News & Updates — exotica

Happy birthday to tenor saxophone hero John Gilmore. A long-time member of Sun Ra's Arkestra, a major influence on John Coltrane and an icon Blowing Out Of Chicago. Gilmore started playing clarinet at 14 and tenor sax at 17 and he played with Earl Hines before joining Sun Ra's fledgling Arkestra in '53. He stayed with Ra for over forty years, recording on every single Arkestra record until '95 (including most of the legendary Ra-produced doo-wop sides). He brought a gifted and harmonically advanced style and could play sweet to ferocious, but bop & blues was always his main language....

Happy birthday to that Peruvian songbird with the five-plus octave vocal range, Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo, aka Yma Sumac. Not truly an Inca princess but her name does mean "beautiful" in Quechua and she became a '50s pop music icon. She started her singing career on the radio in '42 and made her first records the following year. After moving to NYC in the late '40s she signed to Capitol and proceeded to become one of the major stars of the "exotica" craze. In the early '50s she toured Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. She worked...

You know those people who's music everyone knows but they've never heard of it's creator? Meet Raymond Scott, one of the wackiest composers out there. He was a dada-inspired jazz bandleader, an instrument-builder, a pioneer in electronics and the composer of the Looney Tunes (arranged by Carl Stalling) and Ren & Stimpy music. Born Harry Warnow in Brooklyn to a family of Russian Jews, he started working for his brother in the CBS Radio house band as a pianist, changing his name to "Raymond Scott" (how to avoid claims of nepotism) before forming his spin-off Quintette in 1936. (It was...

The original Mr Babalú Miguelito Valdés, the Havana-born icon was a boxing champion in his twenties before turning to music professionally. Playing around Cuba in son & charanga bands in the '20s & '30s, he played trés, guitar, bass and percussion (also a composer) but it was as a singer & interpreter of Afro-Cuban songs that helped him find fame. In '37 he joined Orquesta Casino, who were hooked up with RCA-Victor Records, and cut some sides with them, achieving fame enough to do a big tour of Latin America in '39. He joined Orquesta Riverside in '40 before moving...

There are so many interesting artists born on July 15 that it is impossible in my schedule to write pieces about them. So here are some shorties, along with a video or two for each. --Francis Bebey / July 15, 1929 - May 28, 2001 This unique Cameroonian composer and his interesting DIY synth-pop crossed with traditional music has been justly making new fans in recent years. --James Jacson / July 15, 1932 - Aug 10, 1997 Happy cosmic birthday to James Jacson, one of my favorite characters from Sun Ra's Arkestra. Jacson is the one who was instructed to...