ROBERT DRASNIN – VOODOO III LP, CD, Digital officially released
Towards the end of Robert Drasnin‘s life – he set out to work on the third, and final, volume of Voodoo which he left unfinished. Drasnin had requested Skip Heller to complete his works and turn them into a releasable album. Skip finished Robert DrasninVoodoo III which was rushed out as a super limited release, sold only at Tiki Oasis 15 with a few leftovers sold through Dionysus Records Mail Order.
After numerous delays, including an entire pressing of records recalled to due to a manufacturing defect, the official release including remastered audio, extremely detailed liner notes by Skip, cover art by Claudette Barjoud, and package design by Bob Deck, is now officially released on LP, CD, and digital (available through iTunes, Amazon, and just about all streaming services). The first pressing of 500 LPs is on transparent blue vinyl.
You can order the LP and CD straight from Dionysus at these links. Search your digital provider for downloads and streams.
Join Skip Heller, Lee Joseph, and Joshua Tree-based drummer Jeff Boaz for a night of rockin’ acoustic-based roots and blues at the Joshua Tree Saloon! The show goes from 9-11, and is free. If you’ve not yet been to this authentic, rustic, desert saloon you are in for a treat! The Saloon features a bar and full food menu, indoor stage, plus an outdoor bar and seating area as well.
While Skip’s main focus these days is the Hollywood Blues Destroyers, he is reviving the Trio for this special Hi-Desert show, which also celebrates the release of Skip and Lee’s 78 RPM release, an all-analog, all-tube recording which comes with a digital download code featuring bonus tracks!
Here’s a video of the trio with DJ Bonebrake on drums, at The Redwood a few years back!
Skip Heller 78 RPM Release Party
Thursday, March 24
7-9 PM
La Luz de Jesus Gallery
Soap Plant / Wacko
4633 Hollywood Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA 90027
www.laluzdejesus.com
Join Skip Heller’s Hollywood Blues Destroyers at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in celebration of Skip’s new release, a limited edition three-track 10” 78 RPM record. Heller and group will be performing a full set, featuring a Hot Five performance of the songs on the 78. The event is free, all ages, and takes place in the gallery surrounded by this year’s massive Laluzapalooza group show!
About the release: Dionysus Records inaugural 78 RPM release does the label proud. Roots/exotica/rockabilly master Skip Heller returns to the imprint with Heller’s Hot 5, including Dionysus Records head honcho Lee Joseph on acoustic bass, delivering three smoking, blues-drenched tunes, recorded and cut live to mono tape by former Big Sandy and the Fly Rite Trio’s bassman, Wally Hersom, on all tube powered analog gear. This platter that matters is a limited edition vinyl microgroove 78, playable on anything that plays 78, including jukeboxes. The release comes with a download card. Purchase online direct from Dionysus Records at this link – or from Amazon, etc – downloads available from iTunes, Amazon, eMusic…
>All analog 78 RPM cut with a Westrex head on a vintage Scully Lathe >Edition of 300 on Blue Vinyl in plain gold vintage 78 RPM sleeve >Includes digital download with bonus tracks!
ARTIST: Heller’s Hot Five Title: “I Hate You” 78 RPM
Label: Dionysus Records
Catalogue Number: D7801
Format 10” 78 RPM
Genre : Rhythm and Blues – Acoustic
SRLP: $16.95
UPC: None
Track List:
“Our Old Street”
“I Hate You”
“Sweet Sue, Just You”
Bonus digital track
“Have Love, Will Travel”
Distributed by ILD
Dionysus Records proudly announces our first new releases of 2016; The Alika Lyman Group “Leis of Jazz Vol 2” and Heller’s Hot Five “I Hate You” 10″ 78 RPM. Both releases are available in our online mail order cart (individual links below) or via retail via our distributor, ILD.
