Author: Kitty & Mr. C's Enchanted Tiki Hut Show

“Mambo With Tjader” is one of our favorite albums by Cal Tjader. From the cover to the actual music, it’s just a party album, all the way! You can’t help but dance to it, regardless of whether you know how to do the mambo or not! Mr. C gifted this one to me, in red vinyl, no less! I used to bring my CD of this one to his house when we first met. Do ya think Cal tipped the scales in my favor? I think he did! Thanks, Cal! I’m so glad Cal brought us together! We are such big fans! And, now, we get to share his music with you! How lucky can ya get?! Not much more, I say! Cheers to the wonderful music of Cal! And a pair of dirty martinis is perfect for the occasion!

Hey everybody out there in Tikiland! Have you heard?! It’s “National Offer a Drink to The Tiki Gods Day” today! (Just kidding! But, Mr. C and I will make up any excuse to make a tiki drink! Haha!) We do hope you’ll tune into the show tonight on KUPR.ORG, though, because, as you can see from our show promo, there’s going to be lots of tikis appearing tonight in the tiki hut! Cheers!

Tonight I’m blogging about several things, so, if you’re in the mood for my virtual “chit chat,” read on! Lately Mr. C and I have been brainstorming different ways to share information about our newest show with our listeners. We’ve gotten a few questions from new listeners asking: “Where are you shows located?” If you visit us here, you’ll find a link that says “Mixcloud Shows”. Depending on whether you’re on a desktop or a mobile device, you may see this link in a different spot. In desktop view, it’s up at the top of the main page. That takes you to Mixcloud.com. You can certainly listen through Mixcloud.com or with the Mixcloud app, but the reason we like to send people to Mixcloud via our website, http://www.enchantedtikihutshow.com, is so that it becomes more of a personalized experience, especially for our new listeners. We simply host our shows on Mixcloud’s platform, as do many other producers, but we don’t have the freedom to create additional, individualized creative content there. We do that here, on our own website, which I constructed on my own, and which is hosted on WordPress. We have the paid version, with the additional option to purchase the right to use the .com after our show’s name for easier access to our site. We have found these tools, both of which renew annually, extremely useful for sharing information with you.

As you can imagine, especially if you are an artist in the music community, there are so many various and sundry, recurring and rising costs involved in producing consistently high-quality shows, such as web hosting services, as well as other services, tools and resources needed to create new, fun, educational and engaging shows and other related online content for listeners each week. We truly enjoy hearing from so many of our listeners that our show encourages your further musical explorations and promotes the love of exotica and tiki music and tiki culture. Our website is where we have the option for you to help support the show, if you like what we do and want to be instrumental (no pun intended!) in promoting this type of unique programming. You can do so through either occasional or recurring, monthly support. Every little bit helps! 🙂

(Oh, we’ve also been asked about providing branded merchandise and so that’s also been percolating in the back of our minds! We are currently looking for a tiki artist to work with us for our logo, so please reach to us if you know of one, or ARE one, and think you can capture the vibe of our show through art!) Additionally, if you know of any radio stations who would like to syndicate our show, or know of any business that would like to sponsor us, feel free to forward us their information and we’ll reach out to them if we feel it is the right fit for our radio show’s concept.

Another question we’ve had is “What the difference between ‘like’ and ‘follow’?” If you “follow” us on our Facebook page, as well as our website here, and Mixcloud, that seems to ensure that you are always notified whenever we post a show on Mixcloud, or share something on Facebook or our website, so you’ll probably want to do all three! “Liking” the show is also appreciated, of course, but it’s our understanding that you may not receive our notifications or updates unless you hit “follow” as well.

Since we wanted to experiment with a slightly different approach this week, to reach more people by throwing out a wider net, we are not only sharing this week’s Mixcloud show directly from our Facebook page, but also including the link to our show’s website in the post. We are also sharing the latest show, below, to increase its visibility, but, as mentioned earlier, you can always find past shows by clicking on the “Mixcloud Shows” link. This week’s show is already uploaded to that site.

We also have a Twitter account at @kitty_hut that we are trying to help grow, in case you didn’t know about it! We are hoping that all these different approaches will help listeners become more familiarized with our content via various social media platforms, and will make our content easy to find. (Or maybe this is just an excuse for me to write a longer blog post than usual, because I’m in a writing mood and had too much caffeine!) Mahalo for reading all the way through! But, if you fell asleep three lines into the first paragraph, don’t worry! Just grab a latte and pick up where you left off! Cheers, Baby!

