Last week's offering from Spencer, as part of our collaboration where he sends me a song and I write about it, was The Seven Rays by David Stout, some early 80s proto- electronica. It joined Eden Ahbez's Full Moon, Woo's Make Me Tea and Cindy D'Lequez Sage's The Lovely Bones in the series, a sequence of songs largely linked by voices and words. This week's offering is in the same vein and goes back to 1957 and some spoken word/ modern jazz, the jazz provided by The Fred Katz Group and the whimsical words by Ken Nordine.
Ken, with his instantly recognisable voice from TV voiceovers and film adverts and trailers, takes us on a meander down an corridor, opening doors to show us sound paintings, the musicians interpreting Ken's descriptions. Children's voices, choirs, noises, found sounds and bursts of noise jump out as Ken maintains a radio announcer/ beat poet/ absurdist cool. Sound Museum may not be a track you turn to daily for your shot of pop music but it's a dreamlike, leftfield and innovative slice of 1957 that will improve a mixtape/ playlist/ compilation CD.
The album, Word Jazz, was a hit and followed by a series of follow ups, Ken's narration over cool late 50s jazz hitting the spot with the record buying public as Eisenhower's America turned into Kennedy's. Ken was in demand as a voice artist. In 1978 Ken voiced an advert for Levis, an animation where a stranger arrives in town and brings with him colour, slacks, jeans, flared legs, blue jeans, bells, polyester- 'dull has gone out of style'.
From the same year, Ken voicing an equally odd advert with miners bringing out new colours, new fabrics, new styles. Ten years later Levi's would be going retro, Marvin Gaye and Nick Kamen in the launderette launching multiple tie ins. Ken's ads are little further out.
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