Purchase The Alika Lyman Group “Leis of Jazz” LP at this link Purchase Heller’s Hot Five 78 RPM at this link
Leis of Jazz LP cover
Heller’s Hot Five 78 label
Marty Lush opens the Alika Lyman Group LP at Wacko
The Alika Lyman Group LP
Lee Joseph and Skip Heller at La Luz de Jesus
Skip Heller and his 78!
From Hawaii, The Alika Lyman Group delivers a heartfelt tribute to Alika’s Great Uncle, Arthur Lyman. This album spans the gamut of vintage combo jazz and classic Exotica, featuring original compositions and Hawaiian standards with instrumentation featuring vibes, stand-up bass, percussion and guitar!
ALG vibest, Marty Lush has strived to make the album jacket of Leis of Jazz Vol 2 as close to the original Leis of Jazz as possible including an exact repro of the Hi-Fi Records “Stereophonic Hi-Fi” sticker, and label that bears striking resemblance to the silver and black HIFI Records labels of the late ’50s! The first pressing is on purple orchard vinyl and the album comes with a free digital download!
Dionysus Records has released it’s first 78 RPM! Roots/exotica/rockabilly master Skip Heller returns to the imprint with Heller’s Hot 5, including Dionysus Records head honcho Lee Joseph on acoustic bass, delivering three smoking, blues-drenched tunes, recorded and cut live to mono tape by former Big Sandy and the Fly Rite Trio’s bassman, Wally Hersom, on all tube powered analog gear. This platter that matters is a limited edition vinyl microgroove 78, playable on anything that plays 78, including jukeboxes and the sound flying off this thing is super hi-fi! The release comes with a download card which includes bonus tracks- a digital version of down songs can be purchased from iTunes, Amazon, etc.
Robert Drasnin Voodoo III limited edition CD available now
Towards the end of Robert Drasnin‘s life – he set out to work on the third, and final, volume of Voodoowhich he left unfinished. Drasnin had requeseted Skip Heller to complete his works and turn them into a releasable album. 11 songs, plus one bonus were completed by Heller and Voodoo III was finished and rushed out just in time for Tiki Oasis 15 featuring cover art by Claudette Barjoud, designed by Thomas Kimball. The works encompasses all the elements that made Voodoo I and Voodoo II legendary entries in the world of exotica music. We have less than 40 copies of this Drasnin family produced disc currently. Please limit yourself to one copy unless purchasing for family or friends.
We with great sadness announce that the great Robert Drasnin passed away in the afternoon of 5/13/15, after about a year of failing health. He was 87 years old.
Bob is now mostly known for his two masterpiece exotica albums, Voodooand Voodoo 2, but those are only two highlights in a long and multifaceted career as a player, composer, executive, and teacher.
He joined the Musicians Union at the age of 14 upon being hired to play in the Canteen Kids big band on Hoagy Carmichael’s radio show. He first made his way as a player through the forties, playing alto saxophone and clarinet with a great many big bands, including Les Brown, Freddie Slack, Tommy Dorsey, and others. He studied composition and conducting at UCLA, joined a bebop era Red Norvo Quintet (with whom he recorded), and evolved into a film/tv composer and also a very well regarded sideman (on clarinet and alto saxophone).
As a television composer, he was prolific. Twilight Zone, Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, Man From U.N.C.L.E. all boasted great Drasnin scores, and such giants as Johnny Mandel and Jerry Goldsmith considered him an equal. Rightfully.
He eventually became the head of music for CBS television, until his position was eliminated (mostly because the vast majority of shows were made by outside production companies, not the network).
He took to teaching film/tv music, first at the Dick Grove School, then at the UCLA Extension, and he was an excellent teacher, beloved by his classes. I sat in on many of them, and he was inspired, inspiring, insightful, and generous with to everyone to whom he taught.
