I used to think I grew up in the Sixties. A few years ago, I realized I actually grew up, at least partially, in the Fifties. At the beginning of 1960, I turned thirteen. I've always felt the movie American Graffiti was accurate in charting the end of the Fifties to 1962. Around '62, I began buying up second-hand Rock & Roll 78 rpm records of the previous decade, grooving on the wild sounds of Rockabilly, Rhythm & Blues, and great Blues tracks. The music had died, but I had discovered its soul in the second-hand shops of Calgary.
For the first half of the new decade, new Fifties-sounding songs kept cropping up and the old music kept coming back as "old gold" on the pop radio stations. This was the music my friends and I played, not the new, commercialized music, which we panned as schlock-rock. Although we loved it all, a highlight of the Rock & Roll of the Fifties and early- Sixties was the great instrumental hits. That's right folks, no words. What a concept!
Now, forty or so years later, I discover Gene Hardy. Wow! Talk about your classic anachronism. This guy is straight out of 1957. This is wild, mostly instrumental, sax-based boogie, honky-tonk, and Rock and Roll music. I own a long-play recording of the great rock DJ Alan Freed that features Tenor sax men King Curtis and Sam "The Man" Taylor wailing with a big rock and roll band. Hardy's work reminds me of this recording and of the great instrumental recordings by Duane Eddy and others that features fantastic sax solos, as well as the big band rock and roll of artists like Little Richard, especially, that featured powerful horn sections driven by saxophones.
Okay, before I go crazy raving on about great sax, let's talk about the woman. Not all of these songs are instrumentals. Three of these songs, "Down in Dallas,""Sweet Lotus Blossom" and "Since I Fell For You," feature the vocal stylings of Laura Hubert, a singer who should be far better known. Hubert's vocals are sweet and sensual, bringing a soft passion to both of these songs.
Among the Rock & Roll ambience of much of this set, "Sweet Lotus Blossom" comes as a surprise not just for Hubert's fantastic vocals but also for Dennis Keldie's flawless faux Martin Denny passes on the organ that fill out the instrumental backing, adding a very Fifties lushness to the song.
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