Like a fine meal, Caston and Majors begins with an appetizer. "Child of Love," on cursory listening, is "just" a bright pop song with a funky groove, employing booming drums, surging strings and a catchy chorus ("Rise now, child of love/No time for wastin'/Rise now, child of love/Stop hesitatin'...") along with a "Hey, hey" cheer that invites singing along. But a closer listen to the lyrics finds songwriters Leonard Caston and Kathy Wakefield giving voice to a higher power: "You must be a
Review: Albert King, "Born Under a Bad Sign"
The familiar cover artwork to Albert King’s 1967 Stax album Born Under a Bad Sign hardly gives any indication as to its heavy contents. A calendar reading Friday the 13th, the Ace of Spades, snake eyes on the dice, and an almost-cute black cat (!) adorned with a skull and crossbones all reinforce the title of the album but offer precious little hint as to the smoking electric blues within the sleeve. Following 2012’s reissue of King’s 1972 Stax album I’ll Play the Blues for You, Concord Music
Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me: "The TK Records Story" Mines Disco Gold
It’s been said that the greatest music is transporting, to another time or another place. If that’s true, it was no secret where the sounds of TK Records intended to transport the listener. Henry Stone’s TK family of labels originated in Miami, Florida, and the sleeve artwork for TK’s singles featured a tropical setting of palm trees, bright flowers and pristine waters. That serene scene serves as the cover for Gold Legion’s new TK Records Story (67094 562442 7), a 12-track anthology of disco
Dance A Little Bit Closer: Gold Legion Uncovers "The Salsoul Records Story"
Just in case you didn’t already know, there’s plenty of gold to be found from the Gold Legion label. Since its inception, Gold Legion has reissued and remastered classic disco records from master tape sources, adding copious annotation and bonus tracks to flesh out the stories behind the music. Some of Gold Legion’s previous releases have been dedicated to iconic singer-actress-model Grace Jones, “Turn the Beat Around” diva Vicki Sue Robinson, The Emotions as produced by Maurice White and
Review: Elvis Presley, "Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite: Legacy Edition"
Elvis Presley never did anything small. When he stepped onstage at 1:00 a.m. at Honolulu's International Center on January 14, 1973 for a scheduled 12:30 a.m. concert, satellites were beaming the most expensive entertainment broadcast ever to an audience of over one billion (yes, one billion) people around the world. The subsequent RCA album quickly was certified gold, and eventually went five times platinum. Now that world-famous LP, Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, is the latest Legacy
Review: Duane Allman, "Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective"
“I ain’t wastin’ time no more,” Gregg Allman sang following the death of his brother Duane at the age of 24 in October 1971, “’cause time goes by like pouring rain…and much faster things/You don’t need no gypsy to tell you why/You can’t let one precious day slip by.” Surveying the remarkable new box set Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective (Rounder 11661-9137-2), it’s evident that Duane Allman’s too few days certainly were precious, filled with soulful sounds that transcended genre tags like
Review: The O'Jays, "Ship Ahoy: 40th Anniversary Edition"
James Barkley’s rear cover artwork for The O’Jays’ 1973 Philadelphia International LP Ship Ahoy depicts a mighty vessel sailing on the sea, but the reflection in the water isn’t of the boat itself. Rather, ghostly figures of abandoned souls populate these waters. The setting is the Middle Passage, the infamous crossing in the “triangular trade” that saw Africans shackled and shipped as slaves to the Americas. Those spectral presences loom over the visages of Eddie Levert, Walter Williams and
Reviews: Real Gone Reissues A Lost Jimi Hendrix Production, All-Girl Rock Pioneers and Mime-Rockers
We’re taking a look at three of the latest pop-rock rarities from the crate-diggers at Real Gone Music, including two albums from bands with a Todd Rundgren connection! Fanny, Fanny (RGM-0118) Maybe the tongue-in-cheek cover didn’t do the band a great service. The band was called Fanny, and the album cover showed the all-female band’s four members, their backs to the camera, their fannies for all to see. For good measure, Alice De Buhr grabbed June Millington’s fanny. But beyond the goofy
Special Review: David Bowie, "The Next Day"