In the mid nineties, the resurgence of interest in exotica brought him back to public musicmaking. Unlike any of the other first generation exotics, Bob’s powers as a composer and conductor were undiminished. The 1996 reissue of his Tops Records 1959 gem Voodoo returned him to composing and playing. He played on a great many records of mine and toured in my jazz quartet (teaching me more about music than I can ever estimate in the process). He played on my music for Dexter’s Laboratory, Flintsones On The Rocks, Tilt: The Battle To Save Pinball, and theBernie Mac Show. And he was playing at least as well as he had in the fifties.
In 2007, he returned to the studio as composer and conductor with Voodoo 2, a record that did more that just pick up where the first one left off, but rather showed a greater, deepened command of composing and orchestration. It was cut almost entirely live in two days in an auditorium at Pierce College in the Valley. The cast of musicians was stellar, and his brilliance in those sessions was truly awesome to all who witnessed it. In 2008, he was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, an honor that meant the world to him.
There were a few exotica performances after that, but the last years of his life were devoted mostly to teaching. In many ways, his energy flagged as he went into his eighties, but not when it came to teaching. I saw him conduct pieces composed by his last group of students, and his energy as a conductor, his incredibly facile judgement as a music editor, and his unbelievable insight as a teacher served everyone in that room as a lesson on how a classy elder statesman gets the job done.
The last year or so of his life was a lot of health problems. He lived a healthy life — rarely drank, always ate smart, played tennis innto his late seventies — but he became increasingly frail in his last months.
Work was started on a Voodoo 3 (as many of you know). It is not as now releasable, and the family is going to need some time to deal with the immediate facts of his passing, so it would not be in good taste to start asking questions about when and if V3 will be released.
Bob is survived by his devoted wife Marlene and their three children, who loved him dearly. To say he was well-loved by his friends is an understatement. He was generous, insightful, funny, and ridiculously smart, and passionately concerned about the world around him. He’d also take your hand off at the wrist before he’d let you pick up at the check.
His legacy as a great Hollywood composer is huge. Less known but no less enduring is his incredible body of work as a teacher, which is ongoing in the work and methods of the composers he taught so well.
Among the goodies in the Tiki Oasis 14: “Beat Tiki” gift bag will be a postcard containing a code which will give you access to a free 16 track Dionysus Records sampler titled Dig That Crazy Dionysus Beat!Most of the cards will be distributed at Tiki Oasis though we will be offering a limited amount to Dionysus mail order and eBay customers, until they are gone. The codes will expire on December 31, 2014.
The compilation contains tracks from current releases, not-so-current releases and some upcoming things as well! This is the first Dionysus sampler since the Top Secret Dionysus Sampler which was put together for Tiki Oasis 12.
The tracks celebrate recent Dionysus releases by Jason Lee and the R.I.P. Tides, Turkey’s Replikas who recorded an entire LP of classic Antolian garage and psych, The Satelliters (x2 2014 releases) and The Dukes of Hamburg, long out of print vinyl repressings by The Surf Teens and Avengers VI, upcoming vinyl LP releases by The Voodoo Organist and The Alika Lyman Group, a bonus track which will not appear on an upcoming 78 RPM release by Skip Heller’s Hot Five with Dionysus Records head honcho Lee Joseph on bass, tracks from last year’s vinyl releases by Creepxotica, Orchestra Superstring, and Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited, a track from a second limited blue vinyl pressing of The Beachcomber Trio‘s “Live at Kahiki” Lp and a track from an upcoming compilation of the first two Yard Trauma albums which was also the A side of a 7″ which was the very first release on Dionysus!
