The best disco in town

Bezinky & Pražské smyčce – Žiješ v éře diskoték (The Best Disco In Town)
from compilation “Disco klub”, 1978, Panton 110717
conducted by Jiří Hrábek


original compilation cover

What was valid thirty years ago still seems to be valid today – we’re living in a disco era. And this week I have the pleasure to present you literally the best disco in town:

Saturday, June 7, 23:00 h
Kuppel Basel
Czech Oldies Party with DJ Lou Kash

The opportunity for this event should be pretty obvious. So… if you (unlike me) are interested in this, the chances are that you might find yourself in Basel this Saturday. And since you already are reading this blog, it’s very likely that you will then appreciate our little party, too.
See you in the Kuppel!

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Shotgun

The Matadors – Shotgun
from album “The Matadors”, 1968, Supraphon 0130493/1130493 (mono/stereo), Supraphon/Artia SUA13992/SUAST53992 (mono/stereo), reissued 1995 on CD Bonton 710244-2
produced by Jaromír Tůma


original LP sleeve, export reissue sleeve

Between 1966 and 1968 the Matadors belonged to the best beat groups in Czechoslovakia. At that time their enormous popularity might have been threatened only by the equally experienced “veterans” Olympic. (By comparing the former with the latter, think e.g. the never ending “Stones vs. Beatles” dispute…) So it was no coincidence that the Matadors were the second rock band after Olympic to have a full long player recorded and released by Supraphon in 1968. And it’s no coincidence either that their only album still belongs to the most sought-after items from former Czechoslovakia among vinyl collectors worldwide, being an undisputed classic of the so called freak-beat or psych-beat genre.

The band was mainly influenced by british R&B acts like Them, Pretty Things, Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Heartbreakers or even the Kinks and the Who. But like many other Czech groups around 1967 and 1968, also the Matadors couldn’t resist the infectious grooves from the omnipresent soul craze all over the world. Moreover since they were frequently playing abroad, particularly doing a Switzerland night club tour through the winter 1967/1968, where they were often asked to play popular dance tracks from the charts.

In this context it’s not surprising that the album song Shotgun nicely fits into this blog’s scope. Unlike Junior Walker’s proto-funk original however, the Matadors’ version speeds up the tempo quite a bit and adds a trace of a Hendrix-like rock feeling due to heavy use of wah-wah guitar; lead guitarist Radim Hladík (1946) was the Czechoslovak pioneer in using the wah-wah pedal to such an extent, that he supposedly even invented the now commonly used Czech word for that device: kvákadlo. And also lead singer Viktor Sodoma (1945) must have been in a good shape on this recording date. His English phrasing is precise and he doesn’t shout as “over-the-top” as on some other Matadors tracks.

The overall production quality of the whole album is rather bad though. The “old school” Supraphon recording engineers of the 1960s didn’t have a clue how to put this kind of music to tape, not to speak of the poor vinyl mastering. Especially Otto Bezloja’s (1945–2001) bass guitar and Tony Black’s (1946) drums suffer from the thin sound. And if there ever was Jan “Farmer” Obermeyer’s (1944) Matador organ on this very track, it’s nowhere to be heard now. (To illustrate these issues, one of the popular anecdotes is, that on an earlier recoding date an engineer supposedly thought that Hladík’s amplifier was broken after he switched on his overdrive pedal for the first time…)

The full Matadors story has been excellently documented in Aleš Opekar’s authorized biography book The Matadors – Beatová aristokracie z Prahy (Oftis 2007, ISBN 978-80-86845-91-3). While the book is written in Czech language only, it contains not only lots of photos and commonly understandable biographical data, but also a bonus CD with previously unreleased live recordings from 1966! (Hey, remember my interlude from last October…?) So if you are a serious collector of Czechoslovak oldies, this book belongs to your collection even if you don’t understand a word Czech. But as I’ve already noted last year, don’t expect any hi-fi quality – it is a historical document.

Speaking of the Matadors story: last year in June I’ve coincidentally discovered that the English Wikipedia already has an article about The Matadors. Originally it was so full of errors then that I’ve decided to clean it up as well as to add some less known facts about the band. At that time I’ve already read Aleš’s nearly completed manuscript, so my informations were first hand. Hence I won’t repeat what I’ve already put together in a more or less serious form elsewhere (although the Wikipedia article isn’t complete yet). But for regular readers of Funky Czech-In it will be of interest when I point out the connections between other Czech groups and artists previously posted here, like Flamengo, Vladimír Mišík or Komety.

The Matadors album has been reissued in 1995 on CD, which also contains all tracks but one released on seven inches and Supraphon samplers between 1966 and 1968. It’s out of print but it still pops up for sale here and there on the web. There’s also a Korean CD reissue available, but as I’ve been told by Jan Obermayer recently, it’s quite likely a bootleg, as are most of the other releases on various low budget samplers in the past 10–15 years all over the world. Still, some Matadors tracks appeared every now and then on some of the protagonists’ official Best Of compilations, like Sodoma’s or Mišík’s.

The export version of the vinyl LP was pressed by Supraphon/Artia way into the late 1970s, so it should be still around in quite sufficient quantity. In other words: don’t believe a record dealer who wants to sell you an overpriced Matadors copy in the black export sleeve, praising it as the “original pressing”. They are not! That applies also to the old Czech reissues in a half-generic Supraphon sleeve with overprinted text. The true rarity is solely the original Czech issue with the colored logotype – particularly the stereo edition – provided it’s in top condition. Because being likely a popular record to be played at way too many wild parties then, most are probably not in the best shape these days anymore. Anyway, don’t get fooled. ;)

There are chances that an official reissue of the complete Matadors recordings will be available within the next few years (to express it rather pessimistically). In any case you will find out about it here first. Simply stay tuned to the RSS feed.