Welcome to today's special review of David Bowie's twenty-fourth studio album and first in ten years, The Next Day. As you likely know, The Second Disc rarely reviews newly-recorded albums, but the return of this iconic artist to the recording studio simply couldn't be ignored. In 1980's "Ashes to Ashes," David Bowie famously revealed "Major Tom's a junkie, strung out in heavens high, hitting an all-time low." This continuation of the story begun in 1969's "Space Oddity" was as definitive a
Songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil Are "Born to Be Together" on New Ace CD
Born to Be Together: could a more apropos title have been devised for a collection of the songs of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil? Married since 1961, the team both defines and defies the phrase “unsung heroes.” Without hit records as recording artists, Mann and Weil have never had the name recognition of their Brill Building-era compatriots like Carole King or Neil Sedaka, but these Grammy Award-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Famers are hardly unsung. If all they’d ever written was the most
Review: Jimi Hendrix, "People, Hell and Angels"
The Jimi Hendrix reclamation project continues. The partnership between Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings began in early 2010 with the release of Valleys of Neptune, a 12-track collection of previously unreleased material from the late guitar hero. Since then, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays and box sets have all arrived to keep the Hendrix flame burning bright. And now Valleys of Neptune receives a proper follow-up in the form of People, Hell and Angels (88765 41898 2), a “new” collection of
Review: Otis Redding, "Lonely and Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding"
Please, let me sit down beside you…I’ve got something to tell you, you should know... From the very first elongated cry of “please,” Otis Redding’s voice drips with pain, the kind of pain rendered impossible to keep underneath the surface. The singer of “I Love You More Than Words Can Say” pleads, prods and cajoles, all the while at an utter loss. This woman who haunts him, who lingers in his mind, seemingly can’t understand the depth of his affections. Yet we the listeners certainly can
Review: Carmen McRae, "I Am Music"
“Life is just too much for me to bear…I guess nobody ever really cared…do you?” Carmen McRae poses that question some four minutes into “A Letter for Anna-Lee,” the Benard Ighner song that opens her 1975 Blue Note album I Am Music. It’s a startling moment of direct address in this sad tale of a man for whom “the business of the day won’t let me be,” adding that “this life’s not meant for me.” The song, its accompaniment led by Dave Grusin’s burbling electric piano, shifts from its
Reviews: Three From Real Gone Music - Pozo Seco, Kenny O'Dell and Borderline
Between 1966 and 1968, The Pozo Seco Singers released three albums on Columbia Records, notching up Top 40 hits “I Can Make It with You” and “Look What You’ve Done.” The first two albums, Time (1966) and I Can Make It with You (1967) were released on CD by the Collectors’ Choice Music label; now, Real Gone Music has picked up the torch with a newly-expanded reissue of 1968's Shades of Time (RGM-0112). For this album, the group name was shortened just to Pozo Seco, and the trio of Don Williams,
Come Blow Your Horn: Herb Alpert's "Fandango" Returns to CD
Between 2005 and 2007, the beat of The Brass was alive and well at Shout! Factory. The label’s Herb Alpert Signature Collection restored eleven classic titles from the celebrated trumpeter to the catalogue on CD in deluxe remastered editions, plus a rarities compilation and a remix album. Three further releases were also made available, albeit in digital download form only. Shout! is kicking off 2013, however, with the surprising reissue (due February 19) of Alpert’s 1982 Fandango, one of the
Review: Barbra Streisand, "Classical Barbra: Expanded Edition"
The title said it all: Classical Barbra. Here was a singer who needed no surname, diving headfirst into a new repertoire, that of art songs and arias. Streisand’s 1976 “crossover” album, created in collaboration with arranger, pianist and conductor Claus Ogerman, has recently arrived on CD in a newly-remastered, expanded edition from Sony’s Masterworks label (88691 92255 2, 2013). And if Classical Barbra might not have been every fan’s first choice for a deluxe Streisand reissue, producer
Review: Fleetwood Mac, "Rumours: Expanded Edition"
It never should have worked. Since its formation in 1967, Fleetwood Mac had endured radical personnel changes, a stylistic shift from blues to rock, even a challenge from a "fake Mac" claiming to be the band in concert. When guitarist-songwriter-vocalist Bob Welch became the latest member to pass through the Fleetwood Mac revolving door, Mick Fleetwood and the husband and wife team of John and Christine McVie invited two young Californians to bolster the line-up. Lindsey Buckingham and his
