I found this CD at the bargains section of my local record store, and bought it along with a few others virtually given away for the price of €1. Obviously these wasn't stuff I actively wanted, but I bought them to close some gaps in my collection. This CD in particular, is my first indo-rock album. I did already have other albums by Dutch-Indonesian bands, such as Massada and The Bintangs, but "indo-rock" is not just about the ethnicity of the bands but about a local music genre that functioned as a predecessor to Dutch rock, more or less as skiffle did in UK. It always amazed me, why rock'n'roll should be imported to The Netherlands via its Asian minority, when the Dutch people were culturally, ethnically, and geographically much closer to America. There are explanations, which I'll get to later. Anyway, I got to thinking of how these Indonesians got here at the first place, and how and why a small nation like the Dutch became masters of an empire including Indonesia. Pretty soon I fell into a rabbit hole, navigating from one online encyclopedia to the next. The story is very very dimly related to the record at hand, so feel free to skip the red letters if you just want to know more about The Blue Diamonds. So, the formation of the Dutch East Indies colony has its roots in the late 16th century and the fight between the Dutch and Portuguese over control of the spice trade. In Greek we have a saying about that, it goes "two donkeys fought over someone else's barn". Anyway, an Amsterdam-based capitalist venture called the East India Company (VOC) acquired by the Dutch state the spice monopoly for the region, as well as the right to wage war, dispense justice, found colonies, and annex foreign territories - by the sole virtue of being white and better armed. They started, of course, with the so-called Spice Islands (aka Moluccas). Back then, Europeans named places after the products they could snatch from them; for example in Africa there was a Gold Coast (now Ghana), an Ivory Coast (still called by that name), and a Slave Coast (comprised by parts of modern-day Benin, Nigeria, and Togo). The Dutch had, of course, their own Gold Coast colony in Ghana, and their Slave Coast colony in Benin - both initially run by the Dutch West India Company (GWC) formed shortly after the VOC and operating in a similar manner. Back to the spice islands, it turned out that the locals didn't have much interest in the heavy Dutch garments and other goods the Dutch had to trade, and much preferred to deal with the English and Portuguese. Solution: massacre them all and occupy their lands. As much as 95% of the inhabitants of nutmeg-producing Banda Islands were killed by the soldiers of governor-general Jan Pieterszoon Coen, while the rest of them were enslaved. The population of the islands was then replenished with slaves from Java and other places with VOC presence. VOC rule was supplanted in 1800 by the Batavian Republic, and later its successor the Kingdom of The Netherlands, which kept adding to their overseas territories using much the same methods that the VOC did, until it encompassed all of what is today known as Indonesia. This was lost to the Japanese during World War II, after which the Dutch returned only to face an insurrection by the local populace. There was fierce fighting - in my city there is a modest monument commemorating the locals who died for "freedom" in the war of 1945-1949 meaning of course not the freedom fighters but the occupation troops; how ironic is that? In the end the Dutch withdrew and the country gained its independence in 1949. At which time, almost all the Dutch left the country along with most of the Indos, a.k.a. people of mixed ethnicity or Indonesians who may have held positions in the colonial army or administration, and possessed the Dutch citizenship. The brothers Ruud and Riem de Wolff were among them. Like many Indonesians, they had a rich and varied musical education, which included influences from other Pacific islands such as Hawaii, music from American army stations radio (short wave stations from Australia and the Philippines), as well as the local Kroncong music, a distant descendant of the proto-fados which were brought there by Portuguese sailors centuries ago. Nowadays, despite racial differences, Indo people are the most assimilated minority in The Netherlands. But in those early years, they tended to form their own communities. At the time, Dutch radio was dominated by local folk and pop styles as well as German and French music. Some youths discovered American music (probably brought by American GIs stationed in nearby Germany?) but they were listeners rather than players. Being far more cosmopolitan and musically inclined than the locals, it was up to Indo rockers like the Tielman Brothers from Breda and the Wolff brothers from Driebergen to form the first "rock" bands - I'm using quotation marks, as "indo rock" wasn't rock per se. It was far more influenced by American 50's pop and country; in the case of the Wolff brothers duo (under the moniker of The Blue Diamonds) that meant specifically The Everly Brothers. Their debut 7' (Decca Records, 1959) was a cover of The Everly's "('Til) I Kissed You". It's included here along with other Everly tunes like "Let It Be Me" and "Cathy's Clown". Their second single was a cover of Neil Sedaka's "Oh Carol", while the closest this CD comes to rock'n'roll is Buddy Holly cover "That'll Be The Day". Their most famous song was "Ramona" originally written for a film with Dolores del Río, and a big hit for "singing cowboy" Gene Autry in 1928. The Blue Diamonds' version is sped up, with nice harmonies. It became the first record to sell 250.000 copies in The Netherlands, not to mention a million in Germany, as well as the first Dutch single to enter the Top 100 in the USA. This is followed by a couple of songs made famous by Bing Crosby ("Have I Told You Lately That I Love You" and the cha cha-style "In a Little Spanish Town", another tune from the 20's ("Rio Nights"), and a bouncy swing number ("Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop"). Next to that, they cover contemporary hits from around the globe ("Lady Sunshine Und Mister Moon" Germany, "Sukiyaki" Japan, Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby"). "Little Ship" is a little-known song written by the songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, known primarily for the hits they wrote for Elvis. Basically the brothers were very versatile with the material they chose, investing every song with their trademark harmonies. Their regular live group didn't usually record with them - at the insistence of record companies, all instruments were handled by "professional" musicians who played in various orchestras of the time. This may account for the rich sound and production values of the singles, but also for a marked lack of excitement compared to real rock-'n'-roll groups. The above mentioned songs were all released between 1959 and 1963. In 1964, The Beatles and Rolling Stones arrived to Holland ushering the Nederbeat era, spearheaded by a bunch of bands from The Hague (The Motions, Golden Earrings, Q65 etc) playing in a much harder style than The Blue Diamonds. Yet these persevered: two songs here denote 1971 as their release year, although the sound doesn't show any progression compared to the earlier tracks. These are slightly sped-up versions of Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" and the old spiritual "Down By The Riverside" albeit with completely different lyrics. Purely on musical terms, there's not much to recommend here: it's pleasant-sounding (if you like oldies) and fairly well-played, but it consists of covers, mostly similar of inferior to the original versions. There is, nevertheless, a historical and sentimental value to these recordings; especially for millions of Dutch who lived through this period.
*** for ('Til) I Kissed You, Cathy's Clown, Ramona, In A Little Spanish Town, Rio Nights, Dream Baby, Lady Sunshine Und Mister Moon, Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop, That'll Be The Day, Mona Lisa, Down By The Riverside
** for Oh Carol, Let It Be Me, Have I Told You Lately That I Love You, Little Ship, Sukiyaki
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