(Vocalists, Now Sound) LP, Vinyl record album

Strings of many shapes and sizes – not just violins, but guitars as well – all coming together in a host of instrumental pop classics! The package is a lot cooler than you might expect – and features about a decade of chart-topping instrumentals – the kind of clever little tunes that made radio so great back in the day, and which often took familiar instrumentation and played around with it a bit in the studio – so that the end result was a heck of a lot more than just the sum of its parts! Styles are great – and run from folksy to rocking to exotic, and more – really creative stuff spun out over a set list of 28 tracks that include "The Dis-Advantages Of You" by The Brass Ring, "Love Is Blue" by Paul Mauriat, "Fly Me To The Moon" by Joe Harnell, "Flying Circle" by Frankie Slay, "Image" by Hank Levine, "Mexico" by Bob Moore, "Beautiful Obsession" by Sir Chauncey & His Exciting Strings, "Summer Set" by Monty Kelly, "Baby Elephant Walk" by The Minature Men, "Java" by Al Hirt, "The Enchanted Sea" by The Islanders, "More" by Kai Winding, "Cast Your Fate To The Wind" by Sounds Orchestral, "Swingin Safari" by Billy Vaughan, "Calcutta" by Lawrence Welk, and "Lost Love" by HB Barnum. (Funky Compilations, Now Sound) CD

We're not exactly sure what "riff jazz" is, but we can definitely say that the album's one of Jackie Gleason's jazziest from the 50s – a really hard-hitting affair that gets past the sleepier arrangements of other records, and makes great use of breakout solo work from Jimmy Cleveland, Charlie Ventura, Hank Jones, and Charlie Shavers! The players stick with a slightly traditional mode, as you might expect – but the album's got a great way of mixing the fullness of other Gleason albums with a more searing approach to the solos. There's a heck of a lot of titles on the record – and tunes include "Tollgate Treat", "Sawmill Slide", "Hawthorne Circle Hop", "Route 9A", "Mary's Pizza Mart", "Croton Craze", "Cortlandt Clipper", and "Bird N Bottle" – all originals co-penned by Gleason! LP, Vinyl record album