Ex-Matadors Vladimír Mišík, Jan F. Obermayer and Radim Hladík with Lou Kash at the backstage of the Lucerna Music Bar, March 31, 2008, right after one of their annual reunion gigs. (photo: Aleš Opekar)

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Working in the coal mine

Blue Swede – Working In The Coal Mine [sample]
from album “Hooked On A Feeling”, 1973, EMI ST-11286
produced by Bengt Palmers


original LP sleeve (front/back)

As you might have noticed, I have created a new label exclusively for this post, named Obscure Czech-In. That wasn’t without a reason because the other secondary label of this entry, Half Czech-In, is pure speculation on my part. To explain: I’ve found Hooked On A Feeling last year in a second hand record store (coincidentally it was in Prague, but that doesn’t matter here) and at first I thought, “well, yet another cheap one hit wonder from the seventies, nothing of interest for me.” On the second sight, however, there were three things that caught my attention: 1) the group had a “built-in” horn section (often a good sign), 2) they covered an Allen Toussaint song (they had taste!), and finally 3) the guy who’s credited to play clavinet and organ had a surprisingly Czechoslovak-sounding name – Ladislav Balaz [sic]. Well, to make a short story shorter, in the end I bought the record but except for a few tracks I was rather disappointed when I heard it at home. In the meantime I sold it again already.

Blue Swede were better known as Björn Skifs & Blåblus in their home country Sweden. Their international breakthrough came with a cover of B. J. Thomas’ hit Hooked On A Feeling, the title track of this album, which climbed up to no. 1 on the U.S. pop charts in 1974. The group’s style was kind of on the edge between early 70s pop and soulful brass-rock. At times they sounded almost like Chicago, for example, but still more on the pop side of things. The musicians who participated on this recording were, besides of Skifs, Jan Guldbäck (dr), Bo Liljedahl (b), Mikael Areklew (g), Tommy Berglund (tp), Hinke Ekestubbe (ts) and on keyboards the aforementioned Baláž (as the name should be spelled correctly in Czech or in Slovak).

Really, I surfed the word wild web for many long hours but I coudn’t find any other trace of a keyboarder named Ladislav Baláž except that he was playing on this particular record; I don’t think that he could be this guy, though. And interestingly enough, I can’t even hear much keyboards on this particular track either, unless it’s a clavinet and not a guitar in the centre of the stereo panorama when the verse is playing. Nevermind, whatever, Working In The Coal Mine is still my personal highlight of the album, despite the “Czech connection” perhaps being only a mirage. And besides of that, I’m definitely a fool for any Allen Toussaint song. Hence this is the first of only two opportunities known to me to post a Toussaint cover on this very blog in the first place…

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I keep on singing

Eva Olmerová & the Prague Big Band – Zpívám dál [sample]
from 7" single “Georgia”, 1980, Panton 81430053
conducted by Milan Svoboda, produced by Josef Novotný


original SP sleeve

It wouldn’t be appropriate to simply call Eva Olmerová a jazz singer, although the majority of her recorded material falls more or less into that category. But she also loved to sing blues, gospel, pop and even country & western music. Born in 1934, in her teen years she began to sing with dixieland groups in Prague’s coffee houses. Her professional career started relatively late in 1962, when she’s been discovered by composer Karel Mareš, the dramaturge of the Semafor theatre, who was looking for an Eva Pilarová replacement. At that time Olmerová recorded her first hit Jsi jako dlouhý most (You’re Like A Long Bridge) which eventually won the popular song contest “In search of a song for the weekday”.

However, Olmerová’s career probably had more downs than ups. The communist regime always kept an eye on her family, particularly because her grandfather used to be an assistant of the last democratic president Edvard Beneš. In the 1960s and 1970s she’d been regularly prohibited from performing. She also spent more than two years in jail: in 1958 for smacking an insolent police officer and in 1972 for a car accident while driving drunk. And the latter incident reveals that her other enemy was her own lifestyle; alcohol and medicament abuse often turned her unreliable both on stage and in studio…

Olmerová’s undisputed highlight was the debut album Jazz-Feeling, recorded in 1968 for Supraphon’s export subsidiary Artia, which made her quite popular abroad. (I will revisit it more thoroughly in a future Funky Czech-In entry next year.) In 1969 she’s been even asked by Ella Fitzgerald to join her world tour after both ladies jammed together on a river boat party in Prague! Yet the communist regime didn’t allow Olmerová to travel, not even inside the Eastern Bloc. Nevertheless, in 1974 Supraphon/Artia released another English-sung export album with traditional dixieland tunes, recorded between 1969 and 1972 in numerous sessions. But afterwards she slipped into obscurity for the rest of the decade.

She’s been “rediscovered” in the late 1970s by a young generation of jazz-rock musicians. Her new mentors were the keyboarders and bandleaders Milan Svoboda and – particularly in the early 1980s – Michael Kocáb, who both obviously appreciated Olmerová’s dirty voice as well as her untamed attitude. In 1979 she recorded two singles with Svoboda’s Pražský big band (Prague Big Band). Her later collaborations with Kocáb’s studio orchestra or with JOČR were documented on further 45s as well as on two nice pop-jazzy comeback LPs: Zahraj i pro mne (Play It For Me, Too), which in fact was her debut album (!) for the Czech market in 1981, and Vítr rváč (The Wind The Thug) two years later.

