The Second Disc

Are you thinking you should take a chance on Ace Records’ supremely soulful duo of releases from The Apollas and Eddie Holland?  If so…you’re absolutely right!  For The Apollas’ Absolutely Right: The Complete Tiger, Loma and Warner Bros. Recordings (Kent CDKEND 365, 2012) and Holland’s It Moves Me: The Complete Recordings 1958-1964 (Ace CDTOP2 1331, 2012) both belong on the shelf of any serious fan of classic soul and R&B.

If you haven’t heard of The Apollas, you’re forgiven.  This Bay Area girl trio didn’t see much chart action, but the 25 mid-sixties tracks compiled here by Alec Palao (including five unreleased titles) prove that their output was first class.  Top tier talents like Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Artie Butler, Barry White, Jimmy Wisner, Billy Vera, Dick Glasser and H.B. Barnum were behind these recordings.  With a pedigree like that, it’s hard to believe that these sides have languished for so long.  The music on Absolutely Right! sounds better than ever, and should raise more than a few eyebrows.

Like so many African-American artists of the era, and indeed, still today, the members of The Apollas began their vocal careers in church.  The Apollas then honed their sound working nightclub engagements and teen nights at Disneyland, and even added a soulful touch to the recordings of their early patron, Frankie “Jezebel” Laine!  The gospel background of lead singer Leola Jiles always shines through, adding an extra layer of passion to unlikely material like Don Everly’s “Who Would Want Me Now.”  Just as delicious is the Ellie Greenwich/Jeff Barry composition “He Ain’t No Angel” and the smoldering “You’ll Always Have Me” from the pen of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson.  Nearly one-third of the collection’s cuts were written by that famed duo, sometimes with their frequent collaborator Josephine Armstead.  The songs of the trio were previously celebrated by Ace with The Real Thing: The Songs of Ashford, Simpson and Armstead (CDKEND 318) on which The Apollas’ “Mr. Creator” (“Won’t you hear my prayer?”) appears.  Every color of the Ashford and Simpson palette is employed, from the storming “You’re Absolutely Right” to the eminently danceable “I Just Can’t Get Enough of You.”  Hit the jump for more on The Apollas, plus Eddie Holland, too! Read the rest of this entry »

Smash!  Boom!  Bang! 

The ace compilation experts at, well, Ace Records are offering up plenty of Smash, Boom and Bang (both in impact and in label name!) for your buck with their diverse slate of February releases.  You’ll find top-drawer pop, rock and soul for connoisseurs and beginners alike among the label’s latest.  Perhaps the most unexpected is the new entry in the label’s long-running Songwriters and Producers series.  Smash Boom Bang!  The Songs and Productions of Feldman-Goldstein-Gotteher (Ace CDCHD 1317) turns the spotlight on those three named gentlemen who supplied hits for The Strangeloves, The McCoys and The Angels, not to mention the young Ronnie James Dio.

Although the surnames of Bob, Jerry and Richard didn’t have the easy ring of “Mann and Weil” or “Goffin and King,” they travelled the same New York streets.  Encouraged early on by Snuff Garrett and Wes Farrell, the F-G-G team hustled songs to a wide variety of artists across genre lines.  If you don’t know the names of Messrs. Feldman, Goldstein and Gotteher, you’ll undoubtedly know “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Hang On, Sloopy” and “I Want Candy,” and you just might be surprised to find that all three songs were the work (either in songwriting, production or both) of the same team.  Smash Boom Bang takes its name from three prominent labels, the last of which was founded by Bert Berns.  As Berns’ tragically short-lived career has already been anthologized by Ace, this collection makes the perfect companion to those earlier two volumes.

