There are a few records that have been dubbed 'holy grails'. To reach this status,
a record has to not only be extremely rare, but also outstanding in musical content. Naturally,
I don't have any holy grails, but I've heard stories about what some serious collectors will do
to get their hands on their 'holy grails'.
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The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael’s Music Shop (AJP Records, 1970)
There is a lot of history behind this record, and it's conception is very interesting
because it's really a children's record. Hoagy Carmichael was a popular singer and actor in
the 50s. His son, Hoagy Bix Carmichael was a strong promoter of his music, but had developed a
liking to some of the experimental music in the 60s, namely jazz fusion and psychadelic rock.
At some point, Hoagy Bix discovered the music of Monty Stark, a jazz vibraphonist with his own
band, Stark Reality. Hoagy Bix then developed a childrens program at WGBH in Boston that would
revolve around his father's music. He chose Stark Reality to provide the music, with a modern
spin. What resulted was some truly groundbreaking psychadelic soul. The funny thing is that the
reaction from the elder Hoagy was not that of praise at first, but rather confusion as to how
those recordings could be children's music. He eventually saw the beauty in it and praised the band and his
son for a job well done.
I'm not sure who discovered it first, but selections from this album have been sampled by a few
lucky producers that have a copy including Large Professor, J-Live and Madlib. The original record
has become a bit of status symbol for those that have it. It was re-released in 2003 by the Stones Throw crew
including previously unreleased material.
Good luck finding one, but if you do... job well done!
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More to Come... |
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