I’ve chosen Zpívám dál (I Keep On Singing) not only for its funky atmosphere, but especially because of its programmatic Czech title. While Olmerová likely didn’t deliver her best vocal performance ever from the technical point of view, in her voice you can truly feel the pain as well as the heavy weight of life that she had to carry on her shoulders. The tune is an arrangement of Clive Westlake’s ballad Only Once with Czech lyrics by Ronald Kraus: I keep on singing / Even through the veil of tears / My song is my medicine / My song is a soft muffler / I keep on singing / For all who wander aimlessly through the dark / For the love that I know / For those who are alone / I keep on singing for myself. As for the backing band, an article about the Prague Big Band is in the works and I will post it later this fall, so stay tuned.

Czech music critics have often compared Eva Olmerová to afro-american singers like Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday – not only for the blues in her voice but also for the blues in her life. One of the critics even wrote that she was the only Czech world-class female singer in the pop/jazz genre. But in any case, at her zenith she was never given a chance to introduce herself to the world in the first place.

She passed away in 1993 of liver cirrhosis. Jitka Zelenková sang at her funeral. And now, go and get her records. You’ll find Zpívám dál on the CD compilation Blues samotářky (Blues Of A Loner).

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Piece of my heart

Eva Pilarová & TOČR - Padni na kolena (Piece Of My Heart) [sample]
from 7 inch single "Vlny", 1970, Supraphon 0431049
conducted by Josef Vobruba, produced by Miloš Skalka


original SP sleeve (a generic "Pilarová" sleeve with additional imprint on the back)

As I have promised, here's more soul from Eva Pilarová. Her star sank slightly in the second half of the 1960s, after a new breed of female singers popped up on the Czech scene: the miss pop Helena Vondráčková, the C&W queen Naďa Urbánková, the chanson-girlie Hana Zagorová or the beat ladies Marta Kubišová and Marie Rottrová. Pilarová's educated alto voice on the other hand - while technically perfect - usually sounded a bit "academic", possibly too academic for young listeners interested in contemporary pop music. She's always been more comfortable in pop-jazz, swing or even in classical music rather than being an expressive soul or rock shouter. Nevertheless, bravely following the vogue she recorded a couple of soulful and funky tunes around 1970 as well.

Piece Of My Heart is one of the most recognizable female soul songs of the late sixties. Originally written in 1967 by Bert Berns and Jerry Ragovoy for Aretha's older sister Erma Franklin (1939-2002), it has been widely popularized by Dusty Springfield in 1968 and of course ultimately immortalized by Joplin's Big Brother & The Holding Company the very same year. I must say, however, that personally I prefer the softer versions over Janis' overrated hysterical scream orgy. And thanks to a TV ad from a jeans manufacturer, even Franklin's nearly forgotten yet still unmatched original came back to consciousness of a wider audience more than a decade ago.

Pilarová's rendition Padni na kolena (Get Down On Your Knees) with Czech lyrics by Zdeněk Borovec exactly follows Dusty Springfield's model and therefore also stays quite close to the original version. While the Dance Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Radio (TOČR) and an unnamed choir did a steady job as usual, the tune suffers from a horrible mix, mastering and pressing: the guys at Supraphon obviously must have had a really bad day then. (Note that I have done quite a lot of "clean-up", normalization and re-compression while digitalizing the track. The 7" side in its original "glory" sounds much worse!)

As far as I know, this song has never been reissued yet. And what's more surprising, the single doesn't even show up in Pilarová's official discography document. So grab it while it's hot or good luck hunting.

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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.

~

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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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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In memoriam, twice more...

(Yet another almost off-topic post!)

Seriously, what's going on lately?!
Remember: in February, Sleepy Dan, one of my closest friends and a former bandmate passed away, aged 46. In March I've stated that everybody seems to be dying lately after a friend of our family has left us as well, aged 59. But then only one week later a young friend of my wife also died, suffering from a heart disease. She was mere 26. At that time I thought: "Three persons have gone now, actually that's been already enough people for this whole year." Obviously I was wrong.

Last week I've been informed that yet another two former members of the Ugly Blues Connection/Ugly Bluz, our band in the mid eighties, have passed away recently. Roman Gondolán was one of our regular drummers in 1984 and 1985. As a big fan of acts like Earth Wind & Fire or George Benson he loved to play light and funky disco grooves. Although that didn't really matched our style then - besides of playing blues rock we used to listen to more freaky stuff like Zappa, George Clinton, Slickaphonics or the very early and yet-to-become-famous Red Hot Chili Peppers - Roman was probably the funkiest drummer who joined our band in the eighties. Like me, Roman was a Czech emigrant in Switzerland. He became a close friend of my family and he even lived with us for more than a year. He originated from a famous Roma family of musicians: his father Antonín Gondolán (planned to be introduced here on Funky Czech-In very soon, by the way!) used to be a member of the Karel Gott Orchestra. After spending a couple of years in Germany, in the early 1990s Roman returned to the Czech Republic. As far as I know, he mostly gave up playing music actively. The last time we met, it was by coincidence in a street café in Prague about ten years ago. Roman died of cancer in November 2006, aged 42.

