Trunk Records has reissued Tubby Hayes’s Voodoo Session, an ultra-rare soundtrack tune from a 1965 horror film that looks fantastic: Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors. The 7″ vinyl, limited to 666 copies (‘natch), features the film’s “voodoo jazz” number, performed by Tubby Hayes on tenor sax and flute, Sheake Keane on trumpet, Jimmy Deuchar on mellophonium (!), and other Brit jazz greats. Check out the jam at 6:54 in the video above. (Any similarities to authentic Vodoun is, er, likely coincidental.) The “Clean Living in Difficult Circumstances” has more on the recording:
The plot of the film involves five men on a train carriage having their tarot cards read by Peter Cushing, who reveals the horrible destiny of each of them. One of the stories that is revealed through the cards features Roy Castle (of later Record Breakers fame) in his first starring role as jazz musician Biff Bailey, who encounters a Voodoo ceremony whilst touring the West Indies.Loving the Voodoo sounds, he makes the mistake of copying down the music of the Voodoo Lwa Dambala and doing his own Brit jazz arrangement of the spirit rhythms at a club in London. Occult peril quickly ensues as a result of having stolen the music of Dambala.
