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Thelma Houston and Tom Clay (whose version of Abraham Martin and John/What the World Needs Now is Love gave them a top 10 hit). Of Nu Page very little is known but this song -- celebrating the closing overs of American involvement in Vietnam -- had... > Read more

The King: Come As You Are (1998)

28 Oct 2024 | 1 min read

Although there aren't Elvis sighting in gas stations and supermarkets any more, there is still no shortage of lookalikes and impersonators around. While there seems no great call for Kurt Cobain and Mama Cass impersonators, those who swish their hair back and sneer a little seem to be always out there. One week I interviewed two of them and within days I had forgotten which was which,... > Read more