Johannes Lange, a.k.a. Hännu, was from Berne, Switzerland. He used to be my neighbor in the mid eighties, living in the same house where we lived with my mom, my brother and... with Roman. He was hanging around with our band and sometimes he acted as our road technician. With his 8-track mobile recording facility he was later the sound engineer of an Ugly Bluz session in 1987 which we originally planned to release as an LP; unfortunately that never happened, three songs from that session still appeared on local compilations though. Hännu also used to play bass guitar, around 1990 I joined his cover band named D.I.Y. as a drummer for a short time. (It needs to be said that I'm a horrible drummer though... :) In 1995 I've purchased his old analogue mobile recording equipment which I still have in my studio today - although I didn't use it much in the past years. The last time I've seen Hännu, it was six years ago when he rode 100 km with his bicycle from Berne to Basel to visit me and Sleepy Dan. And just two weeks ago I've sent him an invitation to the farewell party for Sleepy Dan (who died on February 21st) which will take place in May here in Basel. I was too late though. On the 6th of April, Hännu has obviously decided to put an end to his life. It was his 41st birthday.

Ugly Blues Connection (the "Dead Men" edition) - Crawling King Snake
live at Gurtenrockfescht Berne, Switzerland, on August 24th, 1985
2-track cassette recording from the mixing console
Sleepy Dan (1960-2007) - vocals, Roman Gondolán (1964-2006) - drums, Hännu Lange (1966-2007) - sound engineer. With Joel Kaiser on bass and myself on guitar. Either Sleepy Dan or our occasional special guest Boldi Debrunner was playing bluesharp on this track.


Hännu Lange at the Gurtenrockfescht on August 24th, 1985; photo © Lukas Machata


from an Ugly Blues Connection photo session on August 25th, 1985: Sleepy Dan, Roman Gondolán, myself, Joel Kaiser; (original photographer unknown)

Rest in peace, Roman.
Rest in peace, Hännu.

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Chain of fools

Komety – Chain Of Fools [sample]
from 7 inch single, 1968, Supraphon 0430547; also on 7 inch EP Artia/Supraphon 133043


original SP (a-side/b-side in a generic Supraphon sleeve)

This one is a true gem and probably the first Czechoslovak recording that really deserves the adjective “funky”. Don Covay’s composition Chain Of Fools was a huge hit all over the world, especially the 1967 version by Aretha Franklin which will still shake up any dancefloor even these days. In the 1960s many people in Czechoslovakia were secretly listening to Radio Luxembourg, thus it didn’t take very long until these chains hooked all “fools” behind the Iron Curtain as well. The most popular Czech rendition was surely the one by Marie Rottrová & Flamingo from their 1970 debut album and its later English export version This Is Our Soul respectively. And suprisingly, Flamingo already had this song on an LP before: a live cut that appeared in 1969 on the 2nd Czechoslovak Beat Festival 1968 compilation. That version was sung by Rottrová’s predecessor though, the young Hana Zagorová, who was then desperately trying to find a trace of soul in her rather thin voice.

Komety (The Comets) were the first Czechs who recorded it, however, and they did best by far in my opinion, with a mean and lowdown beat and lots of dirty fuzz guitar. The group was one of the legends of early Czechoslovak rock’n’roll and beat music. Among the founding teenage members were the guitarists Jiří Kaleš and Jan Reiner as well as the future Matadors organist Jan Obermajer (later known as Jan Farmer Obermayer) who used to blow the clarinet and the saxophone. They played their first gig on a 1959 (!) New Year’s Eve party in a Prague restaurant for which they had kidnapped Obermajer’s parents’ tube radio receiver and used it as an amplifier to plug in their home made “electric” guitars. The first years they played a lot of pub dance parties in Prague, thus their repertoire consisted of rock’n’roll and R&B hits as well as many popular dixieland standards; they also used to have a bunch of horn players. The fluctuation of the group members was immense in the first half of the decade. Like most Czechoslovak young men, also Kaleš and Reiner were forced to make a two-years break when they got drafted. But Komety kept on playing and they seemed to act as a good school for quite a number of teenagers who were about to become respected Czech rock musicians in the future: Radim Hladík, Jiří Helekal, Miroslav Žižka, Vladimír Mišík or another future Matador, Otto Bezloja, who was obviously one of the first in the country to play strictly on an electric bass guitar instead of the commonly used double bass or cello.

Unfortunately, Chain Of Fools, falsely credited to A. Francklin [sic] on the label, was the only vinyl that the group recorded in the sixties. The exact recording date seems unclear. While one source believes it was in late 1967, another one lists June 1968; the latter seems less likely to me though. Nevertheless, both possible dates fit to the era when R&B and soul began to spread over the Czech music scene. Kaleš and Reiner found the perfect frontman for that new “craze” in the legendary ex-Hell’s Devils singer Miloš Vokurka alias Reddy Kirken (not to be confused with a similarly named Czech pop group of the 1990s). At the drums still sat Miroslav Žižka who would soon move on to Apollobeat. Depending on the recording date, the bass was played either by Ivan Pešl or by Pavel Pešta who came in the first half of 1968 when Komety traded their bass player with the psychedelic Primitives Group. As for the b-side of the single, The House That Jack Built is a nice Alan Price cover but compared to the Chain it’s nothing earth-shaking. (Coincidentally, Flamingo and Rottrová later also recorded a song with the same name, albeit the completely different and funkier one from Aretha Franklin’s repertoire.)


