When The Spinners left Motown Records after nearly a decade, the vocal group had never scored a Top 10 Pop hit. They'd come this close in 1970 with the irresistible, Stevie Wonder-penned "It's a Shame" (No. 14) - one of many fine tracks recorded for Berry Gordy's empire that, for one reason or another, never crossed The Spinners over to major stardom. That all changed when Thom Bell - the multi-hyphenate musician, producer, songwriter, arranger and conductor - declared that he wished to
This Is The Love (I've Been Waiting For): Ace Releases "More Motown Girls"
Rarely is the sequel ever the equal - but Ace Records has handily disproved that with Love and Affection: More Motown Girls, a recent trawl through the vaults of Hitsville, USA. And not only is this follow-up to 2013's Finders Keepers - Motown Girls the equal of its predecessor, it might be its better. Whereas that volume featured both previously unreleased music and rarities, every one of the 25 tracks on Love and Affection is never-before-heard (save for five songs culled from last year's
Make a List, Make a Wish: Elemental Music Uncovers Live Art Pepper
Art Pepper would have turned 90 on September 1 of this year. Though the great alto saxophonist passed away in 1982, aged just 56, his legacy lives on. Elemental Music has most recently celebrated Pepper's enduring influence on jazz with the new release of Live at Fat Tuesday's by The Art Pepper Quartet. This new five-song set preserves the performances of Pepper (alto sax), Milcho Leviev (piano), George Mraz (bass) and Al Foster (drums) at the New York nightspot on the evening of April 15,
RPM Label Collects Rare British Jazz On "Turtle Records" Box Set
Though jazz may be one of the most quintessentially American art forms, its influence and power naturally spread around the world in various forms. In Great Britain, the popular Dixieland-inspired "trad jazz" (or "traditional jazz") boom - epitomized by artists including The Three Bs: Mr. Acker Bilk, Chris Barber and Kenny Ball - was followed by a period of intense experimentation among jazz musicians concurrent with the rhythm and blues and rock revolutions. Rock and R&B artists, too,
Audio Fidelity Brings "Cruising" with Hiatt, DeVille, Germs to SACD - And YOU CAN WIN!
Director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) was never one to shy away from controversy. And so was the case with his 1980 film Cruising. Al Pacino starred as NYPD Officer Steve Burns, tasked with tracking down a serial killer targeting gay men. Inspired by the novel of the same name by New York Times reporter Gerald Walker, Cruising earned largely negative reviews and protests upon its initial release, criticized both for its depiction of the gay community and for lackluster
Yesss!!! La-La Land Reissues Williams, Horner, Barry, Tiomkin Classics for Final 2015 Offering
A classic '50s score and four popular '90s soundtracks from three beloved composers make up La-La Land Records' exciting-as-always Black Friday announcements. This year, the label has prepped expanded reissues of Dimitri Tiomkin's Giant (1956), 25th anniversary editions of John Williams' Home Alone and John Barry'sDances with Wolves (both 1990) and two scores by the late James Horner: 1994's The Pagemaster and 1995's Braveheart. All five limited edition CD sets will be available to order on
THE SECOND DISC'S 2015 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE IS HERE!
