Rock Party with the Vikings at the Club Pepsi (1959) b/w Rock 'n Roll (c1962)

The album Rock Party at the Club Pepsi from 1959 is acknowledged to be the first LP by a South African rock and roll group The Vikings (an earlier 10" LP  Flying High by Cherry Wainer and Nico Claasens is the first rock and roll album by South African musicians). Whilst at electricjive we have earlier featured rock and roll infused jive, mbaqanga and twist (see The Bogart Brothers , Rock Jive 1, Rock Jive 2 or the earlier compilation African Twist from the old matsuli site) this album represents what white teenagers were listening to in the late fifties and early sixties. Perhaps no surprise that the tunes are mostly a local interpretation of what was happening in the USA and Europe with few nods to local influences. Except perhaps to kwela in the tracks Send Thomas Kwela and Kwaai ("Cool") Kris Kwela. 

And some interesting details about the band - the bassist with the Vikings is none other than Harry Miller, who later played with Manfred Mann. Harry left South Africa for England to take up contract work playing on cruise ships on the Liverpool-New York passage and then got the jazz bug having heard Coltrane, Taylor and Monk for the first time in NYC. Back in the UK he worked with Mike Westbrook, Mike Osborne and John Surman and by the time the Blue Notes arrived in the UK he was fully established. With his wife Hazel, Harry started the still operating Ogun record label. Chris McGregor chose him for his band The Brotherhood of Breath and he also played with numerous other European free jazz musicians. The vocalist with the Vikings is Al Bentley, at one time named South Africa's rock king who went on to play with The Silhouettes and the Hi-Riders before moving to Perth Australia in the mid-sixties (on a personal note I discovered that Al Bentley was my mothers' cousin about ten years ago). The pianist is Paul Ditchfield who has had a long career in the music industry in South Africa.

Rock Party at the Club Pepsi with the Vikings (RCA 31 323, 1959)

1. Intro-Rock around the Clock- Royal Garden Blues

2. Blue Paul

3. Send Thomas Kwela

4. Now is the Time

5. Lonesome Road

6. Intermission Riff

7. Vivacation

8. Kwaai Kris Kwela

9. Jenny Dog

10. Caravan

11. Kansas City

12. Jumping with Symphony Sid

ENJOY: RS / MF

The second album is undated but appears to have been released around 1962 and features six rock and roll groups popular at the time. 

Rock 'n Roll (Renown NLP196, c1962)

1. Guitar Boogie - The Silhouettes

2. Bouncing Halos - The Blue Angels

3. Send Me Some Loving - Al Bentley and the Silhouettes

4. Birks Works - The Cavaliers

5. Baby You Said No - The 5 Teens with Brian Stein

6. Boiler Shop - The Rousers

7. Asteroid - The Silhouettes

8. Rocking Angels - The Blue Angels

9. Money Money - The Rousers with Tony Blight

10. You Break Me Up - The Big Horns

11. Bull Fight - The Cavaliers

12. When the Saints Go Marching In - The Big Horns

ENJOY: RS / MF

Dancing Time with the Raiders

Over a relative short period of time The Raiders recorded five albums - The Raiders go Latin, Get Ready with the Raiders, Encore,
Dance 69 and Fuzz Face - for the independent Durban label RAJ Records. The music is primarily guitar-led instrumental pop livened up from time to time with the addition of a fuzz box. All clues seem to point to the Raiders being a working band, hired for private functions in the Indian, Coloured and African communities of Durban and its surrounds.

I managed to track down an article by Yogan Naidoo lamenting today's obsession with Bollywood. This recollection provides wonderful context to the music of the Raiders and other forgotten bands of that era:
"Listen to some of the great dance bands of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s - such as the Crescendos and Dukes Combo - and you'll hear a sound that is still like no other in the world. It is inimitably and spectacularly South African-Indian. Other bands - with names like Sam's Latin Kings, Stepping Stones, the Jets, Kreme, Cheyennes, Blue Ricks, the Santiago Dance Band, Los Pepitos, El Remos and Raiders - also reigned over this era. I recall a sultry Saturday night in the 1970s, when knee-high to a grasshopper, I sat beside my father at a table bearing the heavyweights of the Southern Natal Soccer Board at a Soccer Awards Ceremony at the Himalaya Hotel. With the formalities over, a band called The Blue Jewels commandeered the stage. Like a powerful, orchestrating yet symbiotic organism it amplified, fed off and again replenished the enthusiasm of its audience. They were a tight unit of young South African Indian men who, in all likelihood, would return to exploitative day jobs the Monday after, but for that Saturday night, to Durban's assembled soccer elite, they were the undisputed gods of the dance floor. That night mirrored thousands of others featuring a variety of bands, audiences and occasions at other venues such as the Island Hotel in Isipingo Beach, The Railway Hotel in Isipingo Rail, The Butterworth Hotel in the Durban CBD, the Apollo Nightclub in Sea Cow Lake, the Admiral Hotel in Overport, the Pelican and Sol Namara in Chatsworth, and at the Goodwill Lounge in Victoria Street.

"Playing at rock concerts at Curries Fountain, the Durban City Hall's Battle of the Bands and community halls were rock bands such as Nirvana (well before Kurt Cobain's Nirvana), Atomic Ash, Shackles, a folk outfit called Silver Willow Sterling and many more of that ilk. Inspired by 1960s and 1970s groups such as the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, our bands composed a multitude of original songs with socially conscious lyrics. Because the major record companies of the time were white-owned and goaded by an apartheid mindset, they never considered the anomaly of a South African Indian rock band as a viable option. Our musicians received either no material reward or were paid a pittance for their musical undertakings. Yet, they were driven by an overwhelming passion for their vocation.

"Recently, I met a few of the remaining members of these bands. Their stories, while touched by nostalgia, are still underlined by the pathos of just how much more professionally rewarding their lives as musicians could have been. Decades later, it seems nothing has changed. We, the very community from which they originate, are ignoring their contributions to our musical canon. The Crescendos, for example, was established about 50 years ago in Cato Manor. How then are they not part of our heritage? How is it that not one single celebration commemorating our 150 years in this country ever considered inviting them or any of their peers to share the stage? Unlike Bollywood, we own this intellectual property. No other community in the world can lay claim to this legacy. This is our Buena Vista Social Club*. Along with our strugglistas, our writers and poets - these are my heroes.

"We owe them our respect, reverence, gratitude and recognition."

*I think the Buena Vista reference is pushing it when it comes to the Raiders material on the two LPs we are sharing. But check it out anyway.
Get Ready with the Raiders
MF/ RS

Encore (bonus share)
RS/ MF