Back in the Day, 1999: 

Various artists   

Swing Out to Victory!   Four-disc set

(Platinum)

Just back in the U.S. of A. from carrying a carbine in the Big One, the crew-cutted, erstwhile gravel agitator surveyed the ballroom from behind a rum-and-cola: Khaki-wacky tomatoes and ducky shincrackers truckin' around the totem pole. The entire place shook to musicalizing perpetrated by axe-choppers cookin' with premium, and decked out in glad rags sharp enough to stun Sugar City.

A victory-rolled, satin-swathed glamour dish swung to his elbow. "What's buzzin', cousin?"

GI Joe drank in her getwaway sticks before gazing into her baby blues. "I was thinking...protecting killer dillers like you was what over there was all about!"

Recommended, disc one: "We Did It Before" (Carl Hoff and His Orchestra), "Hats Off to MacArthur! and Our Boys Down There" (Dick Robinson and His Orchestra "He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings," "Cash for Your Trash" (Fats Waller), "He's 1-A in the Army and He's A-1 in my Heart" (The Four King Sisters, "A Slip of the Lip Can Sink a Ship: (Duke Ellington and His Orchestra)

Recommended, disc two: "For the Flag, For the Home, For the Family" (Johnny Long and His Orchestra), ""What Do You Do in the Infantry" (Bing Crosby with Chorus and Orchestra), "Captains of the Clouds" (Dick Powell with The American Four)

Recommended, disc three: "Let's Put the Axe to the Axis" (Abe Lyman and His Californians), "Ma I Miss Your Apple Pie" (The Jesters), "No Love No Nothin'" (Ella Mae Morse), "D-Day" (Nat King Cole)

Recommended, disc four: "Any Bonds Today?" (The Andrews Sisters), "Bell Bottom Trousers" (The Jesters), "Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima" (Sons of the Pioneers), "Leave the Dishes in the Sink Ma" (Spike Jones and His City Slickers)

Videos: "We Did It Before"   "Hats Off to MacArthur and Our Boys Down There"   "Cash for Your Trash"   "A Slip of the Lip Can Sink a Ship"   "For the Flag, For the Home, For the Family"   "Bell Bottom Trousers"   "Star and Sripes on Iwo Jima" 

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Back in the Day, 2017

Hillbilly Hellcats

s/t   digital

(Audiosparx / Rosenklang)

32 slices from past platters. Some smooth, others serrated. Most were culled from Rev It Up with Taz (1996) and Our Brand (1998). In addition to cut-above wittiness that is at turns self-deprecating - and the ten-miles-high musical chops of Chuck Hughes, Lance Bakemeyer, and Taz Bentley - this compilation offers salvation to those previously denied admittance to creepered Mystic Order of the Ostinato swing society meetings for not having purchased songs when first dealt to vendors.

Recommended: "Road Rage," "White Trash," "Leavin' Colorado," "Hippie Dance," "Tom Grey's Dream," "Everybody There Was Drinkin' Martinis but Me," "Crazy Little Baby," "Hillbillies on Speed," "Havin' it All," "Hillbilly Love," "I Wanna Be a Rockabilly Rebel," "Cats Like Us," "My Baby Moved," "Better Be Some Drinkin'," "Over and Over," "Train to Nowhere," "I Dig Jazz," "A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action," "I Never Thought"

Videos: "Everybody There Was Drinkin' Martinis but Me"   "Crazy Little Baby"   "I Wanna Be a Rockabilly Rebel"   "Better Be Some Drinkin'"   "I Dig Jazz"   "I Never Thought"   

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The Blue Velvets

Anymore   four-track EP

(Enviken)

Unhurried bop buffed to high sparkle with 18-karat Jazz chamois. Alastair, Ralph, and Mario recently played France's Festival Rockin' Berry. (That triple-day event's bill also included Jack Baymoore, Miss Mary Ann, and Arsen Roulette.) One report enthused that the roster "kept the dance floor packed until the early hours of the morning." This EP, produced by the spring-loaded trio, gives testimony as to the vintage vibe that had shoe leather in tatters by festival closing.

Recommended: "Anymore," "Candy Shop," "Midnight Hour (when I bop)," "In Years"

Videos: "Anymore"   "Candy Shop"   "Midnight Hour (when I bop)" (live)  "In Years"

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Bear Family

Jungle Records

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Tidal

Jinx Jones: Fire forever    

                        

Californian Jinx Jones's status as fretboard royalty is beyond dispute. Last March, he issued his 7th disc, Under the Neon Moon. 