This week we got a special delivery! No, the stork didn’t pay us a visit! That bird has already flown! 😂 We got my (or rather OUR anniversary gift in the mail, since both of us enjoy Martin Denny’s music!) They are the Jackpot Records Denny reissues of Primitiva, Exotica II and Afro-Desia! They were worth the wait, though,considering our anniversary was in February, and there was a slight snag in the manufacturing of the album due to a shortage of colored vinyl pellets, which caused a longer delivery time. The sound on these is awesome, the packaging great, and it’s always fun spinning colored vinyl! We also picked up some other cool records this Saturday, and then came home to enjoy them with a tiki cocktail! You’ll notice I have my Shag mug and Mr. C has on his favorite Vince Ray shirt! All in all it was a great week!

Today Mr. C and I went out on another one of our record store adventures and not only did we find some fab albums, including “Time For Two” with Cal Tjader & Anita O’Day, Arthur Lyman’s “Pele,” another cover with Sandy Warner on it, a cool compilation with Prado, Cugat, Esquivel, and more, but I also found a VINTAGE HAWAIIAN DRESS….AT THE RECORD STORE! It fits perfectly, don’t you think?!?! Cheers to a fan-TIKI-tastic day!

If anyone can turn classical tunes like “Blue Danube” and other frothy confections, into danceable, fanciful tunes just ripe for playing at your next Latin dance-themed cocktail party, it’s Edmundo Ros! His “Rhythms of the South” album is a charming and invigorating album, guaranteed to make you want to dance your partner around the room like a frenzied Arthur Murray on a caffeine kick…or Captain Von Trapp and Maria in “The Sound of Music”! (Feel free to dance solo, if you can’t find a willing partner, but maybe not while cutting vegetables in the kitchen!) Featuring tangos, sambas, guarachas, rhumbas, merengues, and other tasty rhythms, Edmundo’s sometimes unexpected arrangements especially shine on a couple of songs that you wouldn’t expect to fit neatly in an album of mostly traditional Latin dance music, like Colonel Bogey’s March done as a merengue! Strangely…or not, since Edmundo IS a musical genius, it works! This delightful record will leave a refreshing taste on your musical palate and keep you wanting more from the king of the tropics! And a one and a two and repeat! By George, you’ve got it, kids!

Hey Everybody! Just a friendly reminder that if you’ve recently changed your payment method for other auto-pay services, please remember to update your information on Stripe (or PayPal) for ours, as well. Otherwise, the payments keep getting bounced back and we keep getting multiple notices from Stripe about failed payments. For now, we are not getting a bounce back fee from Stripe, but this is just a heads up, in case you need to update your information. (Unless, of course, you decide not to continue supporting the show, which is totally fine, but, we’d really love it if you’d consider continuing your support!) 🙂 Thanks so much to those of you who have!

You must be thinking “What’s up with those two?! They’re always either posting tiki drink recipes they came up with or albums they just bought!” Well, YEAH! Why not, we say! We like to think you enjoy these occasional posts, anyways, so here goes another one! Yesterday we went to one of our favorite record stores in town and found these treasures! Who needs an Easter egg hunt when you can go hunting for vintage records, right?! Do you have any of these, too? If so, let us know what you think of these albums in the comments! Cheers!

Mele Kalikimaka! We hope you’re all having a wonderful Christmas Day, and that Santa left you something in your stocking besides a lump of coal! 😆 (But, if you did end up getting that, we’re betting that at least you made it worth your while to be naughty this year!) 😉 One of our lovely subscribers, Abra, gifted us with two Les Baxter albums we didn’t have in our collection, Kaleidoscope and Love is Blue! Thanks, Abra! You’re the best! And Mr. C gave me two Bill Evans albums! It was a fabulous Christmas! Here are some pics! From our tiki hut to yours, we send hugs, and wish you the very best of the season! 🥰 xo-Kitty…oh, and, of course, Mr. C!

Yesterday Mr. C and I went out to one of our favorite record stores in town, following a hot tip from the owner, who knew we love Cal Tjader and called us last week to let us know he had put some of Cal’s albums aside for us! (Don’t ya just love it when that happens?!) Needless to say, no one needs to ever tell us twice about one of Cal’s albums! We’re on our way there, as soon as they mention his name! We already have these two albums, but it’s always neat to have doubles of everything, isn’t it?! Mai Tais, martinis, favorite books, Cal Tjader ALBUMS!!! Both of these are great albums! We hope you love Cal as much as we do! He really set the bar high, and his sound is uniquely Cal’s! There will never be another like him!