Lightnin' Red "Caravan" (Stereo Gold Award) 1974

This one is something of a curious mess, both musically and historically. It was a product of the notorious budget LP pioneer and royalties scammer, David Leonard Miller of Philadelphia, who founded Essex Records (which shot Bill Haley to fame) before being bankrupted and then choosing to litter the developed world with throwaway albums of middle-of-the-road cover versions, public domain dross and peculiar tribute recordings. His genius, if you could call it that, was hiring day-rate musicians outside of American unions, building his own record pressing plant and creating his own distribution network, whence his output could be sold at $1.98 wherever a wire rack might fit. Any publishing rights up for grabs, Miller (sometimes appearing on labels or sleeves as "Leo Muller") took every cent he could. Without any desire to appeal to connoisseurs or fickle youth, he pressed and sold millions upon millions of discs, virtually all of them culturally worthless in every regard. 101 Strings LPs? You've seen those. That was him. The Pickwick label? Him. Crown, Custom, Damil, Damont, Design, Golden Award? All those megatons of crap? That was all him. With the United States flooded in the 1960s, he set up bases of operations in Britain and Germany and saturated them too for years to come. Any style of music in vogue went through the mincer to end up as fodder for undemanding consumers. Who played on these records? Generally unknown. Most of the apparent artist names used as fronts in Miller's empire were fake, yet oddly enough it appears that "Lightnin' Red" was actually an identifiable guitarist, born Wayne Bakalar in rural Illinois. He recorded one LP as a member of local rock act, Ice, in 1972 and somehow his cod-Hendrix style perhaps caught the ear of a contact of the aforementioned David Miller. It isn't inconceivable that his fellow Ice musicians are the band we hear now, but I couldn't confirm. There were two Lightnin' Red albums on Stereo Gold Award, each with similar sleeve designs but wholly different content. For reasons unknown, the second was only released in the U.K. and was orchestrated (probably overdubbed by some of the 101 Strings players) hence the hybrid of Psych-Rock and Pop-Symphonia on this peculiar, but enjoyable, version of the Ellington standard.