Entertainment For Lively Minds
Georgie Fame
Posted by Excitable Boy on 15 April 2011 - 11:54pm.
Went to a superbly enjoyable performance by Georgie Fame at Ronnie Scott's last night. A brilliant band in top form running through a wide variety of material in London's best music venue. Georgie himself was in great voice and is a most entertaining story teller and seems to be best mates with all the music greats.
I have just realised that I have only one cd of his in my collection ("The Very Best Of..") Where to next please ??
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'20 Beat Classics' definitely...
... and then maybe 'Rhythm & Blues at the Flamingo'? I s'pose it depends if you like live albums or not. By the way, if you do, check out Zoot Money's 'Live At Klook's Kleek.' A fabulous slice of early 60s British R&B from the same era.
Does anyone know...
...why Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo has never been released on CD in this country?
Cool Cat Blues
from 1990 knocks the spots off most albums. There's a stellar guest list too; Van the Man, Robben Ford, Steve Gadd, Boz Scaggs and many others.
Tone Wheels A Turning
Is his most recent and just gorgeous - top track "All I Know" but it's all sumptuous GF stuff...buy with total confidence.
Love him
thanks for the reminder!
His stint as Van's MD in the 1990s produced some good stuff
He's all over Van's Live In San Francisco album.
As far as GF solo is concerned, go for the Blue Flames era - R&B At The Flamingo is fantastic. Another vote for Live At Klooks Kleek as well as well as Graham Bond's Sound Of 65 album.
A Treasure
I've been into GF since hearing him as a child in the 60's.
His back catalogue is very hard to negotiate, in particular his pre-CBS stuff. Basically anything pre-67 is essential, but hard to find. You have to pick carefully through the CBS years (67-71 ish) as there is a lot of MOR on there. Somebody Stole My Thunder is a good place to start with the CBS and it is on Amazon for a couple of quid.
After that it gets even harder to work through but there is great stuff all the way through his career. Kinda like a UK Charlie Rich in that the gems are there but you have to sort through a fair amount of dross to find them.
If you really want the early stuff there is a German company http://www.rockinbeat.de/home.php who do re-issues of dubious legality. Basically good quality needle drops with loads of bonus tracks. There are no other official issues of his early stuff so you makes your choice to go there or not.
He has some history too. Played on the Eddie Cochran/Gene Vincent tour as a teenager. Signed to Larry Parnes (hence the name). One of the true mod heroes who introduced tons of people to rare R&B sounds.
Time for a Word piece on a treasured musician?
Great jazz singer
Agree with Jorrox that he lost his way in MOR in the 70s, but came back great in the late 80s and has knocked out some ace albums since then. Best are Cool Cat Blues, Three Line Whip, Walking Wounded and Poet in New York.
Wow, I thought he'd died ages ago.
Glad to hear I was wrong, sounds like a top gig.