Music on the Web (UK)

Webmaster: Len Mullenger

[ Jazz index ] [Nostalgia index]  [ Classical MusicWeb ] [ Gerard Hoffnung ]

BUY NOW AmazonUK   AmazonUS

King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys Hey Puerto Rico! BIG BEAR MUSIC CD46 [54:04]

1. Puerto Rico
2. Bring It On Baby
3. Back To Birmingham
4. Wrong Door
5. Hush Now
6. Barracuda
7. Don't Leave Me Baby
8. Blues From The Booze
9. Big Girl
10. Trapped In The Web Of Love
11. All Or Nothing
12. Blow Her Hot
13. Just One Drink
14. Walkin' With Mr Lee
King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys
rec. Old Smithy Recording Studio, Kempsey, Worcester, April and May 2006

It’s not just Puerto Rico - KP and the BB really taken one on a world trip with this vivacious, engaging and wholly enjoyable album. Rhythm is their business and so is a corporate dynamism and that means that the feet are seldom still, the fingers seldom remain unclicked.

They start immediately with the title track’s solid swinging groove. Lat-Am percussion hurries us on, and the Gitane and whisky soaked vocals of KP himself invite us along for the good time ride. Bring It On Baby goes with laid back Big Easy lope; hints of Longhair and shuffle beat here and of that long suffering sea port. Next up we go Back to Birmingham. In the context you might think Alabama but this sounds like England’s second city in its infatuation with the Skatalites rhythm and sax front line. Vocally KP comes on like Jimmy Witherspoon on speed – a lot of speed. Guitarist Bullmoose K Shirley stretches out and the saxes honk.

There’s a smoother groove for Wrong Door and some Louis Jordan for the next track, Hush Now. KP’s own composition Blues From The Booze – over half the songs are in fact his – indulges some House of the Rising Sun Hammond organ; evocative. Solid boogie piano from Mighty Matt Foundling injects Trapped In The Web Of Love with pulsating venom. And there’s more than a mere touch of raunch in Blow Her Hot. One of the band’s main influences, the 1930s Lucky Millinder band, haunts the intro to Just One Drink and another – though no one seems to mention this - is King Curtis, whose metal-melting soul stands guard over Walkin' With Mr Lee. There’s even an unannounced fifty-second envoi track.

These swinging fellers cover the ground. They’re not just some Jump and Jordan combo, knocking out the same old same old. They swing, they wail, they boogie and much more. They give you a good time and they have one themselves. Great stuff.

Jonathan Woolf

Return to Index