SAX APPEAL
STEVE DOUGLAS King Cobra
(Fantasy F 9632, LP, US, 1984) £6
Saxophonist Steve Douglas (real name Steven Douglas Kreisman) can be heard on several early Duane Eddy records, including his first two LPS. He’s particularly audible on Peter Gunn, which opened 1959’s Especially For You and was a No 6 hit in the UK. (The other side – “Yep” – also appeared on the album, with Douglas again strongly featured, and that, too, made the charts.)
But the rigours of touring got to Douglas (as they did to Buddy Holly, with fatal consequences), and he quit The Rebels (Eddy’s backing band) in 1959. He didn’t quit the business, though, and became very much in-demand as a session player, appearing on The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (1966) and Bob Dylan’s Live At Budokan (1979) – evidently touring conditions had improved over 20 years. He would also put out several releases under his own name, on a variety of labels.
He produced and arranged his 1984 album, King Cobra (his second for Fantasy), writing or co-writing five of the nine tracks. And he played a wide variety of instruments across it – alto and tenor saxes, bass and soprano recorders, flute, piano, organ, synthesiser and percussion. Plus background vocals on one track. And there’s plenty of variety in the raunchy, romantic jazz melodies, too.
Douglas’s old boss, Duane Eddy, guests on Douglas’ composition, Sashay, which wouldn’t have been out of place on an Eddy album, though instead of a guitar-and-sax-break it’s more an ongoing dialogue between the two. A very effective track. Another guitar star, Ry Cooder, duets with Douglas on The Everly Brothers’ Let It Be Me (guitar and saxophone only). In a similar romantic vein is Going Home (actually part of the second movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, famously used in a commercial for Hovis bread that was voted the UK’S all-time favourite TV ad in 2006).
The recorders on the title track conjure a hypnotic, Eastern feel, and there are jazzy improvisations on Jump Up and Wrapped Around Your Finger (tenor sax and flute respectively). The former features the only vocals on the album – scat singing by Barbara Mauritz, backed by Douglas and Jeanette Sartain.
The album is bookended by an original piece of mood music, Mystic Journey, and a punchy version of the standard Harlem Nocturne, Douglas taking the lead on alto sax. If you’re a Cooder or Eddy completist you’ll obviously need this – but it’s far more than just a completist’s record. Anybody who likes instrumentals – especially sax-led ones – will find this well worth investigating.
King Cobra was issued only in the USA and Mexico, and only on vinyl and cassette. It’s a fine album, well worth a CD reissue. Steve Douglas died suddenly of heart failure in 1993, aged 54 – but he left behind plenty of music that sounds great to this day.