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Chaino

Chaino was a personality of easy listening's exotica era from the late 1950s to the mid-'60s. The bongo player and recording artist, self-referenced as a "percussion genius of Africa," had an unusual marketing strategy devised by himself and producer/impresario Kirby Allan -- Chaino was born and raised in the U.S. An itinerant sideman playing the chitlin' circuit from the '40s through the mid-'50s, his fame was established with half-a-dozen exotica albums and a panoply of jukebox singles. 1957's Unbridled Passions of Love's Eerie Spectre marked his debut (reissued in 2009 as Eye of the Spectre). Two other LPs appeared on major labels, Jungle Mating Rhythms (Verve, 1958) and Africana (Dot, 1959). He collaborated on three thematic exotica titles with the Kirby Allan Group, and released Temptation in 1961 -- it received a deluxe reissue from Modern Harmonic in 2023. Chaino was born Leon Johnson in Philadelphia in 1927 and raised primarily on the south side of Chicago. The details of his early life are largely a mystery, although at some point he gave up formal education after grade school, learned to play drums, bongos, congas, timbales, and other percussion instruments, and began auditioning for, and touring with, many acts playing the chitlin circuit of black nightclubs across the U.S. During the mid-'50s he surfaced in Los Angeles, where he met producer Kirby Allan. The pair hit it off and decided to collaborate. At the dawn of the exotica era, they came up with a marketing strategy and created an alternate, mythical biography for Chaino, playing up the exotica imagery, in the liner notes to his albums. According to them he was an orphan, "... the only survivor of a lost race of people from the wilds of the jungle in a remote part of central Africa where few white men have ever been…." These notes also stated that Chaino learned to "play seven or more drums at the same time and that he was brought to the United States by a missionary and his wife. Despite the myths, Chaino was, by virtually all of his peers' accounts, an awesome percussionist and brilliant trap kit drummer who, even early on, knew his way around African, South American, and Caribbean rhythms. He, Allan, and studio aces recorded six otherworldly jungle exotica LPs. His debut was the cryptically tilted Unbridled Passions of Love's Eerie Spectre in 1957 for the independent Spectre label. 1958's Jungle Mating Rhythms appeared from Verve and featured not only a lurid fusion of African rhythms, primal chants, and lusty moaning and groaning, but also liner notes promulgating Chaino's fictional biography. In the months that followed, Chaino issued three more albums -- Jungle Echoes, Night of the Spectre, and Jungle Rhythms Africana -- each for a different label -- and they got him plenty of live club dates. Chaino also worked as a session musician and appeared in a pair of feature films, Nighttide and The Devil's Hand. He also cut three albums for Maze with various studio players as the Kirby Allan Group: Percussion for Primitive Lovers, Percussion for Playboys, Vol. 1, and Percussion for Playboys, Vol. 2. A notoriously difficult, eccentric figure, he and Allan eventually parted ways, but not until after Chaino's masterpiece: 1961's reel-to-reel-only hi-fi demonstration album Temptation: The Exotic Sounds of Chaino. The album's ten tracks featured Chaino as percussionist in a jazz exotica sextet directed by Francis Bay. Its original title, Temptation: The Exotic Sounds of Chaino, was credited to the percussionist as a featured soloist with the Francis Bay Orchestra. Later in the decade it was re-released on LP as Erotic Percussion (credited to Chaino and His African Drums), on eight-track tape as Erotic Drums (billed to the Passionate Few), and another reel-to-reel edition as Afro Stereo (credited to the Francis Bay Big Band). Chaino's activities over subsequent decades are sketchy. He lived in Oklahoma City where he played local clubs but barely survived. In 1989, local philanthropist Carl Brandon rented Chaino a small house, and taught him how to fill out government assistance and artist grant applications. During his time in Oklahoma City, he became a cherished cultural figure. During the '90s exotica revival when the catalogs of virtually all of its major players (Martin Denny, Esquivel, and Les Baxter among them) were reissued. Chaino's brother George Johnson was motivated by this development and discovered the percussionist's whereabouts. He briefly brought him back to Chicago. Chaino nevertheless resumed his nomadic ways soon after. George brought him back to Chicago in 1998 after Chaino was badly injured in a bar fight. A routine checkup revealed a brain tumor in early 1999. Following surgery to remove it, Chaino suffered a fatal heart attack on July 8, 1999. In the 21st century, Chaino's various jukebox singles -- many of them devoted to dances -- appeared on various compilations. In August 2023, Modern Harmonic reissued Temptation with original artwork and a comprehensive liner essay by WFMU's Gaylord Fields.
© Jason Ankeny & Thom Jurek /TiVo
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Discografia

19 álbum(ns) • Ordenado por Mais vendidos

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