Dr. Boogie Presents Heavy Jelly: Essential Instrumentals

VINYL FORMAT. This is the fifth volume in Sub Rosa's collection devoted to rare and lost recordings from the '20s to the '60s. This time around, musicologist and radio personality Walter De Paduwa aka Dr. Boogie has assembled a collection of hot-shot instrumentals culled from the original 45s - tunes mainly dominated by a sax and organ, and always backed by a strong rhythm section. The first half of the '60s was a perfect test ground for whoever wanted to make a record for a fistful of dollars. The 45 rpm was king, and among the other genres of the day, instrumentals occupied a sizeable chunk of production. The best-known instrumentals came from California in the late '50s, thanks to the surfers who quickly adopted a new guitar sound from Texas. Simultaneously, all over the United States bands started recording lots of diverse and surprising instrumental tracks. They did so for various reasons: lack of a good singer, as filler for a B-side, or for a shot at the charts with a different, jukebox-ready mix of an already-released song. The mark of a good instrumental was often a gimmick, i.e. that little something - a riff, an intro, a repetitive chord - that would act as the piece's signature item. The tracks here were shamelessly designed for no other reason than to fill up the dancefloor, to great effect.