---

:: Billy Mure - Flaming Guitars ::

:: Billy Mure - Supersonics In Flight ::

About 10 years ago, I worked in the basement of a small book publisher, doing production work and making little money. On weekends, I’d take my meager paycheck and spend it on what I’ve spent it on since high school, really – beer, cigarettes, and music. On those music excursions to any of the three or four decent record shops in downtown Philly, I’d invariably run into Mark, one of the designers at work. I wasn’t much of a vinyl hound, usually stopping in for my main pursuit at the time – any Guided by Voices release that I did not yet have. Mark, however, could usually be found sifting through boxes of dusty record albums underneath counters. Funnily (or sadly) enough, Mark was what I would eventually become. Anyway, on one of those record store encounters, Mark excitedly held up a find for me to see, Billy Mure’s first album, Supersonic Guitars in Hi-Fi. I’d never heard of Mure, and Mark said he’d tape it and bring it into work for me to borrow. I loved that fucking tape and I never gave it back.

I haven’t found my own copy of Supersonic Guitars in Hi-Fi, yet. Sure, I’ve seen it for sale on-line, but cringe at the thought of paying fifty bucks for any album. I’m hoping to find it the way Mark did, sitting unloved in a box of crap for a couple of bucks. I’ve found Mure’s other “Supersonic Guitars” albums that way, so it’s possible.

Supersonics in Flight was Billy Mure’s third album, released in 1959. As with the other “Supersonic Guitar” albums, he multi-tracked four electric guitars, along with two drum sets, bass and on this one, organ, to give us…uh, supersonic sound in RCA’s “Living Stereo.” The marketing ploy on this record is that it draws its inspiration from the Navy’s F11F-1 Tiger jet fighter, rather than exotic locales like a lot of the other bachelor pad instrumentals being released at the time. Those “fast-moving fingers” are “capturing, in sound and rhythm, the speed and excitement of the fleet-flying aircraft.” I’m sure I’m not feeling that, but just the same, I like what I’m feeling whenever I listen to Billy Mure.


Phil

This entry was posted on Monday, February 06, 2006 at 8:33 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.