Omnivore continues its celebration of Game Theory with a 30th Anniversary reissue of Real Nighttime. The Mitch Easter-produced album is expanded with 13 bonus tracks (10 previously unissued) including covers of songs by Gerry Rafferty and Queen. Real Nighttime will be available on CD and digital download, as well as on a translucent red LP of the original album sequence (with download card for entire CD program). This release includes rare photos and an interview with Easter and series co-producer Pat Thomas, as well as notes from Byron Coley and a remembrance from Carl Newman of The New…
Star-Spangled Rodeo: Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” Turns 40, Gets Expanded Edition
When the 87th Annual Academy Award nominations were announced on January 15, fans of legendary entertainer Glen Campbell no doubt rejoiced at his first-ever Academy Award nomination. Campbell and co-writer Julian Raymond received a Best Original Song nod for “I’m Not Gonna Miss You,” the singer-songwriter’s touching farewell from the soundtrack of the documentary film I’ll Be Me. It followed news of two Grammy nominations for the song. Campbell, of course, is in the midst of a valiant and very public battle with Alzheimer’s. Though the disease has reportedly robbed him of ability…
Lalo Schifrin Casts a Spell On Two New Reissues From Tabu Label
It’s never been easy to pigeonhole Lalo Schifrin. The four-time Grammy-winning Argentinian composer created one of the most memorable television themes of all time with his “Mission: Impossible,” recorded jazz albums for labels including Verve and Creed Taylor’s CTI, worked with Count Basie, Cannonball Adderley and Sarah Vaughan, and scored innumerable films, racking up six Oscar nominations in the process. Now, Demon Music Group has reissued two lost gems of the Schifrin oeuvre, both originally recorded for Clarence Avant’s Tabu label, for the first time on CD. Gypsies (1978) and No One…
Rhinestone Cowboy: 40th Anniversary Edition
Capitol Nashville remasters and expands Glen Campbell’s smash 1975 album with five bonus tracks, including the previously unreleased “Quits,” two rare new-to-U.S.-CD single sides and remixes of “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in L.A.).”
Shadows in the Night
It’s not a catalogue title, but it’s one of the most intriguing of the year nonetheless – Bob Dylan’s 36th studio album and first dedicated to the Great American Songbook. Recorded at Capitol Studios, Shadows in the Night features ten Dylan interpretations of songs previously recorded by Frank Sinatra and written by Irving Berlin, Cy Coleman, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh, and others including the Chairman himself (“I’m a Fool to Want You”).
Taken By Love: Numero Rediscovers Universal Togetherness Band’s Funky Sounds
Numero Group – the top purveyors of obscure yet irresistible pop, rock, soul and beyond – kicks off 2015 with a January 20 release from Chicago’s Universal Togetherness Band. The self-titled release (Numero No. 057) will arrive on CD and vinyl, and as a digital download. The label has explained the story behind frontman Andre Gibson’s Universal Togetherness Band. Between 1979 and 1982 – a time of sweeping change for R&B, with lush disco ceding to lithe, electronic sounds – the group “tracked unearthly portions of their sprawling songbook for bewildered students…
Neon Art: Volume One
Omnivore presents rare music from the late, great alto saxophonist Art Pepper (1925-1982) – first issued on vinyl in 2012 – on CD and digital for the very first time!
Dreams and Images
Originally issued on musical iconoclast Lee Hazlewood’s LHI label in 1968, Dreams and Images is the first of two albums from the Melbourne, Florida-born singer/songwriter. A friend and contemporary of Lindsey Buckingham and Beach Boys collaborator Stephen John Kalinich, Arthur (Lee Harper) entered the studio with Hazlewood, Donnie Owens, Tom Thacker, and arranger/Wrecking Crew vet Don Randi to create this delicate, baroque-pop LP.
Lookin’ for a Love: The Complete SAR Recordings
Joining similar releases for The Soul Stirrers and L.C. Cooke, ABKCO has compiled the complete recorded output of The Valentinos on the SAR record label, co-founded and co-owned by Sam Cooke, who also served as the group’s producer. The Valentinos comprised the five Womack brothers: Bobby, Cecil, Curtis, Friendly Jr. and Harry. Included on this complete set are fourteen tracks originally released as singles, three originally unreleased recordings and more, for a total of 23 tracks spanning 1961-1964.
Joy In My Soul: The Complete SAR Recordings
This new 2-CD collection from ABKCO offers the complete recorded output of the legendary gospel group on the SAR Records label, which was co-owned by former Soul Stirrer Sam Cooke and former Pilgrim Traveler J.W. Alexander. The recordings span the period of 1959 to 1964, and cover the period after the group’s Specialty recordings and up until Sam Cooke’s tragic death.
Universal Togetherness Band
The Numero Group has excavated eight tracks, recorded between 1979 and 1981, from a soulful Chicago collective that may be the best funk-dance-soul outfit you’ve never heard of!
The Smithsonian Folkways Collection
Smithsonian Folkways has a definitive 5-CD chronicle of legendary folksinger Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, packaged in a deluxe hardbound book format.