Producers Rob Finnis and Mick Patrick have curated the set to include the most famous recordings by the team, but there are expectedly delicious rarities blended in, as well, including Dion DiMucci’s demo of “Swingin’ Street,” a F-G-G song with a barroom sing-along feel.  Even “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “Hang On, Sloopy” appear in their original, unedited versions, adding value for the collector.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are plenty of choice “sixties girls” sounds.  Patty Lace and the Petticoats’ “Girl, Don’t Trust That Boy” is a quintessential, if largely unknown, girl group record from 1964, but it’s no surprise that the team had mastered the girl group genre, having written “My Boyfriend’s Back” the previous year.  The story behind that masterwork is still one shrouded in mystery, but Finnis goes a long way in explaining the brouhaha in his copious notes.    When The Angels fell out with F-G-G, they attempted to replicate the group’s sound on a variety of records such as The Pin-Ups’ delightful “Lookin’ for Boys,” though their mileage varied.  One standout track is Debra Swisher’s 1965 take on The Beach Boys’ “You’re So Good to Me,” with Swisher’s recording tougher than the original.  Her piercing lead vocals lend the song an entirely new dimension.  The track was arranged by one “Bassett Hand,” proving that the F-G-G team couldn’t resist a good pun!  F-G-G tried to combine the best of both worlds with The Powderpuffs’ rather humorous “You Can’t Take My Boyfriend’s Woody” (“It don’t look like much, but when he pops that clutch/You’ll think you’re in reverse!”) slyly aping the early Beach Boys style.

We continue with this hitmaking trio, plus lots more – including track listings and order links for Smash Boom Bang, Mod Jazz Forever and The London American Label 1957 – after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

There have been countless recordings of Frank Sinatra…but only one Concert Sinatra.  So named for its full concert orchestra (and not for a live performance), the 1963 album remains a career triumph.  It’s perhaps the pinnacle of Sinatra’s long association with conductor/arranger Nelson Riddle, a vivid display of the singer’s gifts as a dramatic actor, and the ultimate valentine to the American theatrical songbook.  Make no mistake, The Concert Sinatra is serious symphonic music, and it’s back in print via a remixed and remastered edition from Frank Sinatra Enterprises and Concord Records (CRE 33302).

The original Reprise Records album stands apart in so many ways from anything else in the Chairman’s considerable catalogue.  As multi-track master tape recorders were not yet available in 1963, Sinatra took the drastic and unusual step of recording the album on a Hollywood soundstage: Samuel Goldwyn’s Stage 7, onetime home to Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.  Multiple synchronized recorders captured the recording on 35mm magnetic film.  Though only eight tracks appeared on the LP, its sweep and majesty were overwhelming.  There’s hardly a hint of swing in these precisely-controlled recordings, one of the last completely standards-based efforts for Sinatra for many years, as he concentrated on (and succeeded in) the pop market beginning the following year.

The repertoire consisted solely of theatre music, and of the album’s eight songs, four were written by the legendary duo of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.  Two others were by Rodgers with his earlier collaborator, Lorenz Hart; and one by Hammerstein and his earlier collaborator, Jerome Kern. The eighth title came from the equally sophisticated pens of German expatriate composer Kurt Weill (The Threepenny Opera) and American poet/playwright Maxwell Anderson.  Notably, Sinatra had recorded a number of these titles earlier in his career, dating back to the 1940s.  But he revisited them with the maturity of a man nearing 50 years of age, bringing the requisite mood to each charged song, whether exultation or resignation.  The Concert Sinatra is a big album with big emotions; the Weill/Anderson “Lost in the Stars” asks questions of the universe itself!  Much is made of the singer/songwriter’s liberation of the American songbook from the theme of love.  But the titans of the American theatre stood tall with wildly varied expressions of love, rendered by Sinatra, in songs like “My Heart Stood Still” and “Bewitched” (both Rodgers and Hart) and “I Have Dreamed” and “Soliloquy” (both Rodgers and Hammerstein).

Hit the jump to dive in! Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our latest installment of Greater Hits, where we scour an artist’s discography for compilations and pick the best one for your buck. Today focuses on Aretha Franklin’s fascinating third chapter on Arista Records and the multitude of compilations that it’s yielded.

Just as I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, Aretha Franklin’s sizzling 1967 album and first for Atlantic Records, was a shock to anyone who’d known her from her days singing solid if not transcendent soul on Columbia in the early ’60s, the Queen of Soul’s mid-’80s return with 1985′s Who’s Zoomin’ Who? was light years away from “Respect” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” Today, we laud veteran comebacks that echo the songs that made us fall in love with artists in the first place. Aretha, however, did it on modern-day terms, pairing with producers like Luther Vandross and Narada Michael Walden to ensconce herself in the sound of the 1980s, never once compromising that multiplatinum voice we still adore today.

