"Kapusta Kristmas"

Houston Press has an article up about the Al Kooper Christmas Records, which, evidently were called "Kapusta Kristmas", along with links to available audio on the net. Link. See also Bedazzled! The Al Kooper Tapes

"For several years back in the '80s and '90s, rock and roll keyboard legend Al Kooper had a very cool yuletide custom. Kooper was (and is) an avid collector of prank calls, celebrity (and some non-celebrity) bloopers, weird songs, hilarious answering-machine messages and studio banter, and each December he would press up a few of the best of them on vinyl and send the albums to the lucky few dozen people on his Christmas list.

These were called Al Kooper's Kapusta Kristmas albums, and they now cost a fortune on eBay. Because of their limited circulation and high appeal, back in the day most people heard them on second-, third- and fourth-generation cassettes, and so most people just called them Al Kooper tapes. The Kooper tapes not only revealed the darker side of stars like Barry White, Buddy Rich, Casey Kasem and Orson Welles, they also made a few of their own, such as the bluesy and quite probably boozy preacher Prophet Omega and the whacked-out and quite possibly cracked-out music business wannabe proprietor of J&H Productions.

Not only are these tapes huge hits as tour-bus entertainment for rock and country stars, but comedy writers in Hollywood certainly had access to the Kooper tapes. The running joke in The Simpsons wherein Bart goads Moe into vitriol-spewing rage by getting him to ask for patrons like Al Coholic and such was pretty much lifted verbatim from one of these albums, and Orson Welles's ill-fated frozen peas commercial was likewise borrowed in an episode of Pinky and the Brain. And on In Living Color, David Allen Grier and Tommy Davidson's Funky Finger Productions also seemed to owe a lot of its spirit to the aforementioned J&H Productions."

Comments

[Roald Dahl]

Do you know where i can get a copy of the al kooper tapes? why aren't you selling it, you skalliwag?

[bonnie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Brooks

www.harveybrooks.net

[Harvey Brooks]

I have just added Super Session to www.harveybrooks.net