Komety, promotional photo 1968: Miroslav Žižka, Jiří Kaleš, Miloš “Reddy” Vokurka, Pavel Pešta, Jan Reiner

Komety de facto disbanded in the summer of 1968 when Reddy left to replace Viktor Sodoma as the Matadors’ lead singer. Matadors (without Hladík and Obermajer though) then left Prague for a lucrative job in Munich, West Germany, to perform and record a German version of the musical Hair. Kaleš and Reiner continued as the New Comets with Vladimír Mišík taking over the lead vocals, but the timing wasn’t all that great due to the invasion of the Warshaw Pact armies in August 1968. The New Comets quitted before they even appeared in the public. Kaleš with Reiner switched to the “safe side” and became members of František Ringo Čech’s Shut Up orchestra, one of the Semafor Theatre’s house bands. Reddy on the other hand remained in Germany with the rest of the new Matadors crew including Bezloja. Later they were the founding members of the legendary international brass-rock combo Emergency, whose first drummer was the talented young German jazz-rocker (and vastly untalented yet eventually later enormously successful solo singer) Udo Lindenberg.

Komety sort of reincarnated in 1973 when Kaleš, Reiner and Obermajer (who was then an ex-George & Beatovens) got together again. As far as I can vaguely remember from my childhood days, that edition inclined more to pop music. But who in fact didn’t in those days...? That period has been documented on four singles, one of them was a popular cover version of Les Humphries’ Mexico. Komety disbanded for good in 1977. Their last lead singer supposedly was a certain guy named Michal Prokop...

(Credit for parts of the biography and trivia goes to the extensive Czech online article at popmuseum.cz, which itself is a transcript from a Rock&Pop 8/1996 magazine article by Aleš Opekar. The photo, the hint about Emergency and a couple of other details courtesy of my friend, neighbor and former Matadors roadie Josef Voříšek.)

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Can't buy me love

Eva Pilarová & Karel Vlach Orchestra - Can't Buy Me Love [sample]
from album "Zpívá Eva Pilarová", 1966, Supraphon DV10206; reissued for export as "The Fascinating Czech Star" between 1966 and 1974 on Supraphon SUA15719, 55719 or 1130667


original 1966 LP sleeve, 1966 export sleeve, 1972 reissue export sleeve

Now, let's move back into time even further and also away from any funk or soul for a moment, although we're staying quite close to jazz. The Czech female superstar of the first half of the sixties was Eva Pilarová. She grew up in Brno but like many other pop singers of that decade, her career kicked off in Jiří Suchý's original Semafor Theatre in Prague. Yet ironically, it was in fact also her talent that massively helped to establish the relatively experimental Semafor stage in 1960 in the first place.

Pilarová has never been fixated on a particular genre or style: jazz, swing, pop, twist, rock'n'roll, blues, ballads, R&B, beat - anything goes. She had already won various awards and recorded numerous single and EP sides [link to an external MS Word document] before her first 12" LP has been released in 1966. On that album entitled simply Zpívá Eva Pilarová (Eva Pilarová Sings) the Supraphon editors decided to show off her jazzy side, however, and that was definitely an excellent choice. After all, her public nickname was "Fitz-Pilarka" which she received as a reference to her famous US idol. Recorded in the era of relative political freedom between 1964 and 1966, the album presented two popular Lennon/McCartney songs and ten American standards. Summertime, Night And Day and Moonlight In Vermont were recorded with the Dance Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Radio alias TOČR/JOČR. Anything Goes, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Misty and others have been done with the Karel Vlach Orchestra. Vlach is also backing both Beatles covers, Can't Buy Me Love and I Should Have Known Better. The latter however disguises a weakness of many "old school" jazz drummers (here probably the legendary Vladimír Žižka) when it comes to playing a straight and simple binary rock beat: sometimes it fails to groove as such...

Can't Buy Me Love on the other hand captures both the singer and the band in an excellent state. It takes the Beatles' rhythm'n'blues tune one step further to swinging big band jazz, like if Lennon & McCartney never had anything else in mind. A classic. According to the list mentioned above, it has been originally released with Czech lyrics as Já čekám dál (I Keep On Waiting) on the Supraphon single 013663 - which seems to be a pretty rare item as far as I can say.

The album also used to be very popular abroad and it has been reissued for export a couple of times (see images), so it's not hard to find it on vinyl at all. As a matter of fact, I'm selling a copy of the Czech edition for 1 Euro only in my WebShop. There's a snag though: the first track (Moonlight In Vermont) ist damaged albeit still playable - but the rest of the record plays fine, i.e. "Very Good". Actually this very MP3 has been ripped from it last year, though I may have likely filtered some pops and crackles here and there. (In the meantime I have finally found a slightly better copy in Prague.) And if you search my shop for "pilarova" you will also find lots of her singles for sale; sometimes it happens that I buy a single without realizing that I already own it, other times I'm not sure and then I think "better to have two of them than none" and sometimes I find an album with the same tracks that I already have on singles. Hence, at least when it comes to Czech records, usually the reason for selling them is that I actually have those tracks already. Searching my WebShop for "czech" should list all Czech items, by the way.

More from Eva Pilarová is coming later this year, also some of her really funky stuff. Stay tuned!

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This boy

Crystal - Tenhle kluk (Just One Look) [sample]
from SP Supraphon 013464, 1966


a Supraphon mid 1960s generic SP sleeve*

Well... 'nuff of the seventies prog-rock for a while. What we're gonna do right here is go back. Way back. Back into time. When one of the most popular Czech vocal girl groups were... the Krystalky!

