This week Real Gone Music has a couple of titles coming out, both featuring music from the 1960s but in very different styles: The Complete Atlantic & Reprise Singles from Little Richard and Al Oud from Hamza El Din.  The Little Richard title is available tomorrow, July 14, while the Hazma El Din title is available now from Real Gone's website and at other retailers on August 4.

First up is The Complete Atlantic & Reprise Singles from Little Richard.  This 15-track compilation gathers up the four single sides he released on Atlantic in the early 1960s and then jumps to his 11 sides released by Reprise in the early 1970s.  The set begins in 1963, during a time of transition for Little Richard.  Due to his deep religious convictions, the legendary performer had turned away from secular rock music in 1958 and instead began to sing gospel, leaving the Specialty label where he had achieved so much success.  In 1961, Richard released The King of the Gospel Singers on Mercury.  He then went on a tour of Europe where he began to dip a bit back into some secular songs.  But he still was recording gospel, releasing singles and on several labels in the first few years of the 1960s including Little Star (as part of The World Famous Upsetters), Coral, and Atlantic.  For that label, just four songs across two singles were released: "Crying in the Chapel," "Hole in the Wall," "Traveling Shoes," and "It Is No Secret."  The most successful of these was Richard's cover of Darrell Glenn's 1953 hit "Crying in the Chapel," which peaked at No. 119 on the Pop chart in early 1963.  Elvis Presley would release the biggest hit version two years later, which went to No. 3 in the United States and topped the charts in the United Kingdom.  Little Richard would soon return to secular music in a big way, signing with Vee Jay in 1964.  But while his performances were just as explosive as a decade earlier, the tastes of the mid-1960s were different and Richard's efforts did not make much of a dent on the charts.  He bounced around several different labels for the rest of the decade including Modern, Okeh . and Brunswick.  But he remained a successful concert performer, which is why Reprise signed him in 1970, where Real Gone's compilation continues.

Little Richard would record three albums while at Reprise.  He self-produced the first, 1970's The Rill Thing, which saw him recording a set of southern soul rockers at Alabama's FAME Studios.  He was rewarded with his biggest hit in over a decade when "Freedom Blues" reached No. 47 on the Billboard Pop chart.  "Greenwood, Mississippi" cracked the Hot 100 at No. 85 and fared even better at No. 56 on the Cash Box R&B survey.  A non-LP re-recording of his own 1959 song "Shake A Hand (If You Can)" came out on a single in early 1971.  Later that year, Richard's second Reprise LP, The King of Rock and Roll, produced by H.B. Barnum, hit shelves.  The lone single was the Barnum-penned "Green Power" backed with a cover of the Motown classic "Dancing in the Street."  It unfortunately failed to chart.  In 1972, Richard contributed the song "Money Is" to the soundtrack of the film The Heist.  The tune, produced by Quincy Jones, was the A-side of a single backed by one of Jones' own songs from the soundtrack.   Little Richard's third and final Reprise LP, The Second Coming, came out later that year. He reunited with Robert "Bumps" Blackwell from his Specialty days.  Blackwell co-produced the album with Little Richard, who wrote most of the material himself.  The idea was to unite the best studio musicians from the 1950s and 1970s on one album.  Once again, only a lone single was released: "Mockingbird Sally" b/w "Nuki Suki" and failed to chart.  Little Richard then left Reprise (although he had recorded a fourth album, Southern Charm, for the label which remained unreleased until 2005).  He continued recording for a variety of companies of the next two decades, with his last full album being 1992's Little Richard Meets Masayoshi Takanaka on Eastworld.  For the next two decades he would appear numerous times on TV and film and continue his live performances around the world.  His last concert was in 2014 and he passed away in 2020 at 87.

Real Gone's The Complete Atlantic & Reprise Singles is remastered by Aaron Kannowski and features liner notes by Little Richard expert Bill Dahl. It comes on ruby red vinyl.

Next up is oud player Hamza El Din's Al Oud from 1965.  El Din was born in Southern Egypt in 1929 and studied electrical engineering before deciding to study and perform music.  He specialized in the oud and short-necked Arabian lute, along with traditional percussion instruments.  He would accompany his compositions with vocals in Arabic or his native Nubian language.  After a performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, he signed with Vanguard Records.  His first album, Music of Nubia, came out that same year.  In 1965, he released Al Oud.  It features nine original compositions based on Nubian folk traditions with a rhythmic pulse and haunting quality.  Al Oud would be El Din's last album for Vanguard.  He would continue to record for a variety of labels and perform around the world, including a stint with the Grateful Dead.  From the 1970 to the 1990s, he taught ethnomusicology at several universities around the United States.  His final album, A Wish with Hani Naser, was released in 1999 on Sounds True.  El Din passed away in 2006.

Real Gone's reissue of Al Oud features liner notes by Jamal Mohammed Ahmed, at the time Sudan's Ambassador to the United Nations.  It comes on clear vinyl and is limited to 900 copies.  Real Gone's website has an exclusive which comes on metallic tellus vinyl, limited to 100 copies.  Please note that Al Oud is available now on Real Gone's website and will be out August 4 to general retail.

If you would like to try either of these titles, we've got the full tracklistings and ordering links below.

Little Richard, The Complete Atlantic & Reprise Singles (Real Gone Music, 2023) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Real Gone Music)

Side 1

1. Crying in the Chapel
2. Hole in the Wall
3. Travelin' Shoes
4. It Is No Secret
5. Freedom Blues
6. Dewdrop Inn
7. Greenwood, Mississippi
8. I Saw Her Standing There
9. Shake a Hand (If You Can)

Side 2

1. Somebody Saw You
2. Green Power
3. Dancing in the Street
4. Money Is
5. Mockinbird Sally
6. Nuki Suki

Hamza El Din, Al Oud (Originally released as Vanguard LP VRS-79194, 1965 - reissued Real Gone Music, 2023) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Real Gone Music)

Side 1

1. Childhood (Assaramessuga)
2. The Spirits (Shortunga)
3. Grandfather's Stories (Annun Sira')
4. Did Nura Remember? (Gillina Nura)

Side 2

1. The Message Bearer (Hoi To Irkil Fa Giu)
2. THE Gondola
3. Call For Unity (Nuban Uto)
4. The Fortune Teller (Kogosh)
5. Greeting Card (Abdin)