Louis "Sabu" Martinez was a bongo and tympani player, but that's only part of the appeal of Safari With Sabu. It's not your typical hopped up Latin jazz. As you would suspect by the title and the cover above, it's more exotic sounding, like an alcohol emboldened Daktari meets jazz, with weird background vocals, and horns and all sorts of oddball percussion weaving in an out. It's almost like dub in that respect. without the mixing, and echo,...okay, maybe not that much like dub. It sounds like voodoo and shrunken heads. Martin Denny with the gloves off, with horns scaring away the pesky birds.
The 1957 LP is available as a two-fer with another LP Sorcery!, from 1958, another percussion and horn-filled nut cake. (Actually this stuff is pretty crazy given the vintage.) I'd listened to that package for a while, and without knowing anything else (the only name I recognized on the liner notes was Ray Barretto), I looked for something else by him, and came across a song, "Hotel Alyssa-Soussie, Tunisia", recorded in 1973. Ho-ly shit. Same guy, totally different sound. The first fourteen seconds sounds like it could be more of the old Sabu. Faint tympani? Check. Gong? Check. Two seconds later the roller coaster starts the drop and continues full throttle for six minutes. Totally different bag, exhausting this one, but just as want list worthy as Safari. And it's supposedly out of print as well. We'll just see about that...
~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:Louis "Sabu" Martinez - Dawn mp3 at Basement Rug
Louis "Sabu" Martinez - Hotel Alyssa-Soussie, Tunisia mp3 at 30 Milkshakes
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