Krystal or Crystal began to sparkle on the Prague music scene in 1962 as a young rock'n'roll combo founded by guitarist Jaroslav Nevrkla. One year later the group already gigged with a stable line-up that would last for the next few years of their existence: Nevrkla, the singer Jaroslav Jarosil (could it be the same guy who recently played cello with Ian Gillan?!), the lead guitarist Jiří Řádek, Lubor Drahota on bass and Vladimír Brodský on drums. And of course there were also the "Crystalettes" or Krystalky: Jiřina Menšlová, Irena Kubátová and Eva Fatková.**

Crystal recorded over a dozen of songs for radio and TV in the mid sixties. Tenhle kluk (This Boy), a cover version of Doris Troy's soul hit Just One Look with original Czech lyrics by Jiřina Menšlová, became their first single side in late 1966 and their biggest success. Nevrkla stated in 1967 that Crystal actually never were much into R&B or soul. Quite obviously they were covering the popular Hollies' version of the song. Still, thanks to the ladies the song preserves some of the original soul spirit for us "despite" its mersey-beat rework, including a slight and most likely unintended touch of ska on the rhythm guitar.

Tenhle kluk was one of the earlier pure beat sides on a Supraphon single played by an independent beat group; by "independent" I mean bands aside from the "usual suspects" and rock'n'roll veterans like Olympic, Mefisto or the Miroslav Kefurt and Karel Duba combos who all used to back many pop singers for Supraphon. In 1966 the "bigbít" explosion on records was yet to come. Apropos, just for the record (pun intended), on the flip side there's a ballad from the pop'n'swing softie Milan Chladil with the TOČR, but it's not worth to spend any more bytes on it or whatever.

Crystal (without the girls) recorded yet another single and an EP with popular beat and R&B cover versions in 1967 before they gave up. Menšlová on the other hand founded the female vocal duo Eminent who recorded a couple of Supraphon 45s in 1969 and 1970.

Notes:
* Coincidentally it's containing the today's track, but as far as I remember it wasn't the original sleeve when I bought the single a couple of years ago. But it could have easily been: Supraphon wasn't very picky about packaging, they just used to take what they had in stock. That applied even to numerous LP reissues until the early 1990s. (I plan to write an interlude later this year in order to shed more light onto the Supraphon record sleeves inferno.)

** The 7" label lists the names as Menšlová, Kubáková and Fatková whereas J. K. Sýkora's paperback book Czechoslovak Beat Music 67 (Panton 1968) spells them as Menčlová, Kubátová and Fadková. Since the almost 40 years old article supposedly was a transcript of a telephone interview with Nevrkla, Sýkora might have had misspelled some of the names. On the other hand, the Supraphon "empire" didn't care about correct name spelling in way too many other cases either, so who knows...? The unofficial Czech rock discographers M. Balák and J. Kytnar (Československý rock na gramofonových deskách, Indies 1998) are even pointing out that the text on the very first pressing had been spelled even more absurdely (thus turning it possibly into an interesting collector item).

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In memoriam dear friend

(This is an off-topic post.)

Dänu Boemle, alias Sleepy Dan, alias Øml, a very close friend of mine, peacefully passed away yesterday afternoon after being seriously ill for many long years. He was 46 years old.


Dänu in his kitchen on November 18th, 2006

We were friends since 1984 when we began to play street music in Berne, Switzerland. I was a greenhorn teenager, he was a cheeky twen and we both loved the blues. Later on we used to be getting down a bit more funky but by the end of the decade each of us went his own path for a while. We got together again in the mid 90s, this time behind turntables, playing fine jazz and funk records in several Swiss music clubs. Dänu also helped out on our Plookers CD project in 1997 where he can be heard talking on the first and on the final track, as well as playing trombone on a still unreleased song. In the past years we continued to co-operate on various projects: music, his radio play, his web site, his books, his artwork, my wedding... But our friendship wasn't only about music, art or work: at any given time he was like an older brother to me.

Well, to make this entry slightly less off-topic, I'll try to turn it into a kind of Half Czech-In - or I should rather say Self Czech-In. Listen to the Ugly Blues Connection transferred from the copy of a "sub-master" cassette tape as captured in a small 8-track studio on February 16th 1985: Looking For Somebody, a Fleetwood Mac cover originally written by Peter Green. Christian Wolfarth played drums, Joel Kaiser was on bass, myself on guitar (you guessed it, I was the Czech of the group...) and Sleepy Dan was of course singing and playing bluesharp.

My old friend, I will miss you!

UPDATE:
More info about Dänu Boemle is now available on my site: machata.ch/boemle. And our friend Marc Krebs has written an obituary in Basler Zeitung from 27 February 2007 (in German).

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A day in the life

Peter Lipa & the Blues Five - A Day In The Life [sample]
from compilation "Beatová horúčka 1965-70", 1989, Opus 90132113


original 1989 compilation LP sleeve

Last November I've promised you another track from the Slovak compilation Beatová horúčka 1965-70 (Beat Fever) and here it is. A well known Beatles song that originally closes their Sgt. Pepper album; yes, the one with the never ending final chord.

Now, on to the Blues Five version from 1969. It seems that obviously everyone else who has ever covered this song - including such experienced funksters like War, Brian Auger or Peter Herbolzheimer - didn't dare to go too far beyond the original psychedelic arrangement, let alone the given chord progressions. On the other hand, Peter Lipa and his gang turned the song upside down and all around, digging so much funk out of the Blackburn, Lancashire potholes that you could not only fill the Royal Albert Hall with it, but the Gherkin as well. From the first crispy snare hit on, the song keeps on rolling, the Hammond keeps on boiling and Lipa is singing his ass off. Interestingly, according to an online interview with Lipa (in Polish!) they were actually reworking a Wes Montgomery version, while another source (a Slovak article by Fedor Frešo about Marián Varga) points out that it was only a "rip-off" of Brian Auger's live arrangement he played on his Slovakia gig in 1968... Whose nose, as my wife would say.

