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
Kritzerland's Got the Action with "Butch and Sundance" and Vintage Dean Martin Comedy
Kritzerland has just announced its first releases for 2013, and these two rare soundtracks, both of which are making their CD debuts, couldn’t be more different: George Duning’s Who’s Got the Action? and Patrick Williams’ Butch and Sundance: The Early Days. Almost ten years after the runaway success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 20th Century Fox realized its hopes for a follow-up film with Butch and Sundance: The Early Days. At the conclusion of the first film, though, raindrops
Release Round-Up: Week of January 22
Billy Joel, She's Got a Way: Love Songs (Columbia/Legacy) The romantic side of the Piano Man is featured on this new compilation. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) Rodriguez, Searching for Sugar Man (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) One of the most captivating catalogue music documentaries of 2012 is now available on DVD (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) and Blu-Ray (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)! The Blue Nile, A Walk Across the Rooftops / Hats: Deluxe Editions (Virgin/EMI) Slated for release in the
Rare Gems Hidden in New "Playlist" Wave
The latest wave of Playlist releases is almost here from Legacy Recordings, and the series dedicated to collecting “the hits plus the fan favorites” doesn’t look to disappoint. On January 29, Playlist volumes will be released for an eclectic cadre of artists in a variety of genres: vintage metal (Accept), traditional pop (Andy Williams), blue-eyed soul (The Box Tops), classic rock (Mountain, The Doobie Brothers, Harry Nilsson), country (Sara Evans, The Highwaymen), hip-hop (G. Love and Special
Let's Hang On to Two Volumes of Frankie Valli and 4 Seasons' "Gold Vault of Hits"
Whether you consider them the East Coast answer to The Beach Boys, or rivals to The Beatles (as on a famous Vee-Jay LP compilation), Frankie Valli and the 4 Seasons have had a long, illustrious career. Despite having scored his first hit with the Seasons back in 1962, Valli has hardly slowed his pace over the years, overseeing companies and productions of the 2005 musical Jersey Boys, readying a film version, and recently