While Franklin’s work for Columbia and Atlantic have been the subject of many reissues and box sets, modern day representation of the Arista years has mostly been in the form of compilations, most recently Knew You Were Waiting: The Best of Aretha Franklin 1980-1998. (Although that trend seems to be changing, it’s an independent label handling an expansion of her work.) And what a list there is: prior to Legacy’s newest set, three major compilations of the Arista years have been released in the last 15-plus years.

Join us after the jump as we dive into each one and tell you which one should be zoomin’ into your collection first!

Read the rest of this entry »

Aretha Franklin is serious about her royalty.  Billed on her newly-activated Twitter account as “the undisputed Queen of Soul” (take that, Tina Turner!), Franklin doesn’t take her title lightly.  But for a brief period, the artist’s credentials as reigning Queen of Pop were just as unimpeachable.  When Aretha joined Arista Records in 1980, it was after five disappointing albums at Atlantic, none of which have ever seen the light of day on compact disc.  On those LPs, producers as diverse as Curtis Mayfield, Van McCoy, Lamont Dozier and Marvin Hamlisch all tried to reignite the spark that began the Queen’s ascendancy at Atlantic, and all fell short of the mark.  How would Arista’s Clive Davis succeed?  Aretha had watched her contemporary, Dionne Warwick, return to chart supremacy under Davis’ watchful eye with 1979’s Dionne.  So she put her faith in Davis, the onetime head of her very first label, Columbia.   The story picks up on Knew You Were Waiting: The Best of Aretha Franklin 1980-1998, the new 16-track anthology from Arista and Legacy Recordings (88697 99780 2, 2012).

The period that produced these songs will, inevitably, always be second best to the rock steady soul of 1967-1974.  Some might even fairly place the era third, behind Franklin’s precociously mature jazz vocals at Columbia, beautifully boxed en toto by Legacy in 2011.  But this compilation (of eighteen years boiled down to sixteen tracks) nonetheless represents a major period in the career of an eminent American artist, in which she greeted a new decade head-on, flying in unexpected directions with a variety of songwriters and producers.

Producer Leo Sacks has organized the collection in chronological order, allowing one to chart the singer’s stylistic journey.  Her initial effort at Arista actually reteamed her with Atlantic’s “house arranger,” Arif Mardin, as well as with prominent background vocalists The Sweet Inspirations.  The album, the first of two Arista sets titled Aretha, yielded the lush “United Together,” produced not by Mardin but by Chuck Jackson, and firmly in the Quiet Storm mold.  (Producer/songwriter Jackson shouldn’t be confused with the “Any Day Now” singer of the same name!)  The song, written by Jackson and Phil Perry, returned Aretha to the uppermost regions of the R&B chart (No. 3) while placing respectably (No. 56) on the pop survey, as well.  Mardin returned for 1981’s Love All the Hurt Away, and its title song, a duet with George Benson, is reprised here.  The big ballad is as far from Franklin’s soul roots as it is from Benson’s in jazz, and anticipated many future duets; a full seven tracks here are all-star collaborations.

We continue after the jump…so Jump to It, won’t you? Read the rest of this entry »

No love, no peace, no shoes on my feet…no home, just a shack where I sleep…

In the fall of 1971, Philadelphia International Records launched its long-playing series with Billy Paul’s Going East, and the title opus in which the velvet-voiced crooner spins a slow-burning yarn of slavery.  It was hardly Top 40 fare (Paul would have to wait till producers/songwriters/label entrepreneurs Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff gifted him “Me and Mrs. Jones” the following year) but signaled the dramatic experimentation with which the label would define TSOP, or “The Sound of Philadelphia.”  Socially conscious, even spiritual lyrics would rest comfortably on a jazz-influenced bed of orchestral splendor, as smooth as it was funky.  With the very next PIR album, the label would start a nearly-unbroken string of music that’s as classic today as it was relevant, then: Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ self-titled debut (“If You Don’t Know Me By Now”), The O’Jays’ Back Stabbers (“Back Stabbers,” “Love Train”), 360 Degrees of Billy Paul (“Me and Mrs. Jones”).

