Jiving Juniors

The Jiving Juniors- Jamaican R&B circa' '1958

Their only U.S. release.

The Jiving Juniors were a Jamaican vocal group, heavily influenced by American rock'n'roll

and rhythm and blues who cut at least a dozen singles for possibly as many labels. The group was Eugene Dwyer, Herman Sang, Maurice Winter, and lead singer Derrick Harriot who'd go on to stardom in Jamaica later as a solo act, producer and label owner. Many other singers passed through the group but names are hard to come by at this late date. They cut sides for producer Duke Reid's bewildering variety of labels as well as a few for his main competitor Sir Coxone Dodd, they even recorded for future prime minister Edward Sega. They had one single issued in the US-- Moonlight Lover b/w Sweet As An Angel for the tiny, Harlem based Asnes label (whose first release was the Dorsets' brilliant homage to the swine-- Porkchops.). Their first disc appeared around 1958, their last in '62. That's pretty much all I know about 'em. But man, they sounded good. Listen to their cover of the Starlites Valerie (for the Starlites incredible story see last months entry here). Here's a few of my favorites-- I Wanna Love, Tu-Woo-Up-Tu-Woo, I Love You, Come On Honey, Don't Treat me Bad, My Heart's Desire, Dearest Darling, and their biggest Jamaican hit-- Lollipop Girl. Their harmonies are gorgeous, but they still sounded dirty and raw, and they could rock when they wanted to. They never made the transition to ska and by '62 they must have sounded dated to Jamaica's record buying public, but to me, nearly a half century later, they sound as good as any of the major American groups of the era, in fact better than most. Duke Reid always used the best musicians on his discs and you be sure that Rolando Alphonso (sax), Don Drummond (trombone), Owen Grey (piano), Ernest Ranglin (guitar), and Arkland "Drumago" Parks (drums) were on a lot of these sides. There were tons of great R&B acts in Jamaica before the dawn of ska-- the Blues Busters, Laurel Aitken, Derrick and Patsy, the Mellolarks, et al, but the best one I've ever heard are the Jiving Juniors, and even though I don't have much to tell you about them, their sounds are priceless. There's a bootleg called Jamaican Doo-Wop Vol. 1 (no label, I never saw a volume two), that has a bunch of their tunes, and Trojan UK has issued a three CD box Tojan Jamaican R&B Box Set, 50 tunes over three CDs with an excellent selection of pre-ska R&B and rock'n'roll from the Island.

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The Stooges- James Williamson's Return

Raw Power, Live at the Planeta Terra Festival, Nov. 7, 2009, San Paulo, Brazil



Search & Destroy



Cock In My Pocket



Death Trip (this must be the first time they ever played this one live)...

The Stooges are back, with James Williamson on guitar, a year ago this would have been almost unthinkable, but with Ron Asheton's passing there was no other man for the job. Oddly enough "Straight" James had just taken an early retirement from his executive job at Sony.

He sounds great, still playing the Les Paul he played on Raw Power, great set list that included

pre-Raw Power material and two Iggy solo tunes (Lust For Life and The Passenger). The whole set list can be found here. Steve McKay is now onstage for the whole set, playing a lot of sax and some percussion, I can't wait for 'em to hit NYC...

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Kenneth Anger

Kenneth Anger at the Cinematheque,Paris, 1950

Marianne Faithful as Lilith in Lucifer Rising, 1980

Donald Cammell as Osiris, Lucifer Rising, 1980

Seal of Crowley's Magick Order of Argenteum, good for 10% discount.

Kenneth Anger, child of Hollywood.

Autograph.....


Invocation Of My Demon Brother, Mick Jagger at the moog on the soundtrack.



Anger on Crowley, April 2009



Scorpio Rising part one....



Anger documentary....



Mouse Heaven, Anger's homage to Ubl Werks original Mickey...