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 nearly 75 essential selections for the music enthusiast in your life! We've filled the guide with box sets (such as the popular Bob Dylan title to your left!), archival releases and holiday music favorites. So Just click here to access this year's picks! You'll notice that the Gift Guide is in the same easy-to-use format as our Release Calendar, so you can
Release Round-Up: Week of November 27
To our U.S. readers, today is the day of shopping known as Black Friday - but happily, the diverse slate of releases due in stores today should lift your spirits - no matter where you're located! Love, Reel to Real: Expanded Edition (High Moon Records) (Amazon U.S.) High Moon Records has the premiere reissue of Arthur Lee and Love's 1974 album Reel to Real as a newly-expanded Deluxe Edition boasting a color, 32-page booklet. A vinyl edition will follow early next year. Read more
Ease On Down! Motown Unveils Lost Diana Ross Album For Digital Release
On the eve of NBC's new production of The Wiz next week, Motown/UMe have dug into the vaults to release a lost album of songs from the Broadway musical by Diana Ross. The pairing, of course, is no mistake: the 1975 Tony Award-winning "super soul musical" was adapted into a film in 1978, with Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell and original cast member Ted Ross as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion, respectively. Produced by Motown and directed by Sidney Lumet, with a young
Say, Say, Say! The Second Disc's Essential RSD Black Friday 2015 Release Guide
From all of us here at Second Disc HQ to all of you, we hope you're enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving in the company of family and friends. Of course, from this day which conjures nostalgic and warm feelings comes a celebration of a different kind with this year's annual Black Friday - the day for consumers to start off the holiday shopping season on a mad, frenetic note. But 2015 is just in the latest year in which numerous retailers in the U.S. have made headlines by blackening Thursday, or
Review: Frank Sinatra, "A Voice on Air: 1935-1955"
Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings' new box set Frank Sinatra: A Voice on Air (88875 09971 2) begins, appropriately enough, with the jarring sound of an old-time radio tuning in. The shrill noise quickly segues to the first of nearly 100 performances on four CDs - 19-year old Frank Sinatra, one-fourth of The Hoboken Four, singing the perky "S-H-I-N-E" on WHN Radio's The Major Bowes Amateur Hour. Here, then, is the future Chairman of the Board - before he sang for swingin' lovers, before he
Tried, Tested and Found True: Big Break Expands Two By Ashford and Simpson
Big Break Records has recently continued its definitive reissue series chronicling Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson' Warner Bros. years with the expanded releases of 1977's So So Satisfied and 1980's A Musical Affair. This pair follows previous titles in the series including Come As You Are, Send It and Is It Still Good to Ya and Stay Free. (Gimme Something Real and I Wanna Be Selfish arrive in January!) Though So So Satisfied found Ashford and Simpson still on the cusp of the greater
A Culture Factory Christmas: Label Reissues Beach Boys, James Brown, "Charlie Brown" and...Wookiees!
The Culture Factory label, which reissues classic albums in limited edition mini-LP replica sleeves, has a trio of Christmas titles due this Friday likely to make spirits bright. The label has already released Vince Guaraldi's oft-reissued soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas as an exclusive release for retailer FYE. It's joined this week by straight reissues (no bonus material) of The Beach Boys' Christmas Album and James Brown's Soulful Christmas at general retail, as well as an
It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas: Legacy Adds Amazon Exclusive 3-CD Set to "Classic Christmas Album" Series
With Thanksgiving this Thursday and Black Friday the day after, the Christmas season is officially upon us (if it hasn't already arrived a couple of weeks ago!). There have been several Christmas reissues we've talked about so far this season, including the four new entries in Legacy's Classic Christmas Album series. And now we've got information on a fifth entry for this year: the simply-titled Classic Christmas Album. And we're also happy to say that this Amazon exclusive, 3-CD, 42-song
Something Bad On Her Mind: Rare and Unreleased Timi Yuro Arrives From Cherry Red
There was only one Timi Yuro. The late, Chicago-born Italian-American vocalist was signed to Liberty Records as a teenager, bringing jazz and R&B influences into her emotional, heart-on-its-sleeve blue-eyed soul style. After having spent the first portion of her career at Liberty, Yuro departed the label in 1963. She was dubbed The Amazing Timi Yuro by Mercury Records for her Quincy Jones-produced LP debut there in 1964, but Mercury never followed it up with another long-player, opting
Do You Know What I Mean: Lee Michaels Celebrated On New Box Set, Anthology
The enigmatic Lee Michaels is back. No, the cult favorite singer-songwriter who once graced the rosters of A&M and Columbia Records hasn't recorded a new album; he's been happily retired from the music business since the early 1980s. But Michaels has given his blessing to a definitive new compact disc box set collecting all seven of his A&M albums originally released between 1967 and 1973 as well as a new single-disc anthology drawing on the same period. Manifesto Records' The
