8.24.2010


Esquerita – Vintage Voola
Dipping into a bit of Norton's new stable a couple weeks back got me slinking back to a few old favorites like Hasil Adkins and of course Equerita, the man pseudo/sorta/unfoundedly credited with influencing Little Richard. Now the
yelp's in place so its not a hard sell but there always remains the fact that Reeder didn't get his songs down on tape until after Richard hit the airwaves. Folklore notwithstanding, Esquerita has a much rawer and untethered style. Its early rock n' roll with a huge wild streak and a savage slice of personality. Fidelity takes a back seat and if you've stuck around RSTB long enough you'll know that matters very little around here. Instead its the beat and heat on the songs that come through. Much of the material on Vintage Voola, recorded in '58, sounds like it's blaring through tin can speakers in a ramshackle dance club and honestly no amount of revamping would do it more justice than that. Not the most "essential" recording you're ever going to stumble across but it's certainly a welcome addition to any collection of old standbys.

Download:
[MP3] Esquerita - Sarah Lee
[MP3] Esquerita - Rockin' The Joint


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

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posted by dissensous at 8:21:00 PM

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

please try to help me understand, the guys been dead for 26+ years, never heard of him before recently, HOW exactly is buying his stuff now going to support him?

$4-5 for a 5-10 cent disk in a 29 cent package isn't pure profit enough, greedmongers want $15-25. Our country (national economy) is going to hell in a borrowed handbasket, unemployed enthusiasts should cough up $$$ on credit cards at 15-30% intrest to hear 40-50 year old music once or twice by a long dead artist.

Wikipedia-
Eskew Reeder Jr, originally known as Steven Quincy Reeder Jr. and also known as S.Q. Reeder and SQ Jr. A native of Greenville, South Carolina, he was born on November 20, 1935, and died in Harlem, New York on October 23, 1986, aged 50, of AIDS.

4:57 AM  
Blogger dissensous said...

Wow I have to say this is one of the most off base comments I've ever received and a wholly unresearched generalization of the recording industry that's usually bandied about.

Esquerita's music is released by Norton Records, run by folks who have such an incredible passion for long out of print and overlooked works, often originally released on labels that themselves may have left artists unpaid or underpaid. They spend years looking for classics to reissue and since their inception have done so often with the knowledge that they might not recoup costs. A fair portion of what they do make they pass on to the estates of artists. And on a more striking note, I doubt that you'd have ever heard of the music of Esquerita were it not for their efforts.

The "Support The Artist" tag is applied to all posts on this site, regardless of whether the artist is alive or not. My hopes are all labels are as ethical as Norton. On a sadder note, Norton lost a ton of their stock from Hurricane Sandy and are working to recover so any purchases from them would, I'm sure, greatly help their cause. Their albums rarely exceed $13 retail cost, which is hardly an excessive cost for a CD or LP.

9:03 AM  

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