In reviewing it at the time, I wrote: "Bow low when entering the palace chamber. Jinx pulls up a pillowed seat at the same roundtable as Barry Ryan, Chris Spedding, George Benson, and Danny B. Harvey. (From yon wall, gilded portraits of lamented heroes like Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Matt Murphy, Jimmy Bryant, Danny Cedrone, Charlie Christian, Danny Gatton, and Franny Beecher peer down on proceedings.)"

Globally famed as a breath-stealing picker both encyclopedic and devastating, he's on first-name terms with outer planets of bop nonpareil. Whereas others might have left the Rockabilly / Country trail he's ridden to fame -- to assay styles more sanctified by clef-note gray-beards -- Jinx stayed put and unburdened himself of serrated thunderbolts that parted pomps and frizzed Bettie bangs.

His journey to current renown was paved with experiences that both seasoned and informed him. 

Beginning in 1976, he backed legends Solomon Burke and Howard Bomar. He then worked in one of Chuck Berry's regional touring bands. During the mid-1980s, Jinx backed Roy Buchanan in concert.

Subsequent studio session toils led to Jinx playing both guitar and bass on the 1992 En Vogue hit "Free Your Mind."

Over these years, he developed a musical voice inclusive of the finest of Americana past, his own novel articulations lending piquance. 

With seeming ease, he divines the blood fraternity of Rockabilly, Western Swing, Blues, Jazz, and Honky Tonk, dazzling with furious note-bursts one moment and in the next, spinning glorious strands of wondrous and untethered imaginings.

Imagine an advanced fretboard textbook on 10. Listeners are surely thunderstruck by Jinx's authoritative command of labyrinthine note aggregates, lightning-fleet navigations, and esoteric chordal modes. One intuits they are in the twang-upholstered, Jazzy Court of a flat-gone monarch, one for whom fair Aoede is a favored midnight-hour ship.

Jinx's Under the Neon Moon holds gripping wonders for both his established audience and untouched ears. Ecstatic notes are bent, jabbed, and fired off at jet velocity. Fierce and wooly barn-dancin' bop drops by the bale, but gentler moments also croon.

"Hittin' the Hard Stuff," "Cadillac Love Machine," and "Million Dollar Fool" point up his flair with spring-heeled rambles and wry (sometimes self-effacing) wit. Instrumental odysseys like "Prelude Noir," "Duane's Train," and "Neon Moonlight" allow Jinx the elbow room to expand at length upon artful musings.

Honky Tonk expressiveness and rumbustious Rockabilly exhortations were colorfully integrated with ebullient bursts of Jazz-inflected phrasings. . 

Now, it's not uncommon for artists to cool down once they're a few discs into recording careers. Perhaps they lose something of their initial creative fire.

But not Jinx. Never Jinx. I don't believe he'll ever lose the fire.

Videos: "License To Twang"   "Redneck Barbie"   "Cadillac Love Machine"   "Neon Moonlight"

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Djordje Stijepovic: They call him artist          

Beyond dispute is that Djordje merits placement at the topmost level of music -- Rockabilly, Jazz, Swing, Punk, Worldly styles, Exotica - and the beautiful beast they combine to form.

His years of wildcatting across Rock'n'Roll stages are offset by impressive academic regimen; he boasts degrees in Jazz bass and arrangements, as well as a conservatory one in classical double-bass performance.

His most recent solo single (as Bullfiddlecat) is 2025 untethered raver "Knockout." Djordje uses familiar construction and style, but adds unanticipated key shifts. The Paul Pigat lead and nimble skins administered by Aleksander Petrovic flabbergast. (Too, a factor in the accompanying video's magnetism is the shameless frolic of pinups Scarlet Paige and Terra Jackson.)

Djordje contributed talents to others' 2023 works, including Dark Bardot (by Filip Mitrovic and Andy Baldwyn) and Argentinian singer Fito Paez's EADDA9223.

In 2008, I was writing as CD review editor for Rockabilly magazine. My introduction to Djordje came when I reviewed his group Atomic Sunset's Hot Rods and Pin Ups CD. 

"De riguer aggro aside, this Serbian trio's truest worth lies in the same instrumental attentiveness distinguishing all serious musicians," I wrote. "Impeccably precise Sinesa Jovic is ever at hand, Drazen Skaric crafts alarmingly charged exhortations, and Djordje Stijepovic's artful upright maneuvering salutes no superior."

There have since been diverse discs featuring Djordje (as well as before). Among them are platters by Fishtank Ensemble, Beats Antique, Anne McCue, and the BBB featuring Bernie Dresel. 

