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Was watching beatnik crazed 1960 Corman's "bucket of blood" (very minor gore) and they had a guy playing guitar. At a beginning party scene he played a very brief sevillanas. Turned out to be a guy named Alex Hassilev, actor and founding member of the Limeliters, Harvard educated. Looked like he was playing a flamenco guitar, had tap plates, perhaps pegs. Flamenco seems to pop up in the weirdest places--maybe that's a good thing.
During the late '50s and early '60s I more or less came of age during the folk music boom and loved the Limelighters, the Kingston Trio, Bud and Travis, and others. The original Limelighters (Lou Gottlieb, Alex Hassilev, and Glenn Yarbrough) were overall the best, in my opinion, although no group could beat Bud and Travis when they sang in Spanish. (Their version of "Maleguena Salerosa" is still better than that of any Mexican singer or group, in my opinion.)
During that same period, I first discovered the beauty of flamenco guitar through the vinyl LPs of Carlos Montoya. I saw Carlos Montoya in a live performance in Phoenix in 1960 and was totally captured, although I would not learn to play for another 45 years, after retiring from the U.S. Foreign Service. I had no idea at the time, however, that Alex Hassilev played flamenco, in addition to performing folk music. I don't recall that he ever cut an album with flamenco guitar in it. He obviously was a very talented individual.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
The original Limelighters (Lou Gottlieb, Alex Hassilev, and Glenn Yarbrough) were overall the best, in my opinion, although no group could beat Bud and Travis when they sang in Spanish.
I was a Kingston Trio man myself; and although their Spanish was (I’m told) really ropey, I still think their recording of a 15th-century villancico is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard, leaving several HIP early music versions in the dust:
(The choice of this song, so far from their standard repertoire, was probably one of Dave Guard’s last contributions before “musical and personal differences” split the group apart.)
For the melodramatic strange and fascinating Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, 1951, the film production imported (or took advantage of the presence of) some performers from Spain for a few scenes:
Although not all are credited, as far as I can figure out it was La Pillina, cantaora La Gitana, bailarines Heredia y El Pillin, cantaor Maera and guitarrista Antonio Perel who were in London "under the protection" of Alberto Puig.
Dylan Thomas was also 'in' the movie as an extra during a crowd scene.
I remember seeing 'Bucket of Blood' a few years ago - hardly any gore at all, a bit like 'Little Shop of Horrors' - more macabre than gruesome. If memory serves, it's about a waiter in a beatnik coffee house, who aspires to become an artist, and winds up (somewhat inadvertently) taking a short cut to modeling sculpture. It's actually more than a little goofy, and relies pretty heavily on beatnik stereotypes - it should have been called 'The Bad Dream of Maynard G. Krebs.' Knowing something about Corman, it was probably shot over a weekend using some money left over from another film budget.
Apropos the topic, though, is anyone familiar with the 1984 movie 'The Hit'? Paco de Lucia provided the soundtrack to this B-movie, which starred Terence Stamp and a very young Tim Roth, among others. British gangsters hunt down "Stampy" in Spain for turning evidence in a criminal trial, find him, and then nonsensically haul him over a good part of the countryside before killing him. Soundtrack and scenery aside, though, I confess I found 'Bucket of Blood' more interesting.
RE: obscure movie trivia (in reply to El Frijolito)
Yeah, I remember being surprised at this soundtrack by Paco, and I agree that B of B is in it's own way, more thought provoking, where you have a man who doesn't want to kill, but is motivated by the positive attention he gets, for the first time in his dim witted life. I know the feeling....
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