Nancy Sinatra put some photos of her and the late Lee Hazlewood online. Click here.
Thanks to Robbie on the Exotica Mailing List.
Thanks to Lou Smith on The Exotica Mailing List
NPR – Weekend Edition Sunday, July 29, 2007
Lyle Ritz has logged over 5,000 sessions on the bass as a studio musician. But for his latest project, he wanted to figure out a way to make music on a computer. So Ritz bought an Apple laptop and a software program called GarageBand, designed for making home recordings. Six months later, he completed work on a new solo album.
‘Hardly anybody knew how to operate GarageBand, how to deal with it,’ Ritz says. ‘So I had to fool with it a couple of months.’
On No Frills, however, Ritz entered the bass line into the computer using a synthesizer. That’s because the album features Lyle Ritz’s other musical passion: the jazz ukulele.
Ritz is known as the ‘father of jazz ukulele’ for merging the genre with the four-stringed instrument, and his credits on bass include multiple pop hit singles. However, it was in college, while he was working at a Los Angeles music store, when Ritz first picked up either instrument.
‘This was in the 50s, when Arthur Godfrey, the entertainer, who liked to play the [ukulele], popularized the instrument, and so many people just had to have ukes,’ Ritz says. ‘And one day I picked it up, somebody wanted to see this beautiful, nice, big tenor uke, and I picked it up and played a few chords on it, and I was gone.’
After a stint with a U.S. Army Band during the Korean War—in which Ritz played tuba—he dropped by the music store and played a few tunes on the ukulele for his former boss. Ritz didn’t know that jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, the West Coast representative for Verve Records, was present.
‘I just about fell through the floor,’ Ritz says. ‘I couldn’t believe that I had actually played before this man.’
Kessel offered Ritz a record deal, and in 1957—50 years ago—Ritz recorded an LP called How About Uke?, the first album for jazz ukulele.
How About Uke and its follow-up 50th State Jazz generated little interest, however, and Ritz soon abandoned the ukulele for the bass. It was at that point when Ritz joined the ‘Wrecking Crew,’ the legendary group of studio musicians who played on many of the pop hits which came out of the Los Angeles area from the mid 1960s to the early 80s. Later, Ritz also played on film scores.
While Lyle Ritz’s bass was heard by millions, his jazz records for Verve were being studied by a generation of musicians in Hawaii, home of the ukulele.
Roy Sakuma is Hawaii’s foremost teacher of the instrument. ‘All of a sudden here comes Lyle with all these fantastic chord harmonies that just took music to a whole new level on the ukulele,’ Sakuma says. Sakuma tracked Ritz down in 1984, inviting him to headline his annual ukulele festival in Hawaii. Ritz ended up moving to the islands for some time.
Ritz currently lives in Portland, Ore., where he continues to experiment with music and new recording technology. He says he’s always fooling with his ukulele—after all, he did teach himself to play the instrument.
‘I’m a firm believer and exponent of the art of noodling,’ Ritz says. ‘You don’t necessarily have to have a goal in mind, you don’t have to have a specific phrase or song that you’re working on, but you just fool with it and things happen. And I call the result the fruit of the noodle.’
Lyle Ritz on iTunes
I read it here, at the blog of the San Onofre Surfing Club. His name was Les Williams. I never knew who was the surfer on the Beach Boys Surfin’ USA album cover, but it’s a great shot with style on a considerably sized wave. A big wave. The album is among my favorite Beach Boys albums, and even pure instrumental Surf fans should know it.
Dumb Angel Blog is delivering the goods here. The next best thing to being there at the time is knowing all the good stuff.
All the themed night-clubs. The recording studios and labels. The Doo-Wop groups, the R&B and soul acts. The garage bands who covered them. The cool jazz-acts. Early Doors, artists and mindblowing interior design. Pheww… You owe it to yourself to check out this update of the Dumb Angel Blog.
Check out this disturbing street skating video.
One of my all-time favorite albums, re-released by Sundazed.
Quoting from their MySpace profile:
Surf Soundtracks 1964 – 1974 Released on July 2nd on Harmless Records
Never mind the Beach Boys, Chairman Of The Board is a collection of vintage soundtracks from iconic cult surf films. Underground film makers wanted original music, a harder sound to reflect the new wilder cinematic expression now possible on the face of a wave. The soundtrack they chose to enhance this visual experimentation was the mellower stoner blues and psychedelic rock, which perfectly captured the cerebral highs of living the alternative dream. The music featured on this compilation, some of which has never been released, originates from six of these classic surf films.
I have some of the films on VHS or DVD, and some of the released soundtracks on vinyl. It’s a really great genre with a very high musical standard. And it’s something you can play to people if they ask you what music surfers listened to, in the 60s (and early 70s in this case).
Ingfried Hoffmann – Plays Jazz for Secret Agents
Fantastic organ led spy-jazz cd. Mostly Bond titles from the early movies, but some great originals too. A nifty guitar player is involved here as well!!!
Where would Tiki be without Otto von Stroheim’s Tiki News?
Established in 1995, Tiki News is a printed magazine containing 84 + pages packed full of historic and current Tiki information. The first magazine to solely cover Tiki!
The same folks bring you Tiki Oasis each year!
The original Tiki weekender! This August 16-19 join us in San Diego for the seventh Tiki Oasis! Experience top Exotica and Surf bands, the best DJs in the country spinning vintage vinyl, vendors selling unique Tiki trinkets and idols, relax poolside or dance the night away at the Hanelei Hotel! Come and enjoy three nights and three days of fun in the sun!