Cocktails with Eddie Carson 1980 LP Elmira NY Private Label Jazz Lounge Piano

$

20

EDDIE CARSON

Cocktails with Eddie Carson

1980 LP

CASINO RECORDS
RR 8009-2

Now here's an interesting record, one that many might just pass by as one of those piano lounge-jazz albums from the late 1950s/early 1960s if you judge it by the cover, but it's actually from 1980! An album (cover) like this in 1980 either had to be satire, or completely out of touch with the music scene. Turns out it was neither. Eddie Carson (not to be confused with the blues guitarist Eddie Carson, or Josephine Baker's father, a drummer named Eddie Carson) was a jazz pianist from Albuquerque, New Mexico who played with big bands all over the Southwest in the 1930s and 1940s. Pete Vacher recalls some of Carson's career in his book- "Swingin' on Central Avenue: African American Jazz in Los Angeles" - "Eddie Carson was a real tall fellow to look at him. He was six foot seven and three-fourths. I'll tell you who played with that band was [bassist] Joe Mondragon, Carlton Smith, trombone player from Detroit, he was with the band, and I guess you heard of [alto saxophonist] Rosco Robinson. The others were John White, Henry Gray- he played trumpet- Hunter Gray played saxophone-- that's his brother. Oscar Clark was the drummer; Fred Maxey, the other trumpet player, he was from Memphis. He and [guitarist] Ted Brinson were very good friends....they started out playing banjos together so Ted was with that Carson band; he went with Andy Kirk later on. Eddie could play a [musical] saw, really play it! He started the band, called it Eddie Carson and his Hot-Ten-Tots, playing in town for dances and we'd go out on the road too. From Grand Junction we traveled all 'round Colorado, over to Gunnison, up to Steamboat Springs."

The interesting thing about this album is that as opposed to the Southwest U.S., it has everything to do with Elmira, New York, a town that I live in, but being that Carson's residency here preceded mine by a few decades, I had never heard of him until now. Willard Nagle's liner notes on the back of the album indicate that Eddie Carson was just passing through the area when he fell in love with Elmira and decided to stay. Apparently he was a mainstay performer at a number of local niteclubs and lounges here (all mentioned in the liner notes) all of which are gone now. The album was even recorded in Elmira on September 15, 1980 at Revelation Recordings, Elmira. That recording studio no longer exists. According to the label on the record, Casino Records is a subsidiary of Revelation Recordings. (This Casino Records has nothing to do with the 1970s Canadian label by the same name, nor the Los Angeles based bootleg label.) So it's pretty obvious that Casino Records is a private label.

As for the music, it's just Eddie Carson and his piano doing standards, likely just as he played them in his Elmira gigs. This is a rare, rare record with limited (probably local only) distribution. No CD either. Considering Carson's rich musical history going back to the 1930s/1940s, it's a collector's item.

COVER = EXCELLENT (a mere hint of ring wear top front); VINYL = NEAR MINT

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