Pop Records

The battle of New Orleans (Jan. 8, 1815) is remembered as one of the least fortunate maneuvers in British military history (over 2,000 British casualties, 71 American) and as the springboard that launched General Andrew Jackson on his way to the presidency. It now enjoys a third distinction as the subject of a pop disk, The Battle of New Orleans (Columbia), which has sold some threequarter million copies in less than a month. The recorded Battle is the handiwork of Louisiana Country Singer Johnny Horton, but the song has been played by bayou fiddlers for generations. Singer Horton toned down the original verses ("They lost their pants/ And their pretty shiny coats/ And their tails were all a-showing/ Like a bunch of billy goats"), gave the song a martial beat, and produced a runaway bestseller. Sample lyrics :

We fired our cannon

Till the barrel melted down

So we grabbed an alligator

And we fought another round.

We filled his head with cannon balls

And powdered his behind

And when we touched the powder off

The 'gator lost his mind.

Other new pop records:

Crazy He Calls Me (Dakota Staton; Capitol LP). Singer Staton is an ample woman with a more than ample voice and a gaudy spectrum of moods. She can be broadly comic in How High the Moon, exuberant in No Moon at All, anguished in Morning, Noon or Night. In Can't Live Without Him Any More she hits the listener with a sound like an unmuted brass section. What makes her album a delight, though, is its sheer exuberance, suggesting that nobody is getting more kicks than Dakota herself.

From the "hungry i" (The Kingston Trio; Capitol LP). One of the most gifted trios in years offers an artfully mixed bag of selections from a San Francisco nightclub program. Included are a French lullaby, a calypso number, a Zulu hunting chant and a stunningly arranged version of They Call the Wind Maria. The group has antic imagination and enough craft to strike sparks from as shopworn a number as When the Saints Go Marching In.

Love Is a Swingin1 Word (Sid Ramin & Orchestra; RCA Victor Stereo). A band that takes off like a Brahma bull tears through a china shop full of familiar items--I Can't Give You Anything But Love, I Wish I Were in Love Again--with wonderful gusto.

Holiday for Harp (The Daphne Hellman Quartet; Harmony LP). Harpist Hellman produces some stunning sonorities with an instrument bred to less exotic climes. With the sound sometimes brittle and percussive, sometimes cobwebby soft, Harpist Hellman and her helpers (bass, guitar and drums) swing with sinuous brilliance through Summertime, Swingin' Shepherd Blues, Down the Road a Piece, giving each a fine crystalline gloss.

Quiet Village (Martin Denny Group; Liberty). A smoothly arranged fancy with the theme laid down in beguine tempo by Pianist Denny, and bongo color provided by Hawaiian Percussionist Augie Colon, who is inclined to caterwaul like a turkey buzzard., croak like a frog, or shriek like a cheetah. Blended with Buddhist bells, Burmese cymbals and the West Indian guiro, these noises so far this year have helped sell 60,000 Denny albums, all labeled like bargain-counter perfumes --Exotica, Hypnotique, Afro-Desia.

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