We wouldn’t want you to be left out in the cold for Cyber Monday, so we’re proud to present our annual Holiday Gift Guide featuring over 40 essential selections for the music enthusiast in your life! Just click on the banner above to peruse the full guide now!
The Second Disc’s HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE 2014
Don’t have time to make that list and check it twice? Looking for that perfect present to place under the tree this holiday season? Look no further! 2014 has brought an amazing array of deluxe (and super deluxe!) special editions and box sets – plus a number of holiday-themed releases – all of which prove the vitality of music released in physical formats. We’ve highlighted the crème de la crème – over 40 titles! – right here to make your spirits bright, whatever your musical taste! Bob Dylan, The Bootleg Series Vol. 11:…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Johnny Mathis, “The Complete Global Albums Collection”
In two short years, Johnny Mathis will likely celebrate his 60th anniversary with Columbia Records, a towering achievement by any standard. But even the strongest marriages must sometimes weather separations, as was the case when the vocalist jumped ship to rival Mercury Records for the period between 1963 and 1967. At Mercury, Mathis formed Global Productions to administer his master recordings, and recorded some eleven albums (only ten of which were originally released) under its aegis. Upon his return to Columbia, a select few of Mathis’ Mercury recordings were reintroduced to the…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Various Artists, “The South Side of Soul Street”
The trusty musical archaeologists at the Omnivore label have the perfect stocking stuffer for those looking for a little bit of southern soul hung by the chimney with care. The 2-CD anthology The South Side of Soul Street (OVCD-68, 2013), collecting the A- and B-sides of 20 singles released by the Minaret label between 1967 and 1976, makes the argument that Valparaiso, Florida’s Playground Recording Studio deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Muscle Shoals, American Sound, Stax and Hi. Founded in Nashville in the early 1960s, the Minaret…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: “Here’s Edie: The Edie Adams Television Collection”
In one of the many testimonials that enhance the booklet to the first-ever DVD release of Here’s Edie: The Edie Adams Television Collection, Carl Reiner may have put it best and most succinctly: “Edie Adams…a combination of beauty, brains and talent…what else do you need?” Based on the evidence in this thoroughly delightful 4-DVD, 12-hour, 21-episode set now available from MVD Visual (MVD 59200), you don’t need anything else. Adams just about had it all, and showed it off for the 1962-1964 television variety show. Here’s Edie aired on Thursday nights, alternating…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: The Who, “Tommy: Super Deluxe Edition”
The opening chords of The Who’s Tommy may be among the most famous in all of rock. By the time the horns kicked in, around the forty-second mark, it was already clear that this double-album wasn’t business as usual for the heavy mod-rockers. In fact, the melodic, thunderous, commanding piece of music that opened the 1969 album sounded a bit like the overture to a Broadway musical, weaving together themes that would follow. Thirty-four years later, it would become one. By the time The Who’s Tommy opened at New York’s St. James…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Matt Monro, “The Rarities Collection” and “Alternate Monro”
How lovely to sit here in the shade, with none of the woes of man and maid/I’m glad I’m not young anymore! The rivals that don’t exist at all, the feeling you’re only two feet tall/I’m glad I’m not young anymore! Matt Monro recorded those Alan Jay Lerner lyrics in January 1973 at just 42 years of age. But by that point, the golden-voiced singer had already acquired enough experience to interpret them with supreme confidence and natural charm. Monro’s reassuring, crisply impeccable tone earned him early comparisons to Frank Sinatra, but…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Donny Hathaway, “Never My Love: The Anthology”
This time of year, it’s nearly impossible to spend much time on a holiday music station without hearing the familiar, resonant voice persuasively imploring, “Hang all the mistletoe/I’m gonna get to know you better/This Christmas!” Donny Hathaway’s 1970 single “This Christmas” has become one of the most frequently-sung latter-day Christmas standards, recorded in recent years by everybody from Carole King to Mary J. Blige. In a too-short life that was tragically curbed at 33 in January 1979, the soul singer proved himself a gifted interpreter of the songs of others, as well…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Buck Owens, “Buck ‘Em! The Music of Buck Owens”