Kenneth Anger will be 83 on February 3rd, he remains America's premier underground film maker, a position he has held since 1947 when he shocked the world with Fireworks, his seventh film but the first to be seen by anyone outside a small circle of friends. He was twenty when Fireworks was released although he'd started work on it at age seventeen. He has now made twenty two films, mostly shorts, and lives on money provided by his current benefactor

French clothing designer Agnes B. (who also supports Harmony Korine amongst other artists and film makers). It's safe to say he's America's greatest non-commercial film maker, perhaps of all time.

The bulk of Anger's reputation rest on the films he calls the Magick Lantern Cycle which is all his work from Fireworks (1947) through Lucifer Rising (1980), these are collected in two beautifully packaged DVD's-- The Films Of Kenneth Anger Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 which are easy enough to find and a must have for any film buff. Film critic I'm not, but these films, all shorts, have a dreamlike (often nightmare like) quality that burn their intense imagery into your back brain. As a chronic insomniac I like to put them on in the wee hours when I can't sleep but am too tired to concentrate on a narrative flick. I just sit there and stare at the screen and soon find myself in a half dream like state while the images fold into each other. In fact, my dreams have always looked a lot like certain Anger films --especially Rabbit Moon (1950) and Lucifer Rising.

Anger is often sited as the guy known for introducing the use of cutting images to a pop music soundtrack that was so successfully adopted by Martin Scorsese in Mean Streets (1973) and other films, it's now a tired Hollywood cliche, but this technique is still powerful when seen in Anger's Scorpio Rising (1964) which is probably his most popular film. It follows a bunch of rather nellie looking bikers (who bear no small resemblence to the guys on the covers of the old Jubilee doo-wop LP covers-- Rumble, Boppers, Whoppers and The Paragons versus the Jesters) around Brooklyn, inter cutting them with pop culture icons, comics strips, swastikas, some footage of Jesus from an old, silent, Biblical epic, and the like, it's an acknowledged underground classic.

There are two excellent books on the subject of Kenneth Anger-- Anger- The Unauthorized Biography by Bill Landis (Harper Collins, 1995) and Kenneth Anger by Alice L. Hutchison (Black Dog, 2003). Landis' book, incredibly well researched, is really a hoot. In turns worshipful and hissy-fit bitchy, he tells the story from young Kenneth Angelymeyer, a precious Southern California child, spoiled by his star struck Grandmother (who paid for his early films), following him from the set of Max Reinhardt's Midsummer's Nightdream (he played a boy prince in the film, the set burst into flames at one point), highschool film maker (with pal Curtis Harrington, a school mate) to Paris where he was a protege of Jean Cocteau, through Europe in the fifties and back to the States in the early sixties where he settled first in New York to make Scorpio Rising then in San Francisco in time for the summer of love, playing the magus host to all sorts of hippie flotsam including Bobby Beausoleil (Anger's original choice for Lucifer in Lucifer Rising, he would be the first of the Manson murderers to be convicted, later he would do the soundtrack for Lucifer Rising from his prison cell when original composer Jimmy Page could only come up with 22 minutes worth of music, find it here). One of the funniest part of the book concern an idiot named Bruce Byron who was one of the bikers in Scorpio Rising and would go on to harass Anger and anyone who got within one hundred feet of him, claiming he had written and directed Scorpio (I once had the misfortune of riding in Byron's cab, covered in Scorpio Rising memorabilia and had to suffer through his rant). From there, Landis follows Anger to London where he fell in with the Rolling Stones and a crowd of rich, decedant, luminaries as J. Paul Getty Jr., gallery owner Robert Fraser, Donald Camel (the director of Performance who had a role in Lucifer Rising). Anger's influence on the Stones was great, culminating of course in Sympathy For The Devil. In fact, the Stones promo film for 2000 Light Years From Home (directed by Michael Cooper) looks so much like an Anger film even Andrew Loog Oldham assumed it was directed by Anger until recently. Anger became very close to Anita Pallenberg and later Jagger's girlfriend of that time, Marianne Faithful, would play the lead in Lucifer Rising (her gold make-up was partially made up of heroin when she got her stashes mixed up en route to Egypt where they shot at the Pyramids). Landis writes well about Anger's films, and hatefully about Anger's personal life. Landis, who was responsible for the amazing Sleazoid Express 'zine (and later co-wrote the book of the same name with Michelle Cliffotd) died earlier this year at age 50. Still, just a glance at the index of Anger: The Unauthorized Biography will tell you this is a book you want to read: Forrest Ackerman, Bobby Beausoleil, Stan Brackage, Jean Cocteau, Aleister Crowley, Curtis Harrington, Mick Jagger, Anias Nin, Alfred Kinsey, Jimmy Page, Anita Pallenberg, Jack Parsons, Mickey Rooney, Andy Warhol, etc., the names alone conjure up a world of glamour, decedance, drugs, and the occult. Some of the most interesting people from the music, art and film worlds all found common ground in Anger's world of film and fantasy. Perhaps as the author of two classic volumes of Hollywood dish and dirt, the legendary Hollywood Babylon (Straight Arrow, 1972) and Hollywood Babylon II (Straight Arrow, 1983) it is only fitting that Anger himself become the subject what is often a mean spirited tome, but Anger is still a must read.

