Sixteen tons

Karel Hála & TOČR - Vopravdu sám (Sixteen Tons) [sample]
from SP "Patří ti velikej dík", 1970, Supraphon 0430890
conducted by Josef Vobruba, produced by Zdeněk Borovec
Josef Laufer & the Bohuslav Myslík Orchestra - Šestnáct tun (Sixteen Tons) [sample]
from album "74", 1974, Panton 110431
conducted by Zdeněk Marat, produced by Vítek Haderka


original generic Karel Hála 7 inch sleeve, original Josef Laufer album sleeve

You write a blog entry and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt! But also another double feature for you folks under the Cover Czech-In label: here are sixteen tons of Mr. Swing alias Karel Hála as well as yet another heavy load, Mr. Controversial, known as Josef Laufer. Both gentlemen are bringing to you the same song with different Czech lyrics, Sixteen Tons. The original tune dates back to 1946 when it was written and recorded by American C&W singer/hitmaker Merle Travis as a fake coal miner worker song. The ultimate version, however, belongs to Tennessee Ernie Ford. His cool and swinging rendition hit the U.S. charts in 1955 and seemingly became the most successful single ever released. (Check out ernieford.com/SixteenTons.htm for the whole story.)

Karel Hála (1933, no relation with Kamil and Vlastimil Hála of the JOČR fame) with his dark voice is one of the true veterans of Czechoslovak popular music. After he finished the Prague Conservatory in 1954 he began to work as a choir singer, from the Army Opera choir to the Karel Vlach Orchestra. In 1957 he was discovered by Karel Krautgartner who hired him as a soloist for his short-lived jazz combo. Since the late 1950s Hála toured with various dance orchestras again, this time as a bass player and later as a lead singer. His career finally began to take off in 1965 with his engagement in the Apollo Theatre (the one in Prague, of course) alongside Karel Gott and other Czech pop stars. But despite several hit songs and praises from the critics he had to wait until 1973 to finally record his first solo album called simply Swing. One reason for that might have been his progressive "skinhead" haircut - which supposedly was almost considered an opposite extreme to the long-haired freaks from the sixties' beat scene. Another obstruction probably was his inconsistent repertoire: Hála had to sing a lot of Soviet "muzak" or schlagers, too, because singing too much jazz used to be considered too "imperialistic" by the responsible communist authorities. Nevertheless he recorded several good single sides for Supraphon in the sixties which are worth checking out, like Tak rychle jako čas, Růžová nálada or Budu hledat dál. Some are closer to jazz, others may even sound quite soulful.

Vopravdu sám (Definitely Alone) is sort of a hybrid of both genres, where a cool rhythm'n'blues double bass verse à la Fever alternates with a driving chorus accompanied by a powerful big band arrangement. However, except for the overall impression, not much has been left from the original Sixteen Tons tune, not even Jiří Štědroň's lyrics hint at the origin. Their message is pure blues though. And that's where Hála definitely feels at home. As such, this rendition might be one of the "blackest" versions ever recorded. The production doesn't even sound much like "1970", the TOČR/JOČR rhythm section still gives the song lots of the early 1960s feeling. The a-side of the single is an original blues/gospel ballad in 12/8, Patří ti velikej dík (A Big Thanks Belongs To You), with a wild Hammond organ and a strangely wicked rhythm guitar. Unfortunately, that otherwise interesting song flips to the cheese side of the universe as soon as a pathetically arranged choir drops in.

Hála has been still sporadically performing with various Czech big bands in the recent years. The original recording of Vopravdu sám is available on a "best of Karel Hála" CD compilation.

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Josef Laufer was born 1939 in France to a Czech doctor and a Spanish nurse. The family spent the war in England and in 1947 they moved to Czechoslovakia. Laufer's artistic path began as an actor during his military service and he finished the Theatre Academy in Prague in 1965. Being fluent in several languages, in the late 1960s he launched a promising international career as a pop singer when he toured and recorded in Western Europe and in the U.S. However, the Iron Curtain closed for him for some time after his brother emigrated in 1968.