No less an eminent personage than American author William Faulkner once said that “a writer needs three things – experience, observation, and imagination – any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.” Country music legend and Bakersfield Sound pioneer Buck Owens, however, utilized all three of those key elements in his songs, which may help explain their timeless stature. Fifty of those recordings are anthologized on Omnivore’s new Buck ‘Em! The Music of Buck Owens (1955-1967) (OVCD-75), a two-CD alternative history of the…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Woody Guthrie, “American Radical Patriot”
The title of Rounder Records’ new box set describes its subject, Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), as an American Radical Patriot. Especially in today’s politically-polarized times, some might find those words a contradiction in terms. But in the late folk troubadour’s world, very little was black-and-white. It’s that world which is explored in such depth in this lavish new collection, a limited edition of 5,000 units. American Radical Patriot (Rounder 11661-9138-2) not only proves why Guthrie matched that label, but does so by presenting music that very few have ever heard and placing it…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: A Real Gone Christmas With Andy Williams, Patti Page and The New Christy Minstrels
When Andy Williams passed away on September 25, 2012 at the age of 84, the loss was keenly felt by anyone who had ever played the “red album” and the “green album” during the holiday season. The Andy Williams Christmas Album (1963) and Merry Christmas (1965) were the best-selling Columbia LPs that led Williams to embody the title of “Mr. Christmas.” His rich, warm and resonant tenor was ideally suited to holiday music of both the secular and spiritual traditions, and his association with the holiday lasted for his entire life, through…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Bobby Darin, “The 25th Day of December” and Various Artists, “Funky Christmas”
Real Gone Music is ensuring that it’s going to be a merry Christmas, indeed, with a number of holiday-themed releases that practically beg to be enjoyed alongside a glass of egg nog and a warm fireplace. Bobby Darin’s The 25th Day of December, the late singer’s only holiday LP, arrived on the Atco label in 1960. However, the album wasn’t the work of Bobby Darin, the splish-splashin’ rock-and-roller, or Bobby Darin, the finger-snapping, tuxedoed crooner. It’s not even the work of Bob Darin, the folk troubadour. Instead, it displays another side of…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Frank Sinatra, “Duets: Twentieth Anniversary”
“May you live to be one hundred and may the last voice you hear be mine.” The image of Frank Sinatra, glass in hand, delivering that favorite toast is an indelible one. His wasn’t just a voice, after all. Before he was Ol’ Blue Eyes or The Chairman of the Board, he was simply The Voice. And through all its many changes, The Voice endured. The pure, romantically-charged timbre that set the hearts of bobbysoxers pounding in the forties transformed into the ultimate instrument of ultimate cool during the fifties and sixties. …
Holiday Gift Guide Spotlight: Diamond, Streisand, Williams, Cash, Jones, Wynette and More Join “Classic Christmas Album” Roster [UPDATED]
Legacy Recordings’ Classic Christmas Album series has grown this holiday season. Last year brought volumes from a variety of artists across the rock, pop, country and R&B spectrum including Barry Manilow, Luther Vandross, John Denver, Willie Nelson, Kenny G and Elvis Presley. For 2013, another eight seasonal anthologies have arrived under the Classic Christmas Album umbrella from Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, Andy Williams, Barbra Streisand, Alabama, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Martina McBride. Christmas is the one time of the year you’re guaranteed to hear the voice of…
The Second Disc’s HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE 2013
Don’t have time to make that list and check it twice? Looking for that perfect present to place under the tree this holiday season? Look no further! 2013 has brought an amazing array of deluxe (and super deluxe!) special editions and box sets, so we have highlighted the cream of the crop right here to make your spirits bright, whatever your musical taste! The Animals, The Mickie Most Years and More (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) Real Gone Music jumps into the box set market with this 5-CD (and 1 T-shirt!) collection…
‘Tis the Season: The 2013 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Is Here!
It’s that time of year again! Click above to visit The Second Disc’s annual Holiday Gift Guide, featuring over 25 of our favorite gift picks for 2013!