Whatever it was, I won't go much into further trivia. You can learn a lot about Lipa directly from the English section of his official web site. Just a few interesting highlights: Lipa's long discography includes many Bratislava Jazz Days live compilations, he is also one of the festival initiators. In the 1980s he worked intensively with ex-Energit and ex-Framus Five guitarist Luboš Andršt whom we already met on this blog. And in 2002 Lipa recorded a nice blues-jazz album full of Beatles songs, albeit without A Day In The Life.

The Beatová horúčka compilation occasionally pops up on eBay and it's still available overthere. CDs by Peter Lipa are available online and on eBay, too. A Day In The Life also appeared on the out-of-print Bonton CD compilation Bigbít 1968-1969, however that was most likely the live version from the 2nd Czechoslovak Beat Festival in December 1968 in Prague which was originally released on a Panton EP. On cojeco.cz you can listen to a short snippet of it. Last but not least, I have the rare double LP compilation Bratislava Jazz Days 1981 for sale, with Lipa singing the Ray Charles standard Tell All The World About You.

Without her

Helena Vondráčková & TOČR - Jsem bůh i ďábel (Without Her) [sample]
from album "Ostrov Heleny", 1970, Supraphon 1130839
produced by Bohuslav Ondráček & Vladimír Popelka
Václav Týfa & Konstelace Josefa Vobruby - Bez ní (Without Her) [sample]
from album "Václav Týfa", 1975, Supraphon 1131599
produced by Oskar Jelínek, arranged by Vladimír Popelka


original LP sleeves (Vondráčková/Týfa)

Here is a "double feature" with a "triple connection": both tracks were conducted by the TOČR leader Josef Vobruba (1932-1982), co-produced by arranger Vladimír Popelka and both are cover versions of the same song, Without Her by Harry Nilsson. Nilsson's original from 1967 is a very minimalistic version with its cello accompaniment, other mostly softly arranged renditions have been recorded for example by Blood Sweat & Tears, George Benson or Glen Campbell. Besides of his songwriting, Nilsson also became quite "famous" as John Lennon's drinking buddy in the mid seventies.

Regular readers will surely remember my Vondráčková entry from last December when we dived deep into her jazz-rock phase. Jsem bůh i ďábel (I'm The God As Well As The Devil) is not nearly as funky as that. It's pure easy listening pop with a very light touch of bossa nova. The "funkiness" lies more in tiny details as well as in the atmosphere. I like in particular the brilliant dynamic arrangement which precisely illustrates the excellent original Czech lyrics by old maestro Zdeněk Borovec. The story is a confession of a seductress. At one moment she's soft and lovely, the next second she burns you with passion. She's the god and the devil, Cain and Abel in one person and she promises you both heaven and hell at the same time. Yeah guys, there's definitely no hypocrisy on the lady's part since you've been warned. This here is the hottest version of Without Her that I know.

Jsem bůh i ďábel comes from Helena Vondráčková's second solo LP Ostrov Heleny (The Island Of Helena, not to be confused with her English export album The Isle Of Helena), recorded between 1969 and 1970. It's the album's only track that has been produced with the TOČR (a.k.a. JOČR) orchestra. All other songs are credited to the Golden Kids Orchestra & Chorus - which of course includes Marta Kubišová and Václav Neckář, for more info on them check out my first Marta Kubišová post (and more is about to come later this year). Ostrov Heleny is a much softer album than Kubišová's classic Songy a balady or both Golden Kids LPs, however. You can buy a CD online including 9 singles only bonus tracks or get the vinyl from a Czech auction site. Some singles are still available in my web shop, too, if you search there for "vondr".

~

The trumpet player Václav Týfa (1943) oscillates between pop and jazz. His career started in 1962 in the Karel Vlach Orchestra. In the early 1970s he switched to the backing band of Karel Gott, the Ladislav Štaidl Orchestra. At the same time he also worked with Josef Vobruba's TOČR/JOČR. In 1974 Vobruba set up and conducted an all-star album project named Konstelace (The Constellation). The member list on this first effort is indeed stellar: besides of Týfa there are Radim Hladík (Blue Effect, ex-Matadors) and Petr Janda (Olympic) on guitars, Jiří Urbánek (Flamingo) on bass, Rudolf Rokl (Štaidl Orchestra) on Hammond organ, JOČR members Zdeněk Dvořák on guitar, Karel Růžička on piano and drummer Josef Vejvoda, Miroslav Kokoška (Czech TV Orchestra) on marimba, the flutist Jiří Válek (who got to record his own Konstelace solo album two years later) as well as jazzmen Ivan Dominák and Jiří Kysilka on percussions and Karel Velebný on vibes. Obviously the original concept of the project was to produce a series of albums that would feature exceptional soloists who were working in contemporary Czech pop/jazz orchestras at that time. But as far as I know, no other Konstelace albums besides of Týfa's and Válek's have ever been released.