Hutchison's book concerns itself only with Anger's work, giving only the basic biographical details. She covers all of Anger's films with detailed analysis, but it's the collection of stills, memorabilia, photos, graphics, posters, etc. that make this coffee table style paperback a must own for the Anger fan. It's a work of art in itself, with many quotes from Anger and much of his occult inspired graphic work through out. It also includes commentary (in English and French) from contemporaries like Stan Brackage, Anais Nin (who had role in Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome, 1954), Jonas Mekas and others.

I don't know anything about Aliester Crowley, other than that he's fun to read about ("the wickedest man in the world"--pshaw...compared to Dick Cheney he was Mother Theresa), and even less about the occult, but I don't think you need a background in such things to enjoy the films of Anger's Magick Lantern Cycle. Since Lucifer Rising, he seems to have entered a new phase as a film maker with short works about Hitler Youth (Ich Will!, 2000), an homage to the original Mickey Mouse as drawn by Ubl Werks, (he had fangs)-- Mouse Heaven (2004), Crowley's art work-- The Man We Want To Hang (2002), bascially a montage of Crowley's drawings and paintings, some of it from Jimmy Page's collection, Elliot's Suicide, about friend and neighbor, the musician Elliot Smith who stabbed himself to death (2004), even an anti- smoking film-- Don't Smoke That Cigarette (2000, mostly montage of vintage cigarette ads). He even started work on a film about cricket, a passion of Paul Getty Jr's which was never completed because Getty died and the funding disappeared. A complete Anger filmography can be found here.

About a year and half ago I had dinner with Kenneth Anger. Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain were filming an interview with him for a cable TV show about the occult and rock music, later we all went out to eat. The restaurant was very loud and since I was seated next to Anger we could only talk to each other, and then only by talking directly into each other's ear (I hate going to restaurants in New York these days for that reason, they're all so fucking loud you can't hear the person across the table from you). We talked about Todd Browning whose West Of Zanzibar was on TV the night before (he admires his work), and about Phil Spector, then on trial, he told me Spector had been "a bastard" to deal with when he had to secure the rights to He's A Rebel to use in the DVD version of Scorpio Rising. Anger was nothing like his reputation, he was charming, polite, witty, rather soft spoken, and at age 81, he looked twenty years younger, in fact he looked like Lou Reed circa Sally Can't Dance, except he looks a lot better than Reed does these days. He sure didn't seem like the type to have the word LUCIFER tattooed across his chest.

America no longer produces unique characters like Kenneth Anger , the corporate takeover of pop culture and blanding out of things in general has filled our lives with boring celebutards and pretentious dorks. Underground film these days in not very interesting, in fact, regular TV is better. Which only means we should appreciate Anger while he's still here, because he and the world he came from will soon be gone, and there's nothing to replace them.

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Elvis

From Private Elvis, a collection of sleazy photos of G.I. era Elvis on leave in Paris having fun, long out of print....

From Pic mag, May, '56, a digest size sleaze mag...

