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:: Firecrackers ::

:: By The Beautiful Sea ::

:: Jealous ::

:: Crackerjack ::

I’m still on a Billy Mure kick, so here are some songs from his second LP, Fireworks, released in 1958. There’s the same multi-layered sound as his other “Supersonic Guitar” records, this one using four guitars, a bass player and three drummers. What sets this record apart from the other Mure releases I’ve heard is the use of a chorus -- eight vocalists and all of them not singing any words, giving us a lot of “Do-Doo-Wah’s.” These kind of wordless choruses were being employed by a lot of those space-age pop maestros of the day, like Esquivel. They’re not my favorite cuts from the album, so I’m only including one of them, “Jealous.” “Firecrackers” and “Crackerjack” are guitar rockers penned by Mure, while “By the Beautiful Sea” is one of those early twentieth century standards that I’m pretty sure my dear grandmother knows the lyrics to. Mure did four albums with RCA, jumped around to a couple of smaller labels for some Hawaiian-themed records, and finally ended up on MGM to briefly return to the “Supersonic Guitar” sound and concept. This lack of label stability and support is probably the reason he’s not very well-known and his records can be so damn difficult to find.


Phil

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