Teasing the Korean

I'm talking about the US LP from 1979. It has your liner notes, and they appear to be in order. And I applaud your use of the Oxford comma. You absolutely were on. Thanks for clarifying the order.

Ms. TTK and I have a tiki room in our house. We call it the Bora Bora room. We have a mid-century Arthur Umanoff bar and matching barstools, and a jungle mural on the wall. And lots of dollar tiki mugs we liberated from thrift stores over the decades. Behind the bar, we have a Bose docking station that plays jungle sound effects on a loop. Last night's festivities took place in our family room, though, as we wanted to get the full effect of listening to music on the hi-fi. Do you also indulge in mixology?

I love the early 70's album where he does "The World is a Ghetto."

Actually, there is a market, at least in the US, for early model CD players. From early in our relationship, a very memorable Christmas haul from Ms. TTK was composed of the following: Michel Legrand Sings Jorge Ben Philips debut Gary McFarland - The In Sound

That album cover terrified me the first time I saw it! Eat that chicken! It has become a Thanksgiving tradition to spin this album on Wednesday night during dinner prep.

Not jazz per se, but a really heartbreaking story. https://www.kmfa.org/pages/2888-somewhere-under-a-golf-course-the-destruction-of-mgm-s-musical-legacy?fbclid=IwAR1nuVdfVBGls76gYgG4k8CucMQ9-Qwdmy29BbJhKgXtxoZJ9PN7rEkxq8s

I have that one, with the wrong cover art, unfortunately, and it is indeed superb. And the liner notes are indeed written by a guy named Larry Kart. Any relation? Shifting gears, it would be interesting to learn if, among jazz fans, there is any correlation between an interest in cover art and an interest in interior design. Maybe I could hire a marketing firm and write an article for an academic journal.

I waddled over to Qobuz, and for $1.49, I bought a lossless download of the track "Fantasia Africana" by Lou Perez. I had the LP, but this was the only track I liked. At the time, I burned the title track from the vinyl, and sold the LP to Dusty Groove.

The Bernard Herrmann score? Which release? Regarding the covers, you either get it or you don't. For me, the album art is a part of the total experience, and in my case, the music is even perceived differently if I have the wrong cover art. When I was a kid in the 1970s and teaching myself about jazz, all those Blue Note albums in the cutout bin jumped out at me - not because I knew who the players were, but because of the artwork. Would Out to Lunch be as good of an album with a color photo of a grilled cheese sandwich on a hospital tray? For some, maybe, but not for me. In the 1990s, I was bringing home vinyl by the armload for no money. I can't tell you how many times I bought an LP just for the cover art. I also can't tell you how many times I would buy a trashed LP with a clean cover, knowing that I could find pristine reissue vinyl in an ugly cover. Case in point: Herbie Mann's African Suite on UA. The laminated covers are usually in good shape, but the vinyl is usually trashed. But you can find the same album, with hideous cover art, on Solid State. Place the clean Solid State LP inside a clean UA cover, and voila. Also during that era of cheap LPs, I brought home lots of those Blue Note Classic LPs with the inappropriate cover art. Like you, I was happy to have the music, but I was not getting the full Blue Note experience, and I wondered who the genius record executive was who made such a poor aesthetic choice. So I am happy that the powers that be at EMI or Monsanto or whoever eventually reissued most of these albums with period-appropriate cover art. I have since bought some of these on CD. I wish they would sell LP-size slicks of the period-appropriate cover art that we could stick on the Classic Rainbow covers. Back to Vertigo, I have the late'70s European Polygram pressing, which is gorgeous, with hideous cover art. I keep hoping that I will find a cheap, beat copy of the original Mercury LP with a clean cover. Well, the ones that do a good job imitating the stylized 1950s Madison Avenue take on Picasso are OK with me, but some of them miss the mark entirely.

So do the stems stay healthy between blooming periods, or have they ever produce new stems?

I feel great this morning! The secret: Hydrate during cocktails, and drink a coconut water right before sleepy time.

Did these labels - or whoever owned these labels by the late 1970s - ever produce high-profile series of unreleased gems from their catalogs? I know that some unreleased sessions ended up as parts of the OJC group's twofer LPs of the 1970s, but they weren't marketed in the same ways as Blue Note's releases. It seems that Blue Note/EMI, between the tan-colored twofer series and the period-inappropriate Classics/rainbow series, was actively trying to Spotlights these albums. Agree with you about the need for a Blue Note cover LP app for my phone. Do you mean the Jazz Masters compilation series?

Well, overall, it was a very good night. Ms. TTK and I enjoyed: Navy Grogs (variation) Shrunken Skulls Trader Vic's Maitais And lots of great exotica. So while International Tiki Day is over this year, it lives on. And like Johnny Mathis sang, "It's not the things you do on International Tiki Day/ But the International Tiki Day things you do the whole year through."

So I it looks like many or most of these were eventually treated to period-appropriate cover art, but a few were not. I'm glad that Blue Note, or Liberty, or EMI, or Universal eventually came to their senses and understood how this music should be packaged. Thank you for sharing.

Well, that may be the 80s album I unloaded.

So from there, Ms. TTK and I moved onto Shrunken Skulls, and we listened to Les Baxter's classic Le Sacre du Sauvage and Tamboo. Now I am mixing us Trader Vic's Maitais, paired with a custom CD I made of Thee Great Chaino with added jungle sound effects!

So I just mixed some quasi-Navy Grogs for Ms. TTK and myself. I used the Spindrift grapefruit fizzy to make up for the lack of grapefruit juice. I double the ratio, as it covers both angles. I didn't have gold Demerara, so I used Puerto Rican gold, along with Cuban white rum and Jamaican dark. And I did not have any honey syrup, so I used simple syrup. And, I threw in a little bit of allspice dram, for fun. It turned out great!

I think you're on the wrong website, Gramps!

I'm flattered by your carnal interests in me, but I'm happily married. Plus, I don't go for guys with facial hair.

Excellent! If you need orgeat or falernum, and you don't want to take the trouble to make them, I would suggest getting the Latitude 29 brand, from Jeff Beachbum Berry, the world's foremost authority on vintage rum cocktails! Ms. TTK is home, and we just had a middle eastern dinner. We are now enjoying the Return to Paradise, and excellent exotica comp from the el/Cherry Red conglomerate. Trying to decide if we want Trader Vic's Maitais or Shrunken Skulls. We may do the latter, only because they are easy. Four ingredients in four even ratios. You can mix one or one thousand.

I wouldn't refer to those covers as squishy. I would refer to them as cheap looking and ugly. But not all of us are into aesthetics.

I just showed the before and after pics to Ms. TTK. She said that the hideous late-70s/early-80s covers look like Windham Hill! I think they look like Pickwick or Springboard trying to be upscale.

The aesthetes among us feel differently.

Beautiful, thank you! The period-appropriate cover art makes these albums truly a part of the canon. The cheap looking late-70s/early-80s covers made them feel like substandard sessions, like rejects. I'm glad that Blue Note or EMI or whoever did the right thing.

Next up is Exotic Island by the Surfmen, a budget label album by a group of west coast jazz guys, including Paul Horn, Jimmy Rowles, Emil Richards, Alvino Rey, Jack Costanza, Milt Holland, and, as they say, many more!