It’s a Scream! “Rhumba” Takes Latin-Jewish Musical Journey with Carole King, Herb Alpert, Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, More
Last year, The Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation regaled listeners with ‘Twas the Night Before Hanukkah, an eclectic and offbeat anthology that breathed life into the concept of a holiday-themed compilation. With its mission “to look at Jewish history and the Jewish experience through recorded sound” firmly in mind, the organization this year has released another two-disc set that lives up to the much-overused word unique. Whereas last year’s release focused on the relationship in song between Christmas and Hanukkah, the colorfully-titled It’s a Scream How Levine Does the Rhumba (RSR 021)…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Various Artists, “‘Twas the Night Before Hanukkah”
The story behind The Idelsohn Society for Music Preservation’s fascinating new 2-CD set ‘Twas the Night Before Hanukkah is a simple one. The label, dedicated to telling Jewish history through music, set out to chronicle the music of Hanukkah before discovering that the most famous Christmas songs – “White Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “The Christmas Song,” just to name three – were all written by members of the Jewish faith! So the Hanukkah compilation doubled in size, and gained the cheeky subtitle The Musical Battle Between Christmas and the Festival of…
Holiday Gift Guide Reviews: Etta James and Sarah Vaughan, “Complete Albums Collections”
Etta James and Sarah Vaughan: by any and all accounts, two formidable women of song. Now, these late legends are both receiving the deluxe treatment from Legacy Recordings on two box sets as part of the Complete Albums series. Though Etta James’ most enduring recordings were made during her sixteen years (1960-1976) at Chess Records, including her oft-imitated but never-topped perennial “At Last,” the former Jamesetta Hawkins recorded for over fifty years in a variety of genres for a variety of labels. Modern, Warner Bros., Elektra, Island, Fantasy, RCA, Verve: tenures with…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Louis Armstrong, “The OKeh, Columbia and RCA Victor Recordings 1925-1933”
Duke Ellington famously stated, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing,” but without Louis Armstrong, Duke would assuredly have had to pose some other question. Bing Crosby, the man owed a debut by every popular singer of the past eighty or so years, described Armstrong as “the beginning and end of music in America” while fellow trumpeter Miles Davis acknowledged that “you can’t play anything on a horn that Louis hasn’t played.” Yet Armstrong is arguably most remembered today by the general public for his latter-day vocals like…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: The Moving Sidewalks, “The Complete Collection”
Before ZZ Top, there was The Moving Sidewalks. The dust has been blown off a lost chapter of Texas rock history with RockBeat Records’ release of The Complete Collection (ROC-CD-3018) from Billy Gibbons’ early band. This 2-CD set chronicles, in deluxe style, the four-piece psychedelic blues-rock outfit that emerged from the ashes of The Coachmen and eventually morphed into the first iteration of ZZ Top. Vocalist and guitarist Gibbons, a native of Houston, founded the psychedelic blues-rock band as a young man in the mid-1960s with Don Summers joining him on bass,…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Duke Ellington, “The Complete Columbia Studio Albums Collection 1951-1958”
What made Ellington a Duke? Though born in the final year of the 19th century, few figures in 20th century music were as influential as composer, pianist and bandleader Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington. By the time of his first ever long-playing album, 1951’s Masterpieces by Ellington, he was already American royalty, well-established via films, Broadway musicals and the enduring compositions he gifted to the Great American Songbook. Masterpieces also kicks off the nine-disc journey through Legacy Recordings’ The Complete Columbia Studio Albums Collection 1951-1958 (88697 93888 2). As the title indicates, this…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Various Artists, “Surf Age Nuggets: Trash and Twang Instrumentals 1959-1966”
In 1996, Rhino Records released Cowabunga! The Surf Box, a four-disc celebration of surf music, both vocal and instrumental, from its earliest days to the then-present. It’s taken more than fifteen years, but James Austin, the co-producer of that long-out-of-print box, has returned with an all-new companion piece. Surf Age Nuggets, released through the RockBeat label (ROC-CD-3098), offers another four discs’ worth of “trash and twang instrumentals,” as the cover promises. Its 104 tracks include some of the rarest of the rare surf tracks, and they’re almost exclusively from artists of whom…
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Johnny Cash, “The Complete Columbia Album Collection”
Are you ready to add some Black to the red and green this Christmas? If you are, you’ll be richly rewarded thanks to Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings’ Johnny Cash: The Complete Columbia Album Collection (88697 91047 2, 2012). It’s no easy feat to distill the essence of an artist into one package, let alone when the artist in question is John R. Cash. Yet this collection spanning 33 years (1957-1990), 61 albums and 63 CDs succeeds in revealing the man behind the black in all his many personas: God-loving spiritual truth-seeker,…
Holiday Gift Guide Reviews: Legacy’s “Classic Christmas Album” Series from Manilow, Vandross, Presley, Nelson, Denver, Kenny G
If you’re a resident of the storm-ravaged East Coast, you might have recently found yourself singing, “We need a little Christmas, right this very minute! “ I know I have. As happens every year around this same time, holiday albums have already begun to fill the shelves, with new albums arriving from artists old and new as well as reissues from Christmases past. In 2011, Legacy Recordings issued The Classic Christmas Album for Tony Bennett, combining tracks from Bennett’s three holiday-themed albums with rare offerings and one-offs. This year, the Classic Christmas…