Many of Laufer's tracks from the sixties are close to "cheasy" listening or schlager, but he's also featured on a couple of solid beat and R&B single sides with the Karel Duba combo. Then there's the Panton album V roce 1969 (In The Year 1969). Unlike most of his other vinyl output at that time, the said LP was recorded with his live backing band Their Majesties. In my opinion it belongs to the best Czech beat albums of the decade; that said, keep in mind that there weren't many Czechoslovak beat albums in the first place, thus take my statement with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, it's also worth checking out because of the beautiful sleeve, designed by Laufer's wife Irena Greifová. (A blog post about this record is available on a Dutch site where you can look at the cover artwork and listen to its best song. You may want to ignore the article as such though, because the writer doesn't seem to have much clue about the matter...)

Laufer belonged to the most popular Czech singers in the 1970s. But his star began to sink after 1976 when he recorded one of the most stupid pop songs in the history of man kind: Dopis Svobodné Evropě (A Letter to Radio Free Europe). It praises the Czech communist spy Cpt. Minařík who had been planning a terror attack on the Radio Free Europe building in Munich, West Germany. The lyrics are so full of communist propaganda and "anti-imperialistic" hatred that it makes you want to puke when you listen [external audio link] to it 30 years later. Today, out of context, one might want to believe that it was irony, but it wasn't. Sorry, Mr. Laufer, all credit lost...

But let's ignore it for now, because not all of Laufer's 1970s' records were all that bad, at least musically. Usually he was backed by a solid group which evolved from the original Their Majesties and eventually became known as Golem. Laufer's Spanish origin manifested in several latino influenced tunes for example, some of them sung in Spanish. After all, he used to perform in Cuba quite often at that time. And during the disco era he was the logical choice for a Czech rendition of Boney M's classic Daddy Cool alias Tak už jsem boty zul. In the 1990s Laufer launched a comeback as a singer and actor in various Czech musicals.

Besides of 16 tun (Sixteen Tons), the album '74 contains a bunch of other quite tasteful covers like Stephen Stills' Ecology Song (Rád vás tu mám), a driving Les Humphries medley or a medley of traditional Czech folk songs in a surprisingly juicy arrangement. Some of Laufer/Myslík's original compositions even come sort of funky. The orchestra line-up: Bohuslav Myslík (keys), ex-Atlantis Vladimír Grunt (dr), the last original Their Majesties member Ladislav Chvalkovský (b), Pavel Růžička (g) whom you already met as a half ORM, Jan Václavík (saxes), Radoslav Pobořil (tp), Jiří Doubrava (tb) and last but not least the background singers Vlasta Kahovcová, Jarmila Gerlová and Jana Löfflerová.

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Solstice

Jazz Q - Slunovrat [sample]
from album "Elegie", 1976, Supraphon 1151983
produced by Hynek Žalčík & Jan Spálený


original LP sleeve designed by Karel Haloun, export album, export reissue

While I've been a bit behind my weekly schedule with my previous blog post - which has been delayed by a couple of days - today I'm almost on time with an actual astronomical event. And speaking of time, it's truly about time to dedicate an entry to one of the most important Czechoslovak acts of the seventies, Martin Kratochvíl's Jazz Q. Despite the group's name, their importance didn't manifest only on the jazz side of things, of course. Like many other 1970s Czechoslovak combos oriented to jazz, at times they were able to supply a heavy dose of rock to the starving audience as well. And actually it's not even the first time you're hearing Jazz Q on this blog, they were already backing Helena Vondráčková last December.

Jazz Q was founded in 1964 by keyboarder Kratochvíl (1946) with flutist and saxophonist Jiří Stivín. In the beginning they inclined to free jazz. The group was even quite successful internationally, both Kratochvíl and Stivín won a couple of festival prizes in the late 1960s. But while Stivín wanted to continue with his free work, Kratochvíl decided to switch over to the progressive rock camp. After all, he spent the years 1967-1968 in England where he visited a lot of pop festivals, experiencing acts like the Doors or Jimi Hendrix.

