Jane Lee - Happy Days (2023 Remaster)

The 1970s were a crazy time for record labels in America. The underbelly of the industry was a veritable wild west, with shady characters setting up imprints as tax shelters, pressing records in small quantities, inflating the costs spent on them, and then reporting huge losses on tax returns. Often releasing albums by unknown artists and demo tapes that had been laying around, these labels never cleared rights to release any of the music and the artists were not informed or compensated. Some of the band names and song titles were even changed and some artists wouldn't discover that their music had been released until many years later. These practices went on into the early 1980s until the IRS caught wind of the scheme and the party was over. These often interesting yet mysterious releases became known as "Tax Scam" albums. A case in point is the album presented here. Issued on a label called Thaw Records in 1977 when the scam was rampant, the album is titled "Happy Days" by a group named "Jane Lee." The music features a modern sounding Dixieland type jazz band performing concise versions of well-known standards, often with group vocals or with an occasional male or female solo vocal featured. The band is quite competent and the music is crisp and well played. Who the actual musicians are is anyone's guess, although it sounds like the same group on all tracks and definitely not a traditional or known Dixieland jazz band - the sound of the band and vocalists is fairly modern (for 1977) and all the tracks are very well recorded. Presented here is that mysterious album, newly remastered for this exclusive release and finally made available for all to enjoy in the digital domain. Jane Lee's "Happy Days" is definitely one of the better albums of the Tax Scam record variety - at least now more people will get to hear and enjoy it... and just maybe finally discover who this mysterious band of musicians actually are.