Nowadays, anytime some weenie pulls out a guitar there's twelve morons with a camera phone there to document the event, but there are very few great recordings from rock'n'roll's golden era. There are no great live recordings from many of the major figures of the era-- Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Link Wray, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, none of them had good live albums. The few that do exit-- Bo Diddley's Beach Party (Checker, 1963), James Brown Live At The Apollo (King, 1963), Jerry Lee Lewis Live At The Star Club, Hamburg (Phillips, 1964), along with a few recent discoveries-- Are You Ready?- Roy Orbison & the Teen Kings Live (Roller Coaster), Slim Harpo's Star* Time (Ace) are exceptions, not the rule. For example, RCA has never issued a great Elvis live LP, this is truly a crime. The best live Elvis they ever released was a 45 to promote the Golden Celebration box set back in 1980, Baby Let's Play House b/w Hound Dog, recorded at the Alabama Fair & Dairy Show, Tupelo, Mississippi, September 26, 1956. The Golden Celebration box had a disc of recordings from this show, but the sound quality was nowhere near as good as the sound heard on the 45, listen to Hound Dog from the LP and compare it to the 45 version earlier in this paragraph.

Why can't RCA put out the entire Alabama Fair & Dairy Show recordings with sound quality as good as the 45?

In 1980 RCA put out a ten disc Silver Anniversary box set, from which one disc was a performance from the USS Arizona Memorial Concert, March, '61. This show featured Elvis' regulars Scott Moore (guitar) and D.J. Fontana (drums) augmented by Hank Garland (guitar), Bobby Moore (bass), Floyd Cramer (piano), and Boots Randolph (sax). They perform incredible versions of Reconsider Baby, Such A Night, That's Alright Mama, One Night, et al. It's probably his best recorded live show, certainly his best post-Army live recording.

Surely, given today's technology, the tapes can be presented in much better sound than the muddy recording from that box. I mean, we're talking Elvis, it's not like RCA is going to lose money on the deal. This is just one example of why the record biz is in the dumper, it's not the downloading so much as the morons who run the biz without a thought as to what people really want. RCA-- Record Cemetery Of America (which is now owned by BMG, that stands for Big, Mean, Germans). Given that anything over fifty years old is in the public domain in the E.U. maybe some European label can work on it. I'd like to see one great live Elvis album before I die.

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Esquerita

S.Q. in '58, gettin' a reaction from the ladies....

Rare EP, same cover as his Capitol LP

The b-side of his first disc, it was the theme song for my radio show for 13 years...

Detail from autographed copy of Wildcat Shakeout for you handwriting analysis freaks..

Esquerita lights up.....

Meeting of the mindless (left to right) Me, Billy Miller, Julie Whitney, Esquerita, Todd Abramson, Miriam Linna, Tramps, 1981.

"If a producer or arranger was deputed to the sessions he must have been bound and gagged and put in a corner, for there was little sign that anyone responsible for the records had been concerned for their commercial potential...The violence that was normally only a promise (or threat) in rock'n'roll was realized in Esquerita's sound"-- Charles Gillett- The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock'n'Roll (Dell, 1970)

"Truly the farthest out man has ever gone"-- liner notes to Capitol LP 1186 (1958)

S.Q. (Steven Quincy) Reeder, Jr. was born in Greenville, South Carolina on November 20, 1935. He started playing piano in church,-- Greenville's Tabernacle Baptist, and also fell in with two aspiring opera singing sisters-- Cleo and Virginia Willis, who gave him singing lessons. Soon, as a teenager he set out on the Gospel Highway first with the Three Stars and later playing behind Brother Joe May, the "Thunderbolt Of The Midwest", a flamboyant gospel singing sissy best remembered for his hit Search Me Lord on Specialty. He recorded as a pianist behind the Heavenly Echoes, a Brooklyn based quartet, appearing on their version of Didn't It Rain (Baton, 1953). He returned south, working clubs from Atlanta to Greenville with someone called Sister Rosa, an evangelist of sorts. Then began putting together a rock'n'roll act, establishing himself with a residency at the Owl Club on Greenville's main black drag-- Washington Street. This is where Little Richard first encountered him, their first meeting was in the bathroom at the bus station where they were both "trying to catch something---you know, have sex".