Review: The Miles Davis Quintet, "The Bootleg Series Volume 2: Live in Europe 1969"
“Directions in music by Miles Davis,” read the subtitle of the trumpeter’s late-1968 Columbia album Filles de Kilimanjaro. It was the first, but not the last, of his albums to bear those words. But listeners couldn’t have been expected to know which direction Davis would take with each album. Nefertiti, recorded in June-July 1967 but released in March 1968, turned out to be Davis’ last fully acoustic LP, with its follow-up Miles in the Sky (recorded January and May ’68 and released in
Review: Dick Jensen, "Dick Jensen" - A Lost Philadelphia Soul Classic
When Dick Jensen was signed to ABC’s Probe Records label in 1969, only one album title seemed appropriate: White Hot Soul. The Hawaiian-born entertainer’s stage moves earned him comparisons to James Brown and Jackie Wilson, while his voice recalled the booming sonorities of Tom Jones or Engelbert Humperdinck. Tucked away on Side Two of that Don Costa-produced LP, Jensen included The Soul Survivors’ “Expressway to Your Heart” as part of a medley. That 1967 Top 5 hit, of course, was written by
Review: Billy Joel, "She's Got a Way: Love Songs"
“She’s got a way about her…I don’t know what it is,” Billy Joel sings on his very first album. But it isn’t long before the song’s narrator explicates many of those ways about her, like a “smile that heals me” or “a light around her.” Even if he can’t put his finger on it, he’s confident that “a million dreams of love surround her ev’rywhere.” Yet rarely (in life or in art) has love been so simple for Billy Joel. “She’s Got a Way” lends its title to a new compilation subtitled Love Songs
Review: The Pogues, "The Very Best of The Pogues"
Since the birth of the greatest hits album, the preparation of such a product has become a bizarre form of performance art. Do you include only hit singles or sprinkle in favorite album cuts? Do you keep things chronological or craft some sort of fancy playlist for maximum listening pleasure? How intricate do you make the packaging - do you need liner notes, song-by-song credits and all that? The fires of these debates are further stoked with the release of The Very Best of The Pogues (Shout!
Reviews: Buck Owens, "Honky Tonk Man: Buck Sings Country Classics" and Don Rich, "Sings George Jones"
With its two latest releases, Omnivore Recordings continues its great Bakersfield rescue mission. Texas-born and Arizona-raised, Buck Owens made his mark in that California city, answering the prevailing “countrypolitan” style with a return to a pure and unadorned honky-tonk sound. But that “natural” sound had roots that ran deep in Bakersfield. Yet Owens’ parallel career as the avuncular, perpetually joking co-host of television’s cornpone Hee Haw may have caused audiences to take his
Review: Roger Cook, "Running with the Rat Pack"
The rules of pop music were changing, and Roger Cook didn't want to be behind the times. The songwriter of such nuggets as "You've Got Your Troubles," "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," "My Baby Loves Lovin'" and "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" had long balanced his work as a behind-the-scenes songwriter with a singing career. As one-half of David and Jonathan (with co-writer Roger Greenaway) and a member of Blue Mink, Cook was a familiar vocalist, and as a background singer, he added
Big Break Goes Disco with KC and the Sunshine Band, George McCrae, Johnnie Taylor
The Temptations had sunshine on a rainy day, John Denver had it on his shoulders, and the O'Jays took their cue from an old standard to address a loved one as "my sunshine." But Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch, forming Miami's KC and the Sunshine Band, had sunshine both in the band name and in the joyful, exultant brand of music they played. Big Break Records has recently reissued one title recorded by those disco titans, one title produced by them, and one with another connection to the
Dusty Groove Label Returns From Real Gone Music with Steig, Humphrey, Harris
The venerable Blue Note Records label was founded in 1939, and from the late 1940s onward emphasized what was most modern about jazz. Blue Note became well known, of course, for the hard bop classics recorded under its aegis. But the varied influences that created hard bop led Blue Note to explore how the avenues of soul, rock and blues intersected with that of jazz. Three new releases from Real Gone Music and the reactivated Dusty Groove Records label explore three sonically-diverse titles
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