The Marketts Albums (4)
'The Batman Theme'
Release Date 2/8/2005
Tracks 12
Label Warner Bros.
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Their 1964 album includes their big hit, plus other fairly hard swinging numbers in a Twilight Zone theme-meets-surf vein. Fun stuff, though as is the custom, nothing else is as good as the single. The CD reissue adds three bonus tracks from singles of the time, although the group's other hits, "Surfer's Stomp" and "Batman Theme, " are unfortunately not included. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
'Marketts Take to Wheels'
Release Date 1/1/1963
Tracks 12
Label Warner Bros.
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
The Marketts weren't a band in the standard sense, but a collection of veteran Los Angeles session players assembled by producer Joe Saraceno to capitalize on the emerging surf music scene of the early '60s. Loosely known as "the wrecking crew," and including, among others, guitarists Tommy Tedesco and Rene Hall, sax player Plas Johnson, bassist Jimmy Gordon, and drummers Earl Palmer and Ed Hall, the so-called Marketts had more in common with 1940s jazz than they did Dick Dale, and this charming collection of shuffles, stomps, and trippy lounge jazz is really a genre all its own. The group's first single, 1962's "Surfer's Stomp" b/w "Balboa Blue," is indicative, featuring a lazy, sax-led shuffle on the A-side, reprising the same rhythm on "Balboa Blue," only with a different melody line (again led by Johnson's sax) that generates a leisurely, joyous, and infectious groove. This is wonderful stuff, and while this version of the Marketts (they were really more a brand than a group) was marketed as a surf outfit, their gentle merging of R&B and small combo swing is really something else again, a style that -- for lack of a better term -- might be called "surf jazz." ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