Although Týfa later recorded lots of solo tunes for radio, TV or for movie soundtracks, this LP actually remains his only solo record to this day. He blows his trumpet in many shades, using lots of overdubs and sound effects, even a wah-wah pedal on some tracks. Side one is an original jazz-rock suite in six parts, Loutna česká (The Czech Lute), written by the arranger and co-producer Vladimír Popelka. On side two Popelka selected and re-arranged six tunes from the Blood Sweat & Tears repertoire like Mama Gets High, So Long Dixie, or the obligate Spinning Wheel which fortunately received an unusual jazzy treatment in 6/8. Without Her on the other hand has been funked up a lot, although I could live fine without the cheesy vocal parts since all other tracks sound fine without them, too...

These days Týfa works again with the Czech Radio Big Band or with the Vlach Orchestra and he can be heard on various CDs, too. The Konstelace vinyl album is really tough to find online, unless you are willing to pay real BIG bucks to these Japanese guys. But while the record may be "über-rare" in Japan, in Prague I've seen it many times for a Euro or two.

Interlude no. 1

As some of you might have already noticed, this music blog is less about being a diary giving away your daily dose of megabytes. Rather I consider it an archive of facts about Czech and Slovak music as defined in the blog header. It's based on my knowledge and what I have gathered from the web (which is mostly in Czech language only), from some books and from the record liner notes. Therefore I don't think it's a good idea to remove any traces of audio from earlier posts after a certain time - which has been after about five weeks so far. Instead, I have now uploaded lo-fi samples of each song that has been published, so in the future you will be still able to hear what I've been writing about. "Lo-fi" means 60 seconds of 64 kbps in mono. Front page audio will be still available in "full size" at 192 kbps (or 96 kbps if mono) as usual.

One more thing...



Someone asked for any rare Yvonne Přenosilová tracks. And indeed I've got one: He's So Heavenly [sample] that appeared on the 1990 album Sklípek, available on vinyl and MC only. In fact, the Sklípek compilation was Přenosilová's first long play album ever! The song was recorded around 1965 or 1966 with the Pavel Sedláček Group. It's a nice up-tempo R&B number, taken from the Brenda Lee repertoire.

An LP is available for sale very cheap. Hurry up!

Blues in soul

The Framus Five - Hold On I'm Comin' [sample]
from album "Blues In Soul", 1971, Supraphon 1130578
produced by Michael Prostějovský & Jaromír Tůma


1971 export reissue LP sleeve, on the left: Michal Prokop

Of the troika of my favorite Czech male rock singers, Michal Prokop is certainly my Mr. Soul (while the other two, Mr. Rock Jiří Schelinger and Mr. Blues Vladimír Mišík, will be featured on this blog very soon). Prokop, born 1946, co-founded the Framus Five in the early sixties. Initially they were devoted to the Mersey sound like the majority of other Czech beat groups but soon they added a horn section and switched to Memphis-oriented rhythm'n'blues. They performed at the famous 1st Czechoslovak Beat Festival 1967 in Prague where Prokop was (rightfully) declared the best singer of the event. They spent the following two years with successful touring all over the country and through Poland.

Hold On I'm Comin', a Hayes/Porter composition originally recorded by Sam & Dave for Stax, is the closing song from Framus Five's first album "Blues In Soul", recorded in the fall of 1968. Although you can hear applause at the beginning and at the end, this is only a pseudo-live "audience" which has been overdubbed to "glue" the album tracks together. Oh well, that gimmick used to be fashionable all around the world at that time. Nevertheless, the song steams like a locomotive engine on the loose, and, even in direct comparison to the certainly soulful S&D original, it is right about to explode. Hold on, baby, Michal Prokop sho 'nuff IS comin'!

Blues In Soul delivers exactly what its title promises. Originally released in 1969 as Framus Five + Michal Prokop, it contains ten R&B and soul covers like Got My Mojo Working, I Believe To My Soul, What'd I Say or Chuck Berry's funked up Around And Around - as well as Prokop's instrumental title track. This is your ultimate Czech R&B long play album because it is in fact, besides Flamingo's first LP (a.k.a. This Is Our Soul), the only one. Unfortunately, in 1971 when this stereo export reissue was finally released, the Framus Five were already history. Besides Prokop who also used to play the lead guitar, the original members were Ivan Trnka on keyboards, Ladislav Eliáš on bass, Petr Klárfeld on drums, Ivan Umáčený on trumpet and saxophonist Jiří Burda who also wrote the arrangements.

Later known as Michal Prokop & Framus 5, the group gave up the horn section and - most likely involuntarily - the English lyrics and for most parts also the "pure" soul. After recording another single as a quartet, in 1970 they were joined by the blues guitarist Luboš Andršt. Soon they began to work with the young producer Hynek Žalčík and poet Josef Kainar on their next album Město Er (A Town Called R). However, the band already broke up in the middle of the production, mostly due to elementary problems like "how do I manage to feed my family while being a musician"; remember, the "normalization" of the real-socialistic society has just begun and rock music was among the first sectors to be "normalized". But despite a few "fillers" on the b-side, Město Er, released in late 1971, remains one of the undisputed masterpieces in Czechoslovak rock history, thanks to the monumental 19 minutes title track where a prog-rock group meets blues poetry and a jazz big band.

Prokop spent most of the 1970s as a background singer with various Czech mainstream pop artists and in the ensemble of the renown Semafor theatre. At least, his superfunky Czech version of Edwin Starr's War (Nač nám je válka) was captured in 1975 on an obscure "socialistic" anti-war compilation Slunci vstříc (Facing The Sun), making it probably the only Norman Whitfield song that has ever been recorded by a Czech artist. (Hm, I guess that's definitely worth a separate Funky Czech-In post...) In 1978 he