Scattered betwixt was Djordje's four-LP stint with Tiger Army and various soundtrack and compilation work. He's also laid down further solo sounds and lent talents as a guest accompanist: Wanda Jackson, Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana, Big Boy Arnold, and Dale Hawkins wisely called his name. 

Still more studio and live performance endeavors matched him with Nickelodeon star Drake Bell and supergroup Headcat (in which he jammed with fabled Slim Jim Phantom and Danny B Harvey).

Putting august genres Djordje enlivens to one side, talk of art may seem incongruous when discussing his rough-hewn roots-musics and Psychobilly efforts. Still, even then, creative intuition and intellectual discipline lurk.

Djordje attends to business and lets observers call him artist. And they do.

Videos:  "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (Atomic Sunset 2007)   "Ciocarlia" (Fishtank Ensemble 2009 live)   Tiger Army solo (live 2017)   "Gimme tha Power" (Molotov 2018 MTV live)   "Knockout" (featuring pinups Terra Jackson and Seattle Paige)

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Jerry Sikorski and American Patrol

s/t

(Self-issued)

Sandburg's line about coming in on "little cat feet" has no relevance here. Opening track "I Ain't Never Been a Cheater" makes like a lion with its tail stuck in a wall socket. That rollick and following ones teem with executive guitar navigations, piano and brass tear-it-ups, and a rhythm section tag team at once poised and dynamic. Swinging baby-moonabilly/jazz-snazz forays predominate, though affairs sometimes downgrade for pensiveness evocative of smoke-clouded, dimly lit nightspots. Plank specialist Jerry's vocals and songcraft are of their usual lofty rank. He's eminently able to loosen his collar and "go native" in grinning, growling fashion. 

You can bet your hat - we got a date Saturday with American Patrol.

Recommended: "I Ain't Never Been a Cheater," "Just Like You," "You're Everything and Then Some," "Blue by You," "It's Me You're Gonna Lose," "Tears Are Falling," "Love Fixes," "Bourbon Street," "Little Baby"

Videos: "Tears Are Falling" (clip)    

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OtyKen

The dimly-lit Yantar banquet hall's gilded appointments silently beheld grandiosty: Attired elegantly in ancestral garb, the ladies raised up sounds dynamic, from eras winds of time had ushered away. There were, that night, horsehead violins, drums of diverse descriptions, and electric bass. A male throat singer dwelled toward the rear. All undulated, like puppets on the rhythm's strings. Jazz dancers stepped impossibly. 

Video: "Tundra"

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Curled lip and world betterment

1950s Rock'n'roll represented a social unity that voices of divisiveness, including Jim Crow-allegiant political, educational, and religious officials, viewed as threatening to an illusory order made possible by strictly enforced segregation.

Young men and women who would help birth the new communal music drew upon airs of rural America that were rooted in European forms, as well as the Blues and Jazz idioms that enlivened the nation.

Over time, and as ecstatic admixtures emerged in countless juke joints, honky tonks, and shoestring recording endeavors, Rock'n'Roll came into brash being.

But that unplanned nascency was only possible because of musicians' and audiences' wide cultural appreciation and openness to natural creative cross-pollination.

The climate in the days of Rock'n'Roll's youth was cold and conformist. So, joining cultures challenged a status quo not at all receptive to integration and permutation.

Among other boons the style brought the world was sorely needed cultural defrosting. And the world was forever bettered.

Kyle Lacy

The Record Hop!   vinyl, CD, digital

(Lacy Records)

The quiet joy that animates young Kyle's features, as his fluttering digits deflower frets, communicates that he very much digs his jump down, turn around musical existence, and wouldn't live differently for a dollar and a quarter. Jazz grooves, Rockabilly-inflected rompings, Blues graspings, and ground-level rhythms gyrate like shameless fun shake-'em-ups. All the wild while, the tipped-brim slew at Kyle's elbow gives up icy-cool jumpin' that has dancefloor folks executing gran mals one song, and exchanging belly rub intimations, the next. 

Ahmet Ertegun would slap a contract on the desk.

Recommended: "One Trick Pony," "More Than That!," "Cryin' and Shakin'," "Lucky Ducky," "Love Spectator," "Everlasting, Everchanging," "Two to Tango," "Playing in My Head," "Give Back My Name," "What is Hip?"

