Real Gone Music is reissuing several Halloween novelty records from the 1950s and ’60s this spooky season.
Philly Joe Jones Sextet‘s Blues for Dracula will be released on September 12.
When both Miles Davis and Bill Evans label you their favorite drummer, you’re granted immortality that stretches even beyond the lifespan of a vampire! But legendary stickman Philly Joe Jones gets it both ways on the must-hear title track to 1958’s Blues for Dracula, on which he does his best Bela Lugosi impression.
The personnel on this album further attests to the soaring esteem in which Jones was held by fellow jazz musicians; imagine assembling a line-up of Johnny Griffin, Jimmy Garrison, Julian Priester, Nat Adderley, and Tommy Flanagan on your first record as a bandleader!
Priced at $23.99, the album is pressed on two vinyl color variants: “Coffin Velvet” dark purple, and “Dracula” clear with red, green, and purple swirl.
Dean Gitter‘s Ghost Ballads will be released on September 12.
This 1957 album on the Riverside label takes you back to merry Olde England for a collection of 12 ballads concerning the supernatural, many of them taken from Francis James Childs’ legendary book The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, and lustily sung by folklorist and balladeer Dean Gitter
One interesting thing to note about these songs: unlike Hollywood’s version of ghosts who “live” to scare the living, many of the poor souls in these songs have come back to soothe the grief of their loved ones. It makes for a very different spin from your typical Halloween record, and a most haunting listen. And you get to gaze at legendary New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams’ amazing album cover art while you do!
Priced at $23.99, the album is pressed on two vinyl color variants: clear with orange swirl, and Coke bottle clear with black swirl.
The Ghouls‘ Dracula’s Deuce will be released on October 10.
In between penning songs for the Beach Boys and producing The Byrds, Gary Usher indulged his love of surf and hot rod music with a series of albums by such studio outfits as The Hondells, Mr. Gasser and the Weirdos, The Kickstands, and The Super Stocks. But the one album from the Usher oeuvre that everybody’s been wanting to rescue from the vinyl crematorium is his frightfully funny 1964 foray into horror rock, Dracula’s Deuce.
In the hands of Usher and his crack outfit of Capitol studio musicians (The Ghouls a.k.a. The Wrecking Crew) and long-time collaborators like vocalist Ritchie Burns, “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena” became “The Little Old Lady from Transylvania,” “Johnny B. Goode” became “Bela Be Good,” and “Be True to Your School” became, you guessed it, “Be True to Your Ghoul.” But the originals, composed by Usher, Richie Podolor, and Roger Christian among others, are the main attraction, including the creepy exotica of “Dracula’s Theme” and the surreal “Monsterbilly Heaven.”
Priced at $24.99, the album is pressed on “Pumpkin Burnout” orange smoke color vinyl.
Don Hinson and The Rigamorticians‘ Monster Dance Party will be released on October 10.
Gary Paxton was the producer behind the all-time Halloween hit “Monster Mash,” and that song rears its revivified head on this 1964 horror rock classic (in a little more R&B vein) along with such frightening fare as “Monster Surf Stomp,” “Werewolf Watusi,” and “That Little Old Graverobber Me.”
And let’s not forget the classic single, “Riboflavin-Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Polyunsaturated Blood,” which was later covered by modern day horror rockers 45 Grave! Buried in the Capitol vaults, the album features Las Vegas DJ Don Hinson doing excellent Bela Lugosi et al. impressions to producer Paxton’s driving beats.
Priced at $24.99, the album is pressed on orange and black splatter colored vinyl.
The Deadly Ones‘ It’s Monster Surfing Time will be released on October 10.
You ready to catch a monster grave? Surf on this 1964 classic from the venerable Vee-Jay label! While this album has been reissued before, this is the first time it’s been cut all-analog straight from the original tapes. And there are some real treats to savor in all their pure sonic glory, like “There’s a Creature in the Surfer’s Lagoon,” which The Cramps must have heard a time or three.
As always with these anonymous Halloween concept albums, speculation has run rampant as to who’s playing on Monster Surfing Time; suspicion this time falls on legendary “Games People Play” guitarist Joe South, who penned five of the numbers here and whose first hit was, after all, 1958’s “The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor.” So we’re gonna go with him as a likely suspect.
Priced at $23.99, the album is pressed on two vinyl color variants: “Bloody Pumpkin,” and “Seaglass” with black swirl.
