DEFINITELY WHAT! / Brian Auger & The Trinity:
Side 1:
Listen: Red Beans And Rice / Brian Auger & The Trinity
Red
Side 2:
Listen: George Bruno Money / Brian Auger & The Trinity
George
It was February 2001 when my assistant Steve, at Sony, buzzed me about an incoming cold call from a Brian Auger.
“He sounds English” was the helpful detail.
I just figured it was one of my pals lazily playing our game. We’d often ring each other’s office and announce ourselves as an impossibly impossible famous caller, a person from our ultimate wish list.
But shockingly it was the real Brian Auger, making the label rounds via phone, shopping his daughter Ali Auger’s then current album, as well his catalog, including all the full lengths by Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express and even earlier titles like DEFINITELY WHAT!, the first as Brian Auger & The Trinity, from which these two songs come. I still have his letter from the huge package that arrived a few days later.
Atlantic and sister label Atco issued a handful of these 7″ promotional EP’s to radio during the late 60′s and early 70′s, all in similar generic information/picture sleeves with short explanatory notes on the back cover from the head of radio promotion or press. Oddly, most had simply one song per side, thereby not in keeping with the EP’s original configuration of two per side, four total.
In this case though, both tracks from DEFINITELY WHAT!, including Booker T & The MG’s ‘Red Beans And Rice’ were quite long, essentially filling out the same time as two shorter, single length tracks would have.
You don’t see the Atlantic series EP’s much these days, and hardly ever in the rather thin plain paper stock information/picture covers mentioned above.
Tags: Atco, Atlantic, Booker T & The MG's, Brian Auger & The Trinity, Brian Auger's Oblivion Express