Videos: "One Trick Pony"   "More Than That!" (official video)   "Cryin' and Shakin'" (official video)   "Love Spectator"

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The Shake Bombs

Originals!!!   digital album

(Self-issued)

The three sporting chrome-finned coolness, in 10 compiled razorings, evidently have zero regard for studio handstand trickery. And that's a very good feature. Eschewing audio counterfeiting leaves the roadway clear for rubbery tread scars, ones that mean nitro-powered Neo-Rockabilly's on the highway market for blond, brunette, and scarlet-tressed hitchhike dolls.

Recommended: "Baby, Put Your Coffee On," "My Big Foot Gal," "Tempe Town Blues," "Saturday Sale at the Goodwill Store," "New '35," "Pretty Baby Blue," "Smoking Hot Body"

Videos: "Baby, Put Your Coffee On"   "New '35"   "Pretty Baby Blue" (live)

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Bamboozle

It's a difficult undertaking - reinterpreting cartoon themes as jazzy instrumental excursions - but it's one Bamboozle pulls off with dash. Innocent fun and learned dexterity clasp hands and spin in playdate circles.

Video: "Inspector Gadget / Spiderman"

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Marley Bone

"Neesey Smile"   single

(Marleybone Records)

There's a time for stridence and pugnacity, but life also offers tender moments. Couple spells, during which lidded eyes lock, caresses inspire, and the clock's hands lose meaning. For, just as the sun's rays banish dismal cloudiness, so dimples dash away despondence. Would that all combos were similarly adept at contriving hushed romanticism. Brushes imprint snare, strummed chords hint at beatitude, and basslines articulate empathetic structure. Blissful stirrings are brought to a head by womanly radiance.

Video "Neesey Smile"

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Jinx Jones

Under the Neon Moonlight

(Vibrosound)

Bow low, when entering the palace chamber. Jinx pulls up a pillowed seat at the same roundtable as Barry Ryan, Chris Spedding, George Benson, and Danny B. Harvey. (From yon wall, gilded portraits of lamented heros like Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Matt Murphy, Jimmy Bryant, Danny Cedrone, Charlie Christian, Danny Gatton, and Franny Beecher peer down on proceedings.) The guitar case Jinx hefts is festooned with stickers proclaiming genres from which he samples, an idiosyncratic admixture the end product. Jazz accentings daub passages as only they can. Rockabilly assertions jump up. Blues pensiveness murmurs. Even Bakersfield Country contributes. Beribboned cavalier Jinx renders them as coalesced body, and they celebrate spectacularly. 

Recommended: "Prelude Noir," "Rumble Street," "Get Out of This Place Alive," "Hittin' the Hard Stuff," "Duane's Train," "Cadillac Love Machine," "Neon Moonlight," "Million Dollar Fool," "Western Orange," "Lookin' for My Next Mistake," "Flippin' My Lid," "Love Letter from North Beach"

Videos: "Duane's Train"   "Cadillac Love Machine"   "Neon Moonlight"   "Million Dollar Fool"   "Western Orange"

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Jumpin' Rockets

Astro-Bash!

(DMG Germany)

"Astro-Bash!" and "Jumpin' Rockets" unfurl in the intergalactic-kicks spirit of the boss cover snap. But - deft musical gurus to the left and right - wall-to-wall enchantment here isn't solely composed of spaceman shenanigans. Reserved Jazz stateliness conjures in turns like "Everybody Loves My Baby." Songcraft is thoughtful and many splendored. Graceful guitar glistens. Rhythms soothe. Suggestive quietude washes ashore, only to be suddenly animated by vibrant onrush. "Supernova Bossa," a gentle stroll through absolute pleasance, offers harmonies one might find in a sunflower.

Recommended: "Astro-Bash!," "All Night Long," "Fell in Love with a Stranger," "Love Me Right," "Everybody Loves My Baby," "Jumpin' Rockets," "Wring-Out Boogie," "Only Lies," "I Don't Care," "Hot Rod Racin'," "Supernova Bossa"

Videos: "Astro-Bash!"   "All Night Long"   "Everybody Loves My Baby"   "Wring Out Baby"   "Supernova Bossa"

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Hitchcocks

Tales of Hitchcocks   300-copy, 4-track 7" orange vinyl, or 13-cut CD 

(Sunnyboy 66 / Latitude Zero Records)

For a bit of a notion as to the present circumstance, straddle a board atop cresting foams splashing through carnival funhouse mirrors, as beyond-Milky-Way tunery, charged by Don Post trick-or-treat mask-wearing outer space spooks with twang bars, reverbs through the Montgomery Ward transister radio you've pressed to an ear. Yeah, it's that good.