Still with Stivín, Jazz Q recorded their first Supraphon LP in 1970, Coniunctio. That was a collaboration with Radim Hladík's reduced Blue Effect who had just kicked their singer Vladimír Mišík out of the group. The album came out pretty weird. Jazz Q already tried to move closer to rock while Blue Effect were sort of searching for the way out of it. All at the same time. And though one might assume that both groups would meet somewhere in the middle, they didn't. Stivín then left for a stellar solo career and Kratochvíl rebuilt his group from the ground up. His 1973 effort Pozorovatelna (The Watch-Tower) has been recorded for Panton with ex-Framus 5 Luboš Andršt on guitar and the young talented bass guitarist Vladimír Padrůněk (later with Mišík's ETC, then again with Jazz Q). Only few months later Kratochvíl began to work on a new Supraphon album with ex-Flamengo blues specialist František Francl (1946) on guitar and his English wife and vocalist Joan Duggan: Symbiosis became one of the darkest reflections of the Czechoslovak normalization era and it's definitely worth another "czech-in" in the future.

Slunovrat (Solstice) is the opener of Elegie (Elegy), Jazz Q's fourth album. Clearly inspired by big names in funk-jazz and fusion, Kratochvíl excels on Fender Rhodes and Moog, Francl plays a sparse but effective rock guitar, while bassist Přemysl Faukner (1952) with drummer Libor Laun (1951) are cookin' it tight and funky. The other seven album tracks also feature several special guests like ETC's violinist Jan Hrubý, Impuls's Michal Gera on trumpet or the ubiquitous Jiří Tomek on conga.

In 1977 Kratochvíl spent a year at the Berklee College of Music. Back from the States he continued to perform and record under the Jazz Q flag until 1984. Besides of making instrumental albums he also used to work with various singers: Jana Kratochvílová, Jana Koubková, the aforementioned Helena Vondráčková, Martha Elefteriadu or with ex-Marsyas Oskar Petr.

Jazz Q reunited another 20 years later, in 2004, and they are still performing these days. The recent line-up features only one "new" member, the Impuls guitarist Zdeněk Fišer. (Francl had to give up playing guitar in the 1980s due to a hand injury. He's still active as a recording producer though.) Faukner is back on the fretless bass, Jaromír Helešic already played drums on Zvěsti (Tidings) and Paprsky (Beams) in 1977-1978. And on vocals there's Oskar Petr again who returned from his U.S. exile to the Czech Republic in the 1990s.

Regular Jazz Q albums are available as second hand vinyl only, so czech out your online sources. Some tracks from Elegie also appeared on several English and German funk-jazz/fusion compilations.

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A rose in the window

Miroslav Koželuh & TOČR/JOČR - Růže v okně [sample]
b-side of the 7 inch split single "René Glaneau - Le petit Gonzales", 1962~, Supraphon 013221
conducted by Karel Krautgartner


a TOČR/JOČR recording session in the early 1960s

After visiting the vernissage of the Karel Krautgartner exhibition* at the Popmuseum* in Prague last week, I think it's appropriate to add a corresponding "soundtrack". But I'm still in Prague right now, so the choice is somewhat limited to what I have already recorded to MP3 and stored in my laptop, since my record collection happens to be in Switzerland. Hence a track which actually features another soloist of Krautgartner's orchestra, not the leader himself.

Karel Krautgartner (1922-1982) began his music career in the 1940s as a clarinetist in various groups and orchestras in Brno, among others in an early line-up of the Gustav Brom Orchestra. In 1945 Krautgartner became member of the renowned Karel Vlach Orchestra, so he moved from Brno to Prague. Under Vlach's leadership he became a versatile soloist on clarinet and sax, composer and arranger. In 1956 he formed his own quintet. This group eventually grew up to a nonet, building the nucleus of the future radio big band and performing with the Czech first lady of jazz Vlasta Průchová as well as with a talented young singer named Karel Gott, who in fact has been discovered by Krautgartner in the first place.