Here is the track listing:
1) Creepxotica: “Bali Hai Bossa” from Haunted Bossa Nova LP/Digital
2) The Voodoo Organist – “Mojave Midnight Moonlight” from Organ Voodoo LP/Digital (Winter 2014)
3) The Alika Lyman Group “Arthur’s Line” from Leis of Jazz Vol. 2 LP (CD/Digital released by Digitki) (Winter 2014)
4) Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited: “The Bossa Nova Squad” from Plays Lost TV Themes LP/CD/Digital
5) Orchestra Superstring: “Easy” from Kalopia LP/Digital and Easy CD/Digital
6) Jason Lee and the R.I.P. Tides: “Rod Swirling” from Jason Lee and the R.I.P. Tides LP/Digital
7) The Avengers VI: “Downtown” from Real Cool Hits LP/CD/Digital
8) The Surf Teens: “Kalini Wipe Out” from Surf Mania LP/CD/Digital
9) Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited “Girl From Acapulco” from The Fluid Soundbox LP/CD/Digital
10) Replikas “Panayir Gunu” from Biz Burada Yok Iken LP only (CD/Digital released by Ada Music, Turkey)
11) The Satelliters “What’s Up With Timothy Dee?” from What’s Up With Timothy Dee? LP/Digital
12) The Dukes of Hamburg “She’s So Fine” from Liverpool Beat LP only
13) The Satelliters “Don’t Take No Maybe” from More of The Satelliters LP/CD/Digital
14) Skip Heller’s Hot Five “Have Love Will Travel” Bonus track from 78 RPM sessions (Winter 2014)
15) Yard Trauma “Some People” from Must’ve Been Something We Took 30 Years Ago! (Spring 2015)
16) The Beachcomber Trio “Beyond the Reef” from Live at Kahiki 1965 LP only
The postcard artwork is actually a few years old, painted by our pal Rober Pokorny – but fit the Tiki Oasis Beat Generation theme perfectly! www.instagram.com/robertpokorny – and thanks goes to our pal Wendy Sherman at www.artslave.com for the postcard layout. We hope you enjoy the compilation and hope you buy some of these fabulous releases!
Here’s the process of putting the final touch on a 78 RPM record; adding an eccentric run-out groove just to make this all-analog mastering that much more authentic! Skip Heller’s Hot Five Dionysus Records D7801 A/B
On Saturday, 3/15 at 9 PM, The Dick and Jane Family Orchestra with special guest Billy Shire on harp and The Skip Heller Trio will fill the desert night with song! No cover charge but donations will be accepted for the performers gas tanks and there will be snacks and refreshments available from the Joshua Tree Listening Lounge – 61597 Twenty-Nine Palms Hwy, Joshua Tree, California 92252 (760) 475-4860
Tune in to LuxuriaMusic.comon Feb 20 from 3-5 PM Pacific for Over Under Sideways Down during the first week of the LuxuriaMusic Listener Sponsorship Drive. Guest Skip Heller will perform a few songs (all acoustic) LIVE with his quartet, featuring OUSD host Lee Joseph on bass! Sponsor LuxuriaMusic for special premiums including lots of items donated by Dionysus Mail Order and for this show some signed Skip Heller CDs! Join us in the chatroom too!
Towards the end of Robert Drasnin‘s life – he set out to work on the third, and final, volume of Voodoo which he left unfinished. Drasnin had requested Skip Heller to complete his works and turn them into a releasable album. Skip finished Robert Drasnin Voodoo III which was rushed out as a super limited release, sold only at Tiki Oasis 15 with a few leftovers sold through Dionysus Records Mail Order.
We with great sadness announce that the great Robert Drasnin passed away in the afternoon of 5/13/15, after about a year of failing health. He was 87 years old.
In the mid nineties, the resurgence of interest in exotica brought him back to public musicmaking. Unlike any of the other first generation exotics, Bob’s powers as a composer and conductor were undiminished. The 1996 reissue of his Tops Records 1959 gem Voodoo returned him to composing and playing. He played on a great many records of mine and toured in my jazz quartet (teaching me more about music than I can ever estimate in the process). He played on my music for Dexter’s Laboratory, Flintsones On The Rocks, Tilt: The Battle To Save Pinball, and the Bernie Mac Show. And he was playing at least as well as he had in the fifties.
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