CHAINO AND HIS AFRICAN PERCUSSION SAFARI - Jungle Echoes
"Reduced price, last copies. Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Chaino And His African Percussion Safari's Jungle Echoes, originally released in 1959. The African American bongo player known as Chaino released a series of sublime exotica albums during the 1950s, based around themes of "savage Africa," supposed tribal mating rituals, voodoo practices, and other concepts of exotica excess. Born Leon Johnson in Philadelphia in 1929, he was raised on the south side of Chicago and began making a name for himself as a bongo player on the Chitlin Circuit of nightclubs catering to a black clientele. In 1957, he was discovered by the nightclub singer and producer Kirby Allan (AKA Sidney Allen Pitmann), who travelled extensively in African earlier in the decade and who was seeking someone that could emulate the ceremonial rhythms he encountered in Kenya and the Gold Coast. In a peculiar marketing strategy, Allan recast Johnson as Chaino, "an orphan from a lost tribe in Africa who was taken in by missionaries and brought to the US." Together they produced eight albums, typically with Johnson playing every instrument himself, with added shouts, whelps and pseudo-African language. Jungle Echoes, first issued in 1959 on the Hollywood-based Omega Disc, is a thoroughly mesmerizing example of Chaino's over-the-top brilliance." - Fantome Phonographique.
After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.
This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).
Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.
Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.
Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).
So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