Krautgartner founded the Dance Orchestra of The Czechoslovak Radio (TOČR) in 1960. The circumstances have already been briefly described in my JOČR post from last November. After the conceptual split of the orchestra to TOČR and JOČR in 1963 Krautgartner remained its chief conductor and artistic leader. In 1967 the big band has been officially renamed (and reunited) as the Karel Krautgartner Orchestra. Then came the 21st of August 1968. Krautgartner with his family emigrated to Austria on the very same day and he never came back. In Vienna he worked as the conductor of the ORF Big Band. In the early 1970s he moved to Cologne, Germany, where he began to study musicology and taught at the Cologne conservatory until his early death in 1982.

Růže v okně (A Rose In The Window) originally was a Czech waltz, composed by Alfons Jindra for the Karel Vlach Orchestra with the singer Jiřina Salačová in the 1940s. It's even possible that Krautgartner already was a member of the Vlach ensemble when the song was first released on an Ultraphon 78 rpm record then. TOČR's 1960s instrumental revamp on the other hand connects the melancholic melody with a fashionable and danceable cha-cha-cha rhythm. The soloist was the trombone maestro Miroslav Koželuh. Other band members at the time of the recording (probably 1962 or 1963) might have been Ladislav Pikart, František Kryka, Bedřich Kuník, Milan Ulrich, Pavel Vitoch, Jiří Jelínek, Richard Kubernát, Václav Hybš, Arthur Hollitzer, Vladimír Tomek, Kamil Hála, Luděk Hulan and Ivan Dominák.

This track appeared as the flip side of the smash hit Le petit Gonzales (Speedy Gonzales), sung by Frenchman René Glaneau with the Sláva Kunst Orchestra. Coincidentally, I have another copy of this 7 inch for sale: check out my web shop and search for item no. 276.

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* Technical note:
If you're using a Mac you'd better view the Popmuseum site in Firefox. It doesn't seem to work well with Safari.

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Life is just a coincidence

Martha & Tena & Vulkán - Život je jen náhoda [sample]
from SP "Martha-Tena", 1969, Panton 040250; also on 7"/33 rpm mini-LP compilation "První pantoniáda", 1970, Panton 080201 and on CD "Ať se múzy poperou", 2005, Supraphon
produced by Aleš Sigmund


original SP sleeve, 7" mini-LP compilation sleeve

This entry would almost qualify for the Half Czech-In section as well. The singing sisters Martha and Tena Elefteriadu (1946/1948) were born in former Yugoslavia and their parents were actually Greek political refugees. Nevertheless, since the early 1950s they grew up and went to school around Brno, so besides of their mother tongue they are absolutely fluent in Czech, too. In 1966 they began to work with guitarist and composer Aleš Sigmund (1944) and his Vulkán. The first version of Vulkán was actually Petr Ulrych's group, the talented Elefteriadu sisters were added as background singers for the second edition. In the beginning they were still sharing the vocal parts with the Ulrych siblings. However, Hana and Petr Ulrych launched their own successful career by the end of 1967 when they joined Atlantis (not the 1970s German group, of course) which already consisted of some earlier Vulkán members.

Like many Czech beat groups between 1967 and 1969, also Vulkán were then partly inspired by soul music. Still with the Ulrychs they recorded two 45s for Supraphon and another two for the very short-lived Discant label from Brno. In 1969 Martha & Tena got a deal with Panton. Besides of Sigmund-penned songs they recorded some of their favorite soul hits like Dancing In The Street, Rescue Me or River Deep Mountain High. The exact line-up of these Panton sessions is not confirmed. But after the group's original rhythm section emigrated to Austria and Switzerland in 1968, their successors were keyboarder Bedřich Crha, bass guitarist Cyril Kajnar and drummer Karel Antonín. In the studio they were augmented by a horn section most likely made of members of the Brno-based Gustav Brom orchestra as those were also regular guests on subsequent Martha & Tena or Ulrych's pop albums.

