VOODOO DANCE DOLL: 1950s/60s Rock'n'Roll Exotica

Bongos in the Congo!  Apes in the jungle! Tikis, cannibals, and witch doctors! Grown men making tropical bird calls! Sound familiar? But this ain't no jazzy Martin Denny-style exotica for grown-ups' cocktail parties. No, my teen-age hoodlum friends, this sampler of exotic rock (rock-xotica?) + relevant soundbites marks this blogs' return to weekend-starting sleazy-listening sounds from the Golden Age of Cool. As with the first collection that kicked off this on-again/off-again project, many of these tracks were recorded off my vinyl, songs that hopefully have not been featured on similar comps like the "Jungle Exotica" series. My records are in various states of preservation, so I did track down some digital replacements when available. But most of this is out-of-print wax whose occasional pops and cracks can be thought of as the crunching of jungle undergrowth beneath the furious feet of Watusi exotic dancers (in all senses of the phrase).

Ingredients: surf rock, doo-wop, rhythm 'n' blues, novelties, some actual ethnic peoples, movie clips, radio ads, excerpts from a record meant to accompany a slideshow or filmstrip about the Congo, Africa (unfortunately, it did not contain the visuals), and some loungey things, but with a backbeat. There are a few well-known hit-makers here like Eartha Kitt, the Dave Clark Five, and Santo & Johnny, but as these records are from the gloriously unself-conscious pre-rock critic era*, many of these artists have been lost to the mists of history. 

Voodoo Dance Doll - an M4M Collection.zip

01 congo slideshow- weekend dance
02 Mel Taylor & The Magics - Bongo Rock
03 The Vistas - Tiki Twist
04 Leni Okehu and his Surfboarders - Hawaiian People Eater
05 Eartha Kitt - Honolulu Rock And Roll
06 congo slideshow - superstition dance
07 Muvva Hubbard & the Stompers Congo Mombo
08 "Alligator Man"
09 The Dave Clark Five - Chaquita
10 The Pyramids - 
Koko Joe
11 "100 Percent Gorilla"
12 The Rocking Vickers - I Go Ape
13 Billy Mure - Tabu
14 congo slideshow - witch doctor
15 Werner Hass - Oh-ee-oh-ah-ah
16 Dick Dale & The Del-Tones - Jungle Fever
17 Jerry & Mel - Cannibal stew
18 "Zombie Island Massacre" - Zombie Attacks Honeymooners
19 congo slideshow - drumming
20 Mel Taylor & The Magics - Drums A Go-Go
21 Thurl Ravenscroft - Dr Geek From Tanganyika
22 Buddy Morrow And His Orchestra - One-Two-Three-Kick (The Original Conga) pt1.
23 Roger Craig - Song of India
24 The Fugitives - Human Jungle
25 Bela's "Jungle Hell"
26 Roy Estrada and The Rocketeers-Jungle Dreams Part 2 
27 Busby Lewis - Jerk
28 Susan King-Drum Rhythm
29 Yngve stoor - Hula Rock
30 Perez Prado - Cuban Rock
31 Leni Okehu and his Surfboarders - Hawaiian Rock
32 Freddy Cannon - Everybody Monkey
33 Johnny and Santo - Caravan
34 congo slideshow - watusi
35 Big Walter and the Thunderbirds _ Watusie Freeze part 1
36 "shrunken heads" ad
37 Buddy Morrow And His Orchestra - One-Two-Three-Kick (The Original Conga) pt2
38 Marti Barris - Ahbe Casabe
39 Sandy Nelson - Casbah 

Thanks to Count Otto for the Rockin' Vicars!

*Cartoonist/record collector Robert Crumb has described the early rock he really liked as "proletariat," and indeed, there may be some class-ism behind the critical dismissal of so much rock prior to the mid-'60s: once rock scrubbed off all of that honky-tonk/ghetto stank and adopted such middle-class, college-educated features as "poetic" lyrics and classical European influences, then it finally merited the status of High Art. But of course, the music wasn't really improved so much as it simply changed - from fun, funny, energetic, sexy, and atmospheric to...not as much. Rock didn't get better, it just moved to the suburbs.

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Ditulis hoohoh — Jumat, 16 Januari 2015 — Add Comment — Afro-Carib-Latin, Comedy/Novelty, ethnic/exotic, Filthy Fridays, funk/r'n'b, Lounge, Lowbrow, misc., odd pop, rock: early/rockabilly, rock: surf/garage, spoken word