1975 Salah Ragab And The Cairo Jazz Band “Egypt, A Holiday Souvenir” on Odeon

Well, to be fair, this killer record is actually a comp and the mighty Ragab only allotted one track, but as long as we’re being honest, the Cairo Jazz Band is why we came here to begin with. Their “Amber Of The Nile” is not only great, but clearly the moneycut of the proceedings, and is really a different take on “Egypt Strut”, and worth its weight in golden scarabs for that alone. Which is not to say the record’s a one-tracker, because the comp would still be wonderful without Ragab and the Boys. I particularly dig the voice of Mohamed Abdel Wahab. And Sayed Darwish, the Elvis of Luxor, gets busy with “Arabesque.” Now you may ask yourself, why is this an Egyptian holiday when it was initially put out in Greece, and there are no odes to the Parthenon or “Amber Of The Ionian” tracks? Well, that’s a question I cannot answer, but probably has something to do with how, like many great Ethiopian sides, this badboy was apparently handed out like party favors by some long-defunct airline that regularly made the midnight Athens-to-Alexandria run, and was promptly lost or left hotel-bedside by hungover American tourists, only to be snapped up like lost tomb treasure by the likes of me decades later. No joke, this one burns and I love it.