Their third Panton single features a cover version of another kind: Život je jen náhoda (Life Is Just A Coincidence) is one of the most popular original Czech evergreens ever. Written by composer and - even in global context - jazz pioneer Jaroslav Ježek (1906-1942) with intelligent lyrics by the comedian duo Voskovec & Werich, the original version of the song first appeared in V&W's and Jindřich Honzl's classic comedy movie Peníze nebo život (Your Money Or Your Life) from 1932. "Life is just a coincidence / one time you're up, another time you're down / life flows like the water / and the death is like the ocean." Sigmund added for Martha & Tena a contemporary pop-soul arrangement while the ladies' alto voices elegantly preserved the original tune's satirical feel. Singing a song like this in the political climate of the year after the Soviet invasion might have likely been meant as a statement.

Martha & Tena had a successful pop career in the seventies. Vulkán eventually transformed into the Aleš Sigmund Group which absorbed the members of another Brno rock legend, the Progress Organisation (alias Barnodaj alias the future Progres 2) including yet another Greek, Emanuel Sideridis on bass. Sigmund himself also often played bouzouki. The new Martha & Tena sound oscillated between folk-rock, mainstream pop and Greek-Moravian "world music". Unfortunately, soul got lost somewhere in that transition, let alone rock; the seventies were bad for any untamed musical expression. Although you can still find a few quite attractive covers from the Beatles, Bee Gees, Mamas & Papas or CCR on their first three vinyl albums. At least, Život je jen náhoda has made it onto their recent "Best Of" CD compilation.

Sigmund began to work for Panton as a producer and editor in the 1970s, later he also recorded a couple of easy listening retro-guitar instrumental albums. In that context it's almost hard to believe that he was supposedly one of the iniciators as well as the main force behind the Panton Mini Jazz Klub series of 7" EPs which began in 1976 and lasted for 10 years with about 50 releases. Martha Elefteriadu on the other hand - who mostly sung the lead voice of the duo, by the way - collaborated with jazz musicians actively in the late 1970s, namely with Jazz Q and with Michael Kocáb. The results were quite funky. That means: more Elefteriadu on Funky Czech-In is about to come.

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Bafff

František Ringo Čech Group - Bafff (Jingo) [sample]
from album "Báječní muži", 1975, Supraphon 1131776


original LP sleeve (front/back)

František "Ringo" Čech (1943) is not only a "bigbít" veteran and a living legend, he is also one of the most controversial figures in Czech rock history. On one hand his music taste has never been really refined, on the other he supposedly didn't only make friends among his colleagues during his career, neither with his business practices nor with his public statements. Čech originates from a family of musicians, his father was a well known songwriter in Prague. His career began as a teenage drummer in dixieland and brass orchestras. In that context it's worth to mention that he's probably the first (future) Czechoslovak rock musician ever to appear on a 12 inch long player: as a member of the Study Group Of Traditional Jazz he hit the skins on a track from the Czechoslovak Jazz 1963 compilation, sharing the vinyl grooves with top jazz names like Karel Krautgartner, Gustav Brom, Luděk Hulan or Karel Velebný. In 1963 Čech began to study at the Prague Conservatory, but at the same time he decided to become a rock'n'roll drummer. He got a job at the Olympik club, Prague's beat address number one. With the club house band, the original Olympic, he recorded about two dozens of 7" sides until 1965, including Dej mi víc své lásky (Give Me More Of Your Love), their first self-penned beat hit in Czech language. He quitted for a prestigious Las Vegas engagement with Jiří Srnec's Black Theatre while J.A. Pacák became Olympic's new drummer. Back from the States, Čech tried his luck with rock'n'roll again, founding the all-star Rogers Band with several former rock'n'roll stars, but by 1967 pure rock'n'roll was already out of fashion.