Richard was already singing professionally, often in drag, sometimes balancing a chair on his chin as part of his act. S.Q. taught him his thundering piano style, this would be the key element in Little Richard's development of the style that would take him to the top of the charts. While Richard returned to Macon, then New Orleans (he'd already cut discs for RCA and Peacock in a style that owed much to Atlanta's Billy Wright) and finally in '55 hit paydirt with a cleaned up version of the drag queen anthem Tutti Frutti on Specialty.

S.Q., now renamed Esquerita was discovered at the Owl Club by Paul Peek, then a member of Gene Vincent's Blue Caps. Esquerita played on Peek's single The Rock-A-Round b/w Sweet Skinny Jenny (NRC) and was then spirited off to Dallas by Gene Vincent where he hooked up with a band- Ricardo Young- drums, Vincent Mosley- guitar, Tony White- bass and a tenor sax player whose name no one remembers. In Dallas he cut a set of wild demos including early versions of tunes he'd later wax for Capitol-- Rockin' the Joint, Please Come Home, Oh Baby, Sarah Lee, et al, that wouldn't be released until 1987, when Norton Records issued them as Vintage Voola.

Capitol which was enjoying great success with Gene Vincent as their own answer to Elvis, took the bait and signed Esquerita as their response to Little Richard's commercial breakthrough. Esquerita was sent to Nashville to record under the tutelage of Ken Nelson (who produced Gene Vincent and would go on to great success with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard). In August on 1958 his first session produced two singles-- Oh Baby b/w Please Come Home, and perhaps his finest two sider- Rockin' The Joint b/w Esquerita & the Voola (drummer Ricardo Young getting a label credit). These discs failed to sell but Capitol stuck with Esquerita, releasing two more singles - Laid Off b/w Just Another Lie, and Hey Miss Lucy b/w I'm Battie Over Hattie and an entire LP, ten of it's of twelve tunes not issued on 45 including Hole In My Heart, Gettin' Plenty Lovin' (also cut as My Baby's Tops on Federal by the Gardenias with Ike Turner's Kings Of Rhythm in support) and a whacked out rendition of Buddy Holly's Maybe Baby. The LP was also released as three four song EP's, all quite rare today. Nobody bought these records and they became legendary amongst collectors. These sides remain one of rock'n'roll's greatest legacies. This was the real thing-- out of tune piano, screaming vocals, crashing cymbals, the entire band seemed on the verge of either falling apart of shooting off into space like a rocket. Every record collection should include these discs, which are easy enough to find on CD nowadays.

In the U.K. a re-issue on the Ember label-- Wildcat Shakeout collected his entire Capitol output and appeared in the early 70's, later French Capitol put out a two record set that included all the un-issued stuff from the Nashville sessions as Believe Me When I Say Rock'n'Roll Is Here To Stay in 1979.

Esquerita cut a striking figure, as the above photos (which can be seen in the Kicks Magazine publication The Great Lost Photos Of Eddie Rocco) illustrate. Six inches of processed conk, rhinestone shades, all manner of make up and jewelry, it's amazing he wasn't killed on the streets of the southern towns he played in.

Meanwhile, after leaving Capitol, Esquerita headed for New Orleans where he appeared at the Dew Drop Inn regularly, cut sides for Okeh, Instant, and Minit (including an instrumental version of Green Door, one of his best post-Capitol sides). On these sides he reverted to the name Eskew Reeder but by the late 60's he was doing business as the Magnificent Milochi, recording for Brunswick under that name. He did sell a couple of tunes to Little Richard-- Freedom Blues and Dew Drop Inn which Richard recorded for Reprise in '69 (Eskew's version of Doo Drop Inn was issued on 45 by Norton with the Dallas demo of Rockin' The Joint on the flip side). Dew Drop Inn would be his swansong recording. A full discography can be found here.

