Customer Reviews

Garden of Joy

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One can never go wrong with anything Kweskin. Another direct hit by Jim and company as they mix divergent tunes such as Ted Snyder's 1920s era "Sheik of Araby", Fats Waller's "If You're A Viper", and Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo". The jug band fun is still there with "My Old Man". We all went ballistic when we heard "When You're a Viper", with its drug inferred ending line.
Oh, and by the way, this album was released in 1967, not 1976.

It's true: August, 1967, the same month I saw the Kweskin Jug Band (I wasn't alone; but that's my business) in Provincetown, MA. Those who know will appreciate that while there I saw Fritz ride down the street on a rented three-speed Raleigh in his orange-and-white horizontally-striped shirt. I still have the souveniers I snagged at the "Blues Bad," and from a telephone pole no cops were watchin'.

And it's true: Kweskin fans didn't disappear; they've been listenin' to the vinyl, and "If You'se a Viper" was originally about the Evil Weed. And Kweskin, on his "Jump for Joy" (with the Neo Passe Jazz Band) sings the great Hoagy Carmichael's "Kicking the Gong Around" (also known as "Minnie the Moocher"), in which Carmichael sang about "the coke" and "junk".

And you thought all the bad dope stuff was invented during the 60s? You'd know better if'n you weren't lost in brown-nosin' the "bible". . .

No joke: were I to see the Japanese import of "Garden of Joy," and I had $40+ skins in my pocket (and it hadn't fallen into Minnie's misplaced hand), I'd pop for it. Alas, somehow, it hasn't yet made it to my neck of the whirled.

The cover of "Jump for Joy," for trivia buffs, is a photograph of downtwon Boston circa 1967, the building in the background being the Prudential Center (and the white complex foregrounding that is Northeastern U). The former was raw wind in Winter, but warmed by a lady (no -- mind your business -- not the one from Provincetown; the one from Fritz Ritchmond's home town of Newton; and -- I misspoke -- she wasn't from Provinetown). And Jim is jumping for joy, in Winter, on the roof of a tenement on Fort Hill, in Roxbury. My stomping grounds were a year or two later, and elsewhere. So whaddya gonna make of it?

If nothing else, before you do anything else -- you could die at any moment -- pick up The Kweskin Jug Band's "Jug Band Music" LP (as CD): if you die not having heard that, you won't be allowed into heaven (regardless how browned your nose).

Life is fleeting, like birds flying, and clouds. But great music ain't. Ain't fleeting, that is. Get yerself some: buy Jim Kweskin Jug Band's "Greatest Hits": it'll knock yer socks off, even if you don't wear any.

That's all I'm gonna reveal of my biography and habits. And no more about the women I've known or hoped to know: that ain't nobody's business but my own . . . when I can remember.