Each one of those artists and songs can be heard on a remarkable time capsule that’s newly arrived from Legacy Recordings and Philadelphia International.  Golden Gate Groove: The Sound of Philadelphia, Live in San Francisco 1973 (88691906232, 2012) is somewhat paradoxical, capturing a 1973 night in the City by the Bay introducing the brightest stars from the City of Brotherly Love.  But in any setting, boy, can these Mothers (and Fathers, Sisters, and Brothers) play!  It’s the first (but hopefully not the last) volley from Legacy in the 40^th anniversary celebration of Philadelphia International Records.

Recorded on July 27, 1973, the concert was held at CBS Records’ company convention inside the plush environs of the Fairmont Hotel.  Previous performers at the convention included Bruce Springsteen and Engelbert Humperdinck.  Joe Tarsia, the owner of Philly’s hallowed Sigma Sound Studios and the concert’s engineer, recalls in the liner notes that the event was attended by everyone on the CBS roster from Perry Como to Edgar Winter.  (What a sight that must have been!)  And nearly everyone associated with the success of Philadelphia International was up there, on that stage.  Vocalists included Melvin and the Blue Notes featuring Teddy Pendergrass, The Three Degrees, Billy Paul, and the O’Jays. The MFSB Orchestra that evening counted among its 35 members two-thirds of the city’s “Mighty Three,” Leon Huff and Thom Bell on piano and organ, respectively. Huff and Bell were joined by a duo of Philly’s finest arrangers, Norman Harris and Bobby Eli (guitars), plus Earl Young (drums), Ronnie Baker (bass), Lenny Pakula (piano/keyboards), Jack Faith (saxophone), Vince Montana (vibes) and other notables. Bobby Martin and Richard Rome, two more arrangers with key contributions to the Philadelphia sound, took turns conducting.

Gamble and Huff considered the evening a crucial one to secure ongoing promotion at CBS Records for their fledgling label despite its already-proven hitmaking ability.  That urgency is evident in the performances.  (Thom Bell was the third partner in Gamble and Huff’s publishing company, and a frequent face at the label despite his outside productions for The Stylistics, The Spinners, Ronnie Dyson, New York City, Johnny Mathis and so many others.)  Hit the jump to meet the evening’s emcee, the one and only Mr. Don Cornelius! Read the rest of this entry »

Among the first releases of 2012 from newbie label Real Gone Music is a two-on-one collection offering the compact disc debut of Bill Medley’s 100% and Soft and Soulful.  But those titles are apt to describe the entire Real Gone line-up for January, as the young label has given 100% to make available a wide variety of music: soft and soulful, yes, but also jazzy, twangy, and folky.  There’s something for everyone in this array of once-neglected titles.

As 1968 began, The Righteous Brothers were still an ongoing concern.  But the split of Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield couldn’t have seemed too far off, at least judging from the March release of their LP Standards.  The LP was composed entirely of solo tracks, six by bass-baritone Medley and five by tenor Hatfield.  Later that year, a live LP was entitled One for the Road, and the solo Righteous Brothers were off and running.  Real Gone has brought together Medley’s first two solo albums for MGM Records, 100% and Soft and Soulful, on one CD (RGM-0016).

1968’s 100% marked a tentative beginning for the singer as a solo act, and he hadn’t severed all ties to his former “brother,” even announcing on his recording of “Let the Good Times Roll” that “Bob Hatfield’s in town!”  Always an accomplished producer, Medley took the controls himself, with arrangements provided by Bill Baker. The Medley/Baker team had previously taken the Righteous Brothers’ reins after the duo parted ways with Phil Spector, and even aped Spector’s Wagnerian style on the majestic “Soul and Inspiration.”

