Here’s a lazy Sunday song, a latin-tinged R&B, Spanish-Americana rock, “Spanish Stroll”.
“Spanish Stroll” is a 1977 single by Mink DeVille, off their debut album Cabretta. It used to be very popular back in the day, during the first wave of punk rock in Indonesia in the early eighties. It reached #20 on the UK Singles Chart; it was to be DeVille’s only record ever to chart in the UK.
Founded in 1974, Mink DeVille known for its association with early punk rock bands at New York’s CBGB. From 1975 to 1977, they were one of the original house bands together with Television, the Ramones, and Blondie. Mink DeVille was also known for being a showcase for the music of Willy DeVille.
Willy DeVille helped redefine the “Brill Building sound”, a broad and influential stream of American popular music (strongly influenced by Latin music, traditional black gospel, and R&B). The Brill Building is located in Manhattan, New York, and is famous for housing music industry offices and studios where some of the most popular American songs were written.
Mink DeVille recorded six albums in the year 1977 to 1985, after which it disbanded the next year. Willy DeVille died of pancreatic cancer in 2009, at the age of 58. Although his commercial success waxed and waned over the years, his legacy as a songwriter has influenced many other musicians, such as Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler and J. Geils Band’s Peter Wolf.
In recent days, “Spanish Stroll” was featured in the made for Netflix film Special Correspondents in 2016.
I think this song could go hand in hand nicely with your hangover-cure Bloody Mary, to get through the slow-moving Sunday…
• Read also IAN DURY – SEX & DRUGS & ROCK ‘N’ ROLL.
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Featured image via Tunefind.
Photo on this page via blousonsnoirs.