The seventies were tough on Esquerita who got by with whatever gigs he could get. He played New Orleans, showed up in Puerto Rico where he also did some time in prison and by the end of the decade washed up in New York City where he lived in a series of SRO Hotels in midtown, doing some small time dealing and pimping, put in a few short stints at Riker's Island, and finally got a gig at a tiny club on West 17th Street called Tramps, a strange combination of blues club (Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Joe Turner, and Johnny Shines all appeared there) and hang out for the Westies, a bunch of Irish mobsters that were used as muscle by the Mafia and also ran the west side docks in Hell's Kitchen. Tramps was a stones throw from Max's Kansas City,

the Gramercy Gym (where Cus D'amato would soon be training Mike Tyson), Julian's Poolhall, and the Dugout Bar (where a frosty mug was .50 cents).

I think it was the fall of '81 when me and my friends, Esquerita fans all, noticed that Tramps' tiny ad in the Village Voice was advertising "Every Monday: Esquerita!". Could it be?

Rare discs in hands, we headed for Tramps, and there he was: the legend, the man-- Esquerita himself! His hair was short, and he looked like he'd ridden some hard miles, but it was he, the guy who made those insane records way back when. There must have been a dozen people in the audience that first night, but he was amazed and thrilled that anyone, never mind bunch of white kids who were either in diapers or hadn't been born yet, knew of his great achievements at Capitol Records. He signed our discs, had his photo taken with us, and he was our pal--- our very own pet legend.

Billy Miller and Miriam Linna got very close to Esquerita, they had not yet started Norton Records (Vintage Voola would be their second release), but were then publishing Kicks magazine and put Esquerita on the cover of the second issue. Billy's liner notes to Vintage Voola are among the funniest and most entertaining liner notes ever, it's worth the price of the disc just to read them. Esquerita showed up at a party at I can't even remember whose house and gave a private recital, rocking through versions of Slow Down and Dizzy Miss Lizzie while a bunch of drunken white kids danced around the piano. I got to know him around this time also. I was leaving an afternoon double feature on 42nd Street and I bumped into him on the Deuce, he remembered my face from Tramps and the party, and we got to talking. He came back to the lower east side where I then lived with me. Back then, what is now the East Village was something of a drug supermarket. Between 1st and 2nd ave. you could buy nickel bags of pot in storefronts like the Red Door and the Black Door, between Ave. A and B. were the coke spots, selling garbage head blow in $5 and $10 bags at places like the Rock and the Pony Pack. From B east it was dope land-- heroin, with lines forming at 5 PM in front of infamous spots like Laredo (10th & B) and the Toilet (3rd & B). Esquerita liked drugs, and they were much cheaper in the east village than in mid-town where he lived, or Harlem, where he had enemies. We did some hanging out, although our tastes in drugs were very different, I took him around and showed him the ropes a bit. A move I'd live to regret as he took to banging on my window at all hours of the night wanting to borrow money. Finally, I stopped answering the door or the phone for him (I'd move from a front, ground floor apartment on 10th St to a rear, four floor walk up on 11th between A & B). I think he owed me around $300 when he died, at which point I had been avoiding him for months. Big Joe Turner referred to him as "Give Me Money, Give Me Money Esquerita". He got busted a few times, ended up in Rikers for a few six week bids (he had lost an eye in prison in Puerto Rico, at Riker's he was segregated and kept with the drag queens in their own wing). Near the end of his life a friend of mine had seen him out in Brooklyn, washing windshields for change. That was around the time I started doing the radio show, late '84. Esquerita and the Voola was my theme music. Crack had hit in late '83 and Esquerita became very hard to deal with around that time. I'd lost touch with him when I heard the news, he'd died of AIDS in Harlem Hospital on October 23, 1986. He was the first person I knew to die of AIDS but he wouldn't be the last. When Vintage Voola was released I wrote about him in the Village Voice, so I got back $150 of the $300 he owed me. I wished I had taped our conversations (he knew everyone worth knowing in rock'n'roll and had amazing stories, most of which I forgot). I wish I'd had him on the radio show. I wish he was still around...

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