It’s odd, then, that Medley seemed a bit tentative about the musical direction he should pursue on 100%.  There’s Bill Medley, the finger-snapping, supper-club swinger of “You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You” and “That’s Life.”  There’s Bill Medley, the Broadway balladeer of “Who Can I Turn To” and the ubiquitous “The Impossible Dream.”  Most familiar is Bill Medley, the blue-eyed soul man of George Fischoff and Tony Powers’ “Run to My Loving Arms,” the rocking “Show Me” and the full-throttle “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.”  The album’s strongest track is, ironically, “I Can’t Make It Alone,” a Carole King/Gerry Goffin collaboration also recorded by Bobby Hatfield in his first year of freedom.  (Hatfield’s version is still unreleased to this day; paging Real Gone Music?)  Medley’s vocal proves that he certainly could make it alone, though this terrific performance was outdone by the unlikeliest of performers, the trouser-splitting British star P.J. Proby!  Though the song was specifically written for The Righteous Brothers, Proby cut the original in 1966, and tapped arranger Jack Nitzsche to repeat the magic he’d created on songs like the Spector-produced “Just Once in My Life.”  Although Medley scored a small hit with his rendition, Proby out-Righteous’d the Brothers.  A bigger hit for him was 100%‘s  “Brown-Eyed Woman.”  It was eritten by the same all-time great team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who had already penned the Righteous Brothers’ two No. 1 hits (“Soul and Inspiration” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”).

Hit the jump to explore Medley’s Soft and Soulful, plus new reissues from Jody Miller and The Tymes! Read the rest of this entry »

Did a cork pop?  Did the world stop?  Am I just in love…with the music and lyrics of Hugh Martin?  Even if you don’t know the name of the late Mr. Martin, you certainly know his songs: “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “The Trolley Song,” and a little song heard every season, year after year, by the name of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”  But these songs from the MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis are just the tip of the iceberg of Hugh Martin’s catalogue, a few highlights of a career that lasted more than 75 years.  Martin died in 2011 at the age of 96, but Harbinger Records and The Musical Theater Project have brought together nearly 30 examples of Martin’s sparkling wit and lyricism in the grandly enjoyable Hidden Treasures (Harbinger HCD 2702).  For those who are already fans of Martin, it’s a must-have.  For those who only know his most famous contributions to The Great American Songbook, well…it’s an education!

You know an album is a bound to be a special one when no less an eminence grise than Stephen Sondheim is enlisted to write the foreword (to a generous 84-page, black-and-white illustrated booklet).  In his two volumes of collected lyrics, Sondheim proved himself to be not only his own toughest audience, but a frank critic of the works of many others from Ira Gershwin to Noel Coward.  But his praise for Hugh Martin is effusive: “Hugh Martin’s music, lyrics and vocal arrangements are the quintessence of 1940s musical comedy; they define what is meant by ‘show tunes’ or ‘pizzazz.’”  And there’s plenty of pizzazz on hand in every one of these thirty well-selected tracks spanning the period between 1941 and 2010, drawing on the composer-lyricist’s works in the Golden Ages of both Broadway and Hollywood.

Most of the tracks are heard in demo form, performed by Martin or his credited partner, Ralph Blane.  (Martin revealed in the last years of his life that he and Blane, more often than not, wrote separately, but took joint credit.  Think of them, then, as the musical theatre’s John Lennon and Paul McCartney.)  But there are also outtakes from Michael Feinstein’s 1995 Hugh Martin Songbook, live performances, a radio aircheck and even a newly-recorded song.  In the interest of making this album a definitive account of Martin’s career, the notes even helpfully indicate other recordings of the songs as well as their source projects.

Hit the jump for more of Martin! Read the rest of this entry »

When The Monkees’ Instant Replay was released in February 1969, less than three years had passed since the band’s vinyl debut in October 1966.  But the pop world of 1966 might have been a lifetime ago.  Five days before Instant Replay’s February 15 release, The Beach Boys unveiled the album 20/20, on which America’s band surreptitiously recorded a song by Charles Manson.  Two days after, The Temptations skyrocketed to Cloud Nine, meeting psychedelia head-on.  By the year’s end, the dream of peace that had flowered at Woodstock seemed shattered in the violence of a Rolling Stones concert at California’s Altamont Speedway.  It was into this heady time that Instant Replay was released, the product of a fractured group of Monkees.  Peter Tork had departed the group after filming the 33-1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee television special in December 1968, which would air to disastrous ratings the following April.  Instant Replay fared somewhat better, climbing to No. 32 to stake its claim as The Monkees’ final Top 40 album.  The album’s production period was not without tension, and Michael Nesmith would depart the band after just one more album, leaving Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones to soldier on as the lone Monkees as 1970 progressed.  Instant Replay is unmistakably the sound of a fractured group, with Nesmith having assessed it as “a final choking cough of the engine before it completely died.”  Andrew Sandoval to the rescue!  The producer has uncovered enough hidden treasures to warrant its journey from a 12-track LP to a 19-track CD in 1995 to finally, a lavish 89-track box set containing three CDs and one 45 RPM vinyl single (Rhino Handmade RHM2 528791, 2011).

