Damn these rocks in my head! I blame them for my many missteps. As I put the finishing touches on this fifth and final volume of the \u201cR&B Hipshakers\u201d series, I think of all the killer sides I\u2019ve wholeheartedly intended to include but somehow not got around to, and they rip at my heart. (Lay off, Lee Parker! You\u2019re hurting me, Hi-Tones!) Let\u2019s not even talk about the pile of unused DeLuxe sides, somehow postponed for a future that now will never be. And how about the concrete factual information about the King family of labels that I\u2019ve never bothered to communicate \u2013 because I decided to leave the detail work to others better suited to it?<\/p>\n
Facts, too few and too late: Did you know that most King and Federal singles went from conception to recording to mixing to mastering to pressing to storage to distribution \u2013 the whole shebang \u2013 under the roof of the company HQ at 1540 Brewster Avenue in Cincinnati, Ohio? That hillbilly music constituted an equal share of the King output, and that there are country versions of many of the R&B records featured on \u201cHipshakers\u201d? How odd is it that you haven\u2019t heard even a peep in this series from James Brown, King\u2019s biggest star? That\u2019s because he pried his masters free from the label\u2019s grip in the early 70s, thus blocking our access to them.<\/p>\n
A word about masters. You may be aware of the loss of a pantheon of beloved recording artists\u2019 master tapes in a fire at Universal Studios in Los Angeles in 2008, a staggering blow to our cultural heritage that remained widely unknown until recently. Well, the fact is that even the masters that do survive are often in a sorry, baffling state. Compilers mining \u201cmasters\u201d often find that what\u2019s been saved are alternate mixes, alternate takes, edits. Throughout this series I\u2019ve attempted to present the recordings as they appeared on released 45s. This has sometimes meant remastering from my own copies of the original records \u2013 although in one instance on this new volume, I\u2019ve opted for a previously unreleased (as far as I can tell) version of a song, Lulu Reed\u2019s \u2018Your Love Keeps A-Working on Me\u2019, because I like the bare-bones, no-backing-vocals recording. Don\u2019t go looking for an original single of it, though, as there isn\u2019t one! (You wouldn\u2019t be the first to undertake that kind of wild goose chase.)<\/p>\n
So here it is, the last batch of your 100 montaditos from the King catalog, 20 final tasty morsels to savor. These hundred \u201cHipshakers\u201d tracks barely scratch the surface (not a great expression to use in the context of records, I know!) of King and Federal\u2019s incredible output, insane as it may sound. Think about that as you listen to returnees Little Willie John and The 5 Royales, whose catalogs are so rich they could keep appearing on hypothetical future volumes in perpetuity. And to the fresh sounds of first-timers Dolph Prince, Cora Woods and Sonny Thompson, which rank with the best on any volume. Rockers, moody slowies, wailers, brassy instrumentals \u2013 all here, all hipshakers. Hank Ballard, my favorite (whose six tracks across the series are the most by anybody), fittingly gets the last word. When he predicts \u2014 perhaps overoptimistically \u2014 \u201cThis is a hit\u201d, these rocks in my head, responsible for so many questionable decisions over the years, go bim-bam. I can only hope yours do too.<\/p>\n
Mr Fine Wine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fifth -and last- volume of our “R&B Hipshakers” series, featuring rockin’ R&B and early soul from the King and Federal catalogues.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>A compilation of tracks from 1953 to 1964 by essential artists such as Hank Ballard, The 5 Royales, Little Esther, Little Willie John, Lula Reed, Albert King\u2026 that, after 5 juicy volumes (do you have them all?), reach the magic number of 100 delights from King and Federal\u2019s incredible output.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>20 terrific dance cuts selected by genre expert Mr Fine Wine, from WFMU’s Downtown Soulville. Most of the tracks have never been reissued before.<\/strong><\/p>\n *This volume includes a previously unreleased version of Lulu Reed\u2019s \u2018Your Love Keeps A-Working on Me\u2019 on a bonus single that will be solely available as part of this 2LP + bonus 7\u201d pack.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":78635,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[62,173,174],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-78636","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-60s-en","7":"product_cat-rb-en","8":"product_cat-soul-en-2","9":"product_shipping_class-lp-doble-en","10":"pa_formato-2lp7-en","12":"first","13":"outofstock","14":"taxable","15":"shipping-taxable","16":"purchasable","17":"product-type-variable","18":"has-default-attributes"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/78636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=78636"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=78636"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=78636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}