In the past here, I've plugged the hell out of Big Daddy, a local band that I've been following for quite some time. Here's the premise: They take songs (usually but not always current ones) that do not sound anything like fifties music and they rearrange them to sound like fifties music. Amazingly, a lot of them sound better that way, in part because the four guys who are Big Daddy — Marty, Bob, Donny and Tom — are real good musicians. They all sing. They all play multiple instruments. And they have a couple of secret weapons: They know plenty of fine guest musicians who can assist them in capturing just the right sound…and Bob — aka "Lightnin' Bob" — is a real fine audio engineer. If you want to listen to some of what they've done, there's an audio sampler on this page. If you prowl about on that site, you'll find even more goodies.
Yesterday, I attended the release party for their new CD, their first in many years. It's called Smashing Songs of Stage and Screen and on it, you hear them fifties-ize tunes like "Over the Rainbow," "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." The way they do the last of these sounds like Johnny Cash teaming up with Alvin and the Chipmunks. The CD was made possible by a successful Kickstarter campaign…and it was kickstarted by a lot of readers of this blog, thank you. Anyway, it's really good and I will soon be posting an Amazon link so you can order it.
I couldn't stay for the whole party due to these things called deadlines. But I stayed long enough to pick up my donor swag and to see how happy everyone there was that Big Daddy is recording again. To those of you who pledged their Kickstarter: Thanks. You did a good thing and when you get your copies, you will feel quite rewarded.