MARCEL BONTEMPI: Sammy The Hillbilly Beatnik plays The Beatles 7″

Description

EVERYBODY LOVES THE BEATLES, and so do YOU, Tods & Mockers – remember the RAVE incident?

The first time I met Sammy it was during a video shoot for a promotional clip I wanted to post on this thing called “The Internet”. He offered to play the pedal steel guitar, which he did in a way I could have done too to be honest. But he proved to be a sure Winner!

Everybody I showed the video to later loved him and his performance, despite his grim eyepatch and his wavy, platinum blond hair, or even BECAUSE of that. He is always chewing gum and there is no way to get it out of his mouth. He is stubborn as a mule and I really don’t want to know his drug habits.

I found out he had an on-and-off relationship with my female bass player Tammy and tended to bully my Guitar player, Dummy, who indeed is a scatterbrained clank!

I also found out his full name is SAMUEL FRYFOGLE and that he comes from a musical background, his father recorded songs sometime in the 60s.

He hung around my house with increasing regularity until one day he asked if I would like to record him covering a few Beatles tunes ?

At first I was baffled, but as the ideas for songs unfolded, i really got into it. I did the musical base for his pedal steel and his voice. But I also wanted some keen drums on it, so I phoned my friend Jesus Lopez from Valencia, a popular and highly in demand drummer from the European music circuit, and told him I had this strange kid here doing a good job on some reshaped Beatles tunes, but we just need his final touch to make it complete and Rockin’…

I still had the telephone in my hand when the first try-out tracks where recorded and sent to me. It took Sammy ages to cut his pedal steel though, not because he was that bad, he kept on blubbering between each take and went for a smoke quite often.

When I finally had all the tracks together, Senor Santiago Sacristán mixed and mastered them with due care and attention….So, here they are.

Two Lennon-McCartney songs, in a new dress. While “A Hard Day’s Night” is borrowed from Jonny Littrell’s version Sammy found in my vaults, “Run For Your Life” stands on it’s own feet as a good 60s country song with some nice nods to other hillbilly tunes.

Tracking:
A – A Hard Day’s Night
B – Run For Your Life