Consumer Guide Album

Orchèstre Vévé: Vintage Verckys [RetroAfric, 2001]
Saxophonist-careerist Kiamuangana Mateta, stage billing Verckys, could just see the guitars taking over O.K. Jazz as the '70s loomed, so he started a rival band to accommodate Franco's exiles. Verckys's soukous had a sweet tooth, with horn room in the sebenes. His tenor matched that of his garbled namesake King Curtis about as precisely as his sobriquet, and his sound was never as individual as Dudu Pukwana's or Issa Cissoko's. But wait till you hear him quack like a duck as he takes "Londende" home. A-