For the last post of wretched 2017, a year we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are pleased to see end, we wish all the readers a Happy New Year!
Slowly, make that very slowly getting over an obstinate common cold that's hangin' on like a bad memory, this blogger will NOT be whooping it up at the Happy Hour Club to ring in 2018.
Won't even be up to dancing unconvincingly to the less-than-supersonic tempos of Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians.
Instead, we shall watch Jack Benny's New Year's Eve show from 1961.
Next up: a slew of different renditions of that one New Year's Eve tune which has been recorded 1000 times.
It is quite the tribute to Frank Sinatra that I have mistook this recording by Harry Connick, Jr. for one by Ol' Blue Eyes on more than one occasion.
There are some very good unconventional New Year's Eve tunes as well, every one much less played and covered than "What are you doing New Year's Eve?" Always loved Otis Redding and Carla Thomas' Stax Records cover of ace blues guitarist-vocalist-songwriter Lowell Fulson's classic Tramp (which Fulson and Jimmy McCracklin co-wrote) and it turns out this dynamic duo also did an excellent song for New Year's.
Another ace bluesman, Lightnin' Hopkins, waxed his "Happy New Year" single for Decca Records in 1953. The sting, bite and power of his guitar is undimmed 64 years later, so this song remains a great way to ring out the old year and ring in the new one.
We wrap this post and send out awful 2017 in style with the astounding Swedish bandleader, entertainer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Gunhild Carling. Here's Gunhild, just one virtuoso from a three generation musical family, accomplishing something I have not seen since the heydey of the legendary hard bop/free jazz saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk: playing three instruments simultaneously. Happy New Year!
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