Release Round-Up: Week of November 20
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up which continues this autumn's tradition of having each week packed with box sets from heavy hitters - in this case, The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, The Who, Queen, Grateful Dead, Frank Sinatra, and they're still not all! Plus: CD and vinyl reissues, anthologies, and much more! The Beach Boys, Beach Boys' Party: Uncovered and Unplugged (Capitol) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) The first disc of this 2-CD, 81-track set features the
Go Crazy: Varese Collects "The Very Best of Paul Davis"
With hits like "Cool Night," "I Go Crazy" and "'65 Love Affair," Paul Davis established himself as one of the most appealing singer-songwriters of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Yet the Mississippi native all but walked away from his solo career at the height of his fame, returning to his roots as a behind-the-scenes songwriter and making cameo appearances on others' hit records. Before his untimely death in 2008 at the age of 60, Davis notched fourteen Hot 100 hits and eight Top 40s. Many
One Less Egg To Fry: Raven Collects Four 5th Dimension Albums On Two CDs
Earlier this year, the Raven label collected The 5th Dimension's first four albums, all originally released on Soul City between 1967 and 1969, as a 2-CD set. Now, Raven is happily continuing the story of Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis Jr., Florence LaRue, Lamont McLemore and Ron Townson with a second collection of four albums on two CDs. 4 Classic Albums: Portrait/Love's Lines, Angles and Rhymes/Individually and Collectively/Living Together, Growing Together has the group's four Bell Records
Esoteric Offers Up Live Barclay James Harvest, Rarities From Tea and Symphony, Third World War
With a trio of recent releases, Cherry Red Group's Esoteric Recordings imprint continues to dig through the archives to reissue some of the most intriguing offerings from the prog-rock era and beyond. John Lees founded Barclay James Harvest in 1966 with Les Holroyd, Mel Pritchard and Stuart "Wooly" Wolstenholme. After one single for EMI's Parlophone imprint in 1968, the progressive four-piece was moved over to the Harvest imprint. Barclay James Harvest remained on Harvest for four LPs, but
In Memoriam: P.F. Sloan (1945-2015)
Take a moment to consider a number of the songs written or co-written by Philip "P.F." Sloan: "Secret Agent Man," "Eve of Destruction," "Let Me Be," "Where Were You When I Needed You," "You Baby," "A Must to Avoid," "Another Day, Another Heartache." Yet the songwriter, who died on November 15 at the age of 70, may be best known for the bittersweet, elegiac ode penned by his colleague and admirer, Jimmy Webb. "I have been seeking P.F. Sloan," Webb's song begins. "But no one knows where he has
John Williams' Original "JAWS" Score Gets Deluxe, Expanded Edition From Intrada
Only shortly after their expansion of the score to JAWS 2, Intrada gives fans of the great white shark franchise a true reason to need a bigger boat, announcing a deluxe edition of John Williams' iconic, Academy Award-winning soundtrack to Steven Spielberg's JAWS. We've told the story behind the music before, in a Friday Feature from 2012. What's important now is what fans can expect from this new release, the third issue of JAWS score on CD. According to Intrada's product description, the
Sweetness and Light: Lush Prepare Career Box Set
Part shoegaze, part Britpop, Lush were one of the most interesting bands to come out of England in the 1990s--and with a reunion imminent, they've readied the definitive box set of their discography. The five-disc Chorus, available December 4, gathers all of Lush's studio output in one set. The EP collection Gala (1990); studio albums Spooky (1992), Split (1994) and Lovelife (1996); and B-sides compilation Topolino (1996) will all be appended with additional material, including 16 unreleased
Dreams Will Not Be Thwarted: New Springsteen Live Archive Release Arrives From 2013 Wrecking Ball Tour
A little over a month since the last release, a new installment in Bruce Springsteen's live archive series has been released: Ippodromo Delle Capannelle, Rome, Italy, 2013. This concert from July 13, 2013 comes at the tail end of the Wrecking Ball Tour which had begun over a year earlier in March of 2012. A concert from right before this tour began, from March 9, 2012 at the Apollo Theater in New York, has been previously released by the Springsteen archive. Also previously released are
Review: Alanis Morissette, "Jagged Little Pill: Collector's Edition"
As time marches on, nostalgia of course goes along with it. So, with the passage of time, we've arrived at an era of nostalgia for the 1990s. Hard as it may be for some to believe, 20th and 25th anniversaries for major releases in the '90s keep occurring - and items are released in commemoration. Thus, Rhino has recently reissued Alanis Morissette's 1995 smash album Jagged Little Pill in a variety of iterations including a 2-CD version and a 4-CD Collector's Edition. When Morissette traveled
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