Digging WAAAY Deep Into The Riverside Vaults

[JSngry]

From ejazznews.com

Due for release tomorrow (8/12) is a unique gem from the Riverside catalog:

the comedy classic "The Grand Prix of Gibraltar!" as enacted by PETER

USTINOV. "There must have been some very perverse people around at the

time, buying [these car] records," Ustinov told CD annotator Nigel Roebuck,

"but there it was! The Riverside people had the idea of my trying

something, a sort of satirical record about motor racing. . . . They had no

idea what I was going to do--and I, frankly, had no idea, either."

http://www.fantasyjazz.com/catalog/ustinov_p_cat.html

"Gibraltar" was reissued last year by Fantasy's U.K. licensee Ace Records

and proved a surprise seller. Roebuck, a writer for Motor Sport magazine,

revealed in his August 2002 column about the CD that his father had given

him a copy of "The Grand Prix of Gibraltar" in the late '50s when he was

just 12, "and I've been entranced by it ever since. Listening to it again,

after an interval, is like re-reading Wodehouse, as fresh now as the day it

was conceived."

Gentlemen, start your engines!

[Stefan Wood]

To heck with that, I'm going after the Rufus Thomas "Funkiest Man Alive" compilation. I'll be doing the Funky Chicken on the way to the cash register............

[brownie]

The Riverside album I am looking for is one of those sounds of Sebring races they issued

back in the late fifties where Allan Eager is heard speeding past on whatever he was driving

at the time. Or was this just in my dreams?

[Stefan Wood]

Riverside did a number of those car noise lps, unless I'm thinking of another label......

[Christiern]

The Ustinov album was fun 45 years ago--it will be interesting to see how it holds up.

Apropos out-of-character releases by jazz labels, has Fantasy ever reissued the Prestige Lively Arts album of Burgess Meredith reading two Ray Bradbury stories? That one, produced by Don Schlitten, will definitely not have aged.

Bill Grauer Productions also released (on its Riverside label) a comedy album called In Our Own Image, which featured two guys whose names now escape me--it was somewhat off-beat, and it included a funny (back then, at least) skit that made fun of Miles Davis' GQ image.

And, although it is eminently forgettable, let us not forget this cabaret act.....

Edited August 13, 2003 by Christiern