On The Dancefloor

-The house band of the popular Peppermint Lounge in the heart of Manhattan landed an enormously successful hit with Peppermint Twist in early 1962! -For Bear Family Records® an occasion to dedicate the first album in the new CD series 'On The Dancefloor With' to the main protagonists: Joey Dee And The Starliters! -Compiled by Nico Feuerbach and with liner notes written by Bill Dahl based on a recent interview with Joey Dee. -An end-to-end compilation extremely usable by any DeeJay to fill their dance floors, featuring the best songs from one of the most experienced US live bands of the days, whose job day in and day out was to provide the right music for dancing. -Great energetic sound! Everyone in America was doing the Peppermint Twist with Joey Dee and The Starliters during the first weeks of 1962. It was the hottest record in the country, and The Peppermint Lounge, where the band performed six nights a week in midtown Manhattan, was the epicenter of jet-setting cool, celebrities of all stripes fighting to get through the door to witness Joey and his crew doing their high-energy Twist thing. It's been a long time since Dee's Roulette Records catalog has been granted deluxe CD treatment, so this disc is a welcome development. All of the group's big ones are here-both parts of Peppermint Twist, the movie soundtrack smash Hey, Let's Twist, their torrid remake of The Isley Brothers' Shout!, even their rare pre-Roulette rockers on the Little and Scepter labels. Joey and his Starliters cut two spectacular live albums at the Peppermint in late '61 with organist Carlton Lattimore and drummer Willie Davis tearing it up behind Dee and his front line (including David Brigati); many of their highlights are here too. Whether rocking This Boat or going uptown soul with a Johnny Nash-penned What Kind Of Love Is This, Mr. Dee was a cool guy -and gave a great interview recently, as the accompanying liner notes illustrate.