The history of the F.R. Čech Group begins in 1968 in the renown Semafor Theatre in Prague. They used to work there as the Shut Up Orchestra, being one of the theater's house bands and usually backing comedy shows by Šimek & Grossmann. Initially their repertoire mostly consisted of country & western covers with Jiří Grossmann's and later with Čech's lyrics - sometimes humorous, sometimes rather silly. Shut Up performed and recorded with Grossmann, Jiří Helekal, Pavel Bobek, Miluše Voborníková, Karel Černoch or the ex-Rebels (what a pun...!) Jiří Korn. Among the group instrumentalists were Čech's brother Svatopluk on bass, former Komety guitarists Kaleš and Reiner, keyboarder Zdeněk Merta or the ex-Juventus Petr Rezek. Čech was still sitting behind the drums but he also slowly evolved to the group's master mind. After Grossmann's death in 1971 Shut Up began to work with singer Viktor Sodoma who was still trying to launch a pop career since the 1968 breakup of the Matadors. At the very least, at that time Čech proved a good sense for choosing obscure bubble-gum music cover versions which then became popular hits in Czechoslovakia. The only part that might have been close to subversion and therefore objected by the authorities was the English band name, thus Shut Up had to be relabeled as F.R. Čech Group.

In 1973 Čech retired from playing the drum kit and became what we would call an M.C. these days - a master of ceremony - while he was still occasionally standing behind assorted percussion instruments on stage. Although he never really left the pop genre for the years to come, as an opportunist that he was he must have realized that the continuing communist oppression on rock music in the early 1970s could actually help him on his way to even bigger fame while gaining credibility by the non-commercially oriented young audience. So in times when almost everyone else in Czechoslovakia would be giving up distorted guitars in favor of safe jobs on the legal side of pop music, Čech's group began to fire up their boosters in an unheard manner to date, bringing examples of contemporary hard rock à la Deep Purple or Black Sabbath to the hungry freaks. And with that change in style a definite change behind the lead vocalist's microphone became inevitable as well, but that's already another story.

Bafff is a "cover" of Babatunde Olatunji's ultimate afro groove Jingo, a.k.a. Jin-Go-Lo-Ba. But F.R. Čech was covering Santana's latinized version from 1969 and he even got it all wrong because he obviously believed he was playing a track called Soul Sacrifice, at least that's what the album cover says. (It's likely that Čech & Co. only had a taped copy of a Santana LP and thus they weren't able to figure out the corresponding track titles...) The song has been recorded by the Czech TV in 1973 or 1974, in the transition period before Sodoma's definitive departure and while the new vocalist Jiří Schelinger arrived. The exact line-up or the recording date seems unknown though. František Ringo Čech was playing percussion, of course, and he's not even doing all that bad. Most likely there's the future Katapult frontman Oldřich Říha playing lead guitar and the Shut Up veteran Miloš Nop (1949-2006) was on organ. Jindřich Vobořil might have played bass and either Anatolij Kohout, Petr Eichler or Jiří Jirásek (ex-George & Beatovens) was drumming. Whether Sodoma or Schelinger were singing any backing vocals is unsure as well.

For sure is that Bafff isn't the ultimate Jingo rendition, that honor belongs without doubt to Candido's disco monster from 1979. But it's still a remarkable afro-rock/latin-rock effort for a pop band that's been stuck behind the Iron Curtain through the best era of the rock history. And as I have stated a couple of weeks ago, it's one of the very few examples of this genre ever recorded in Czechoslovakia in the seventies. Unfortunately, as a quasi-instrumental cover tune it seems to be omitted from any Schelinger/Sodoma/Čech CD compilations, so grab it while it's hot.

I've been briefly writing about the album Báječní muži (Wonderful Men) and some of its background story in my Schelinger post last year. While it was the Čech Group's first true 12 inch LP, in the early 70s they already recorded two "bubble-gum" mini-albums for Panton under the Shut Up moniker. (Such mini-LPs or rather "maxi-EPs" were an obscure and luckily short-lived 7 inch/33 rpm hybrid format with 6 to 8 tracks - probably invented in order to save vinyl resources or something - and partly unplayable on auto-return turntables due to the much narrower inner groove diameter.) Shut Up/F.R. Čech Group has also been backing Sodoma on the side two of his only solo LP Haló děťátka (Hello Little Children) in 1972. Although with five years of age I definitely belonged to the target audience for that album, I can clearly remember that there was something about Sodoma that I disliked then...

Stay tuned to this channel, more about Schelinger/Čech & Co. will surely show up here in the future.

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