New Roman Times
Omnivore reissues Camper Van Beethoven’s 2004 “sci-fi alternate-reality rock opera,” adding four previously unissued bonus tracks. Available on CD, double LP (with download card) and digital.
Return To The “Freedom Highway”: Staple Singers Classic Is Reissued and Expanded
For almost 50 years, between 1948 and 1994, The Staple Singers stood at the crossroads of gospel and soul, preaching messages of peace and positivity through music. In April 1965, The Staples – “Pops,” Mavis, Yvonne and Pervis – were joined by drummer Al Duncan and bassist Phil Upchurch at Chicago’s New Nazareth Church to record the album that became Freedom Highway. The LP, originally released on Epic Records, recognized that year’s historic civil rights marches from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama. Now, some fifty years later, Legacy Recordings has remixed, remastered and…
The Legacy Vault Opens For Christmas With Ray Price, Jerry Vale, John Davidson, More
Without a doubt, 2014 has shaped up to be another joyous year for fans of Christmas music. Sony Music’s Legacy Recordings has been at the vanguard of delivering holiday music with a recent batch of titles from Johnny Mathis, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and others as part of its Classic Christmas Album Series. Sony has also licensed festive titles from Robert Goulet, Rosemary Clooney, The Brothers Four and Frank DeVol and the Rainbow Strings to Real Gone Music. Those titles have recently been joined by 20 digital-only releases from the Columbia and…
The Beach Boys’ New Digital “Copyright Collections” Offer 1964 Rarities, Two Complete Concerts
With another year rapidly drawing to a close, many fans were wondering if 2014 would bring another round of “copyright extension collections,” i.e. releases designed to circumvent recent European Union copyright law. The answer, of course, is “yes.” To greatly simplify, E.U. law now holds that a recording is protected for 75 years under copyright in the E.U. (the period previously was 50 years) but only if that recording has been released. As a result of this change in law, the past couple of years have seen collections issuing rarities from…
Baby’s Coming Back: Jellyfish Goes Deluxe In January
This January is all about Jellyfish, thanks to the team at Omnivore Recordings. On January 20, 2015, the label will release the eagerly-anticipated 2-CD deluxe editions of both 1990’s Bellybutton and 1993’s Spilt Milk – in other words, the complete original album oeuvre of the power pop revivalists. In total, 51 bonus tracks will be spread across the two releases for the most complete account of the short-lived yet fondly-remembered Bay Area band. Formed by singer/drummer Andy Sturmer and keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning, Jr., both late of San Francisco’s Beatnik Beach, Jellyfish…
All That I Want: Bryan Adams Expands “Reckless” for 30th Anniversary
Hot on the heels of his new studio album Tracks of My Years – a deluxe edition of which, with additional material, is due on October 27, Canadian rocker Bryan Adams is revisiting his past in another way. Tracks of My Years features Adams’ recordings of classic songs from which he found inspiration as a songwriter; on November 24, he will release an expanded 2-CD/1-DVD/1-BD edition of his 1984 breakthrough album Reckless. Produced by Adams and Bob Clearmountain and originally released on the A&M label on the artist’s 25th birthday, Reckless spawned…
An Outlaw Looks At 75: Legacy Goes Digital With David Allan Coe’s Columbia Collection
This week, David Allan Coe turns 75. Over those three-quarters of a century, Coe has given a face to outlaw country, raising rabble and raising hell even as he recorded some of the most enduring albums of the genre. In celebration of the perennial rebel’s landmark birthday, Legacy Recordings is making 20 of his classic albums (and over 200 songs), originally released between 1974 and 1989, to digital service providers including Amazon MP3, iTunes and Spotify. The digital initiative launches today with five titles released between 1974 and 1977 (The Mysterious Rhinestone…
Rhiannon Rising: Stevie Nicks Dips Into The Vault For “24 Karat Gold”
On September 29, Fleetwood Mac kicks off its sold-out On with the Show tour in Minneapolis, Minnesota, marking the band’s first tour with returning member Christine McVie in sixteen years. The same day, Stevie Nicks will unveil her latest solo album, but it’s one with a twist. 24 Karat Gold – Songs from the Vault features songs penned by Nicks between 1969 and 1995, but rather than presenting archival recordings of the tracks, all have been newly recorded by the singer in Nashville and Los Angeles. The double-LP vinyl edition arrives on…
Give It to Us, Baby: Rick James’ Motown Masters (and More) Are Digitally Reissued
Singer, songwriter, bassist, producer, partier, punk-funk pioneer – however you know him, one thing’s clear: he’s Rick James. (You’ll have to imagine the word that usually follows.) Though the world lost the “Super Freak” hitmaker 10 years ago this summer, his legend continues: this week sees the release of his authorized biography Glow, written with David Ritz, and to celebrate, two labels are joining forces to update his killer catalogue in the digital domain. From the earliest moments of his musical career, Rick James (born James Ambrose Johnson, Jr.) was a bad boy….