Instant Replay is marked chiefly by the sound of three individuals rather than a band.  It’s tempting to call the album the Monkee equivalent of The White Album, but a more accurate comparison might be to a hypothetical LP containing tracks from McCartney, All Things Must Pass, Plastic Ono Band and yes, Ringo’s Sentimental Journey!  The grab-bag of songs is disparate and varied, and don’t sound as if they necessarily belong on the same album; the remaining band members originally intended the LP to echo the sounds of the past while still looking musically forward.  The greatly expanded content of the box set works in the album’s favor, illuminating each nook and cranny of what once resembled a crazy quilt of Monkee music.

The three discs of the new Instant Replay are largely arranged by mixes. The first disc is dedicated to stereo and contains a newly-remastered and restored transfer of the original album, expanded with 16 additional stereo mixes including “nearly all” of Nesmith’s 1968 Nashville sessions (more on those soon).   Disc Two is all-mono, which is particularly intriguing as Instant Replay was never issued in true mono.  (The Birds, The Bees and the Monkees was the band’s last Colgems album to see such a release.)  But most of the album’s songs were mixed into mono, so those tracks make their first appearances here. Rare and unreleased recordings round out the disc.  Finally, Disc 3 is subtitled “Sessions,” and two thirds of the disc is devoted to backing tracks, though the completed songs from the surviving video master of 33-1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee should intrigue even the most difficult to please fan of the group!

Hit the jump and go Instantly into more Monkee-mania! Read the rest of this entry »

What makes a cult hero most?  Alex Chilton ascended to that lofty rank as the leader of Big Star, a band whose negligible commercial impact is only matched by its considerable influence over an entire generation of musicians.  When Chilton’s Paul McCartney met Chris Bell’s John Lennon (or vice versa?), they formed a brief but potent team as singers and songwriters.  What resulted was the exuberant power pop of the optimistically-titled No. 1 Record as recorded by Big Star: Chilton, Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel.  Bell departed after that one, shining album, having successfully synthesized the sounds of London, Memphis and Los Angeles into something shimmering and original.  Big Star itself imploded after just two more increasingly off-center LPs, and Chilton seemed to retreat, off to battle his personal demons.  Not one of the group’s three records had troubled the charts, quite a comedown for the man who had taught us how to “Cry Like a Baby” and whose baby wrote him “The Letter.”

Alex Chilton, who died in 2010, lived long enough to see his work reappraised by a new generation.  The Replacements name-checked him in song, and the Big Star catalogue appeared on CD from Fantasy, making it a bit easier for the albums to be circulated around college campuses everywhere: “Hey, have you heard this Big Star?”  That ‘70s Show selected a Big Star tune as its theme.  Chilton even re-formed the band in 1993.  As so often happens, the faithful became curious about Chilton’s past.  The Box Tops LPs were reissued on CD by Sundazed.  And in 1996, a missing link between The Box Tops and Big Star arrived in the form of 1970, on the Ardent label.  This compilation premiered an entire album’s worth of unheard compositions by the Box Tops’ moonlighting singer, in sessions at the future birthplace of Big Star, Ardent Studios.  1970 is the foundation of the latest release from Omnivore Recordings and Ace Records (OVCD-13).  Free Again: The “1970” Sessions expands that long out-of-print album from 13 tracks to 20, dramatically resequences it, and makes a strong case that Alex Chilton’s embryonic songwriting talents were as prodigious as his deeply soulful vocals.  (Free Again is also available as a 12-track LP, and the first 1,500 copies of that LP have been pressed on clear vinyl.)

Hit the jump to explore the 20 tracks found on Free Again! Read the rest of this entry »