Recommended: "Halloween Night," "Interferencia UFO," "Passageiro do Futuro," "O Regresso," "Vampire Dancing," "Magma," "Spaceman," "A Noite do Besouro Verde"

Videos: promo clip   live clip   2nd live clip

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The Swingin' Blackjacks

Never Tire, Never Stop

(Self-issued)

Interviewed last month by Blues.Gr, axeman/singer Matt Allen made clear a crucial truth that rigid doctinaires fail to grasp: "Blues didn’t shape Rock and Roll by itself; Jazz, Gospel, Hillbilly, and earlier 20th Century Pop music all had roles in the birth of Rock and Roll. It’s like a delicious musical stew with plenty of spice." 

Revolutionary 1950s DJ Alan Freed stressed as much, in days when our music was barely out of its germinal stage. And Canadian Matt's Swingin' Blackjacks shout that verity in song after persuasively-jukin' track. Matt, drummer Adam David, and bass player/vocalist  Gary Kendall maintain cool and collected Jazz poise, while perpetrating hot and cool, rockin' rhythms that goad flesh-and-blood transportation departments into fancy footwork.

Recommended: "Misery Train," "Deep in My Heart," "Heart Full of Soul," "Rock All Night," "Black Cat Blues," "Let's Pretend We're in Love"

Videos: "Misery Train"   "Rock All Night"   "Black Cat Blues"  "Let's Pretend We're in Love"

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The Monokids

s/t

(Self-issued)

Italy's Monokids are the whole package: a second skin, cat-style look; Neo-Rockabilly (plus sundry other bents) so tight and energetically tossed out that neophyte competitors likely grind molars enviously; and such apparent affection for the bop that drives cats and gators into lava-blooded paroxysms, that sound systems tremble at resultant roar.

Recommended: "Always Do the Bop," "Real Gone Daddy," "40 Days in a County Jail," "The Last Goodbye," "My Blues," "Blazing"

Videos: "Always Do the Bop"   "Real Gone Daddy" (clip)   "40 Days in a County Jail" (clip)   

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Vernon Reid

Hoodoo Telemetry

(Artone / The Players Club)

As was vividly paraded by Vernon's contributions to Living Colour - impossibly alacritous fretboard fingerings that fused notes into kalaidescopic configurations and left jaws hanging - within the man pulsed vision and prowess beyond that of rank and file axemen. But "the past is prologue," as Willy Shakes quilled. Hoodoo Telemetry portrays Vernon's phenomenal bent in far advanced stage, finding breath-stopping animation in unmapped Jazz, Rock, and Funk mileaus. (Edgar Winter's "Dying to Live" and Cream's "Politician" are reanimated with due regard.) Occasional vocals by Vernon and guests are well-turned and wreath movements with body-and-soul essence. A host of hues, textures, tempos, and startling declarations cascade down and around. One is 18 kinds of happy about getting drenched.

(A personal favorite of this author's is the jagged smokestack lightning Reid added to the Ramones' "Cabbies on Crack," from 1992's Mondo Bizarro.)

Recommended: "Freedom Jazz Masque," "The Haunting," "Bronx Paradox," "Or Knot," "Dying to Live" (feat. vocalist Miche Fambro), "Politician" (feat. vocalist Bruce Mack), "Black Fathom Five," "Meditation on the Last Times I Saw Arthur Rhames," "In Effigy" (vocals by Vernon)

Videos: "Freedom Jaz Dance"   "Politician"   "Meditation on the Last Times I Saw Arthur Rhames"

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Gina Haley & the Jive Aces

I've Got a Feelin'

(El Toro)

A decade ago, Vintage Rock magazine described Jive Aces as the "UK's number one jive and swing band." That salute is no less merited, today; styling trademark yellow threads, they dish Swing magic and put rakishy-tipped stank on every College of Musical Knowledge note. A finer complement for brassy, emphatic Gina could not be located. The voluptuous, skirt-snapping girlchik looses steaming vocal torrents that pour atop and betwixt Lindy Hopping he's and she's. Spring-heeled rousers, torchers - all stations are visited. The killer-diller gal digs that, for jitterbugs on the thrashing floor and buzz-boys up in the blue, every day is a V for Victory one.

Recommended: "I've Got a Feelin'," "'Til the Well Runs Dry," "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean," "Them There Eyes," "Teardrops from My Eyes," "As Long As I'm Moving," "Saved"

Videos: "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean,"   "Teardrops from My Eyes" (live)   "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" (live)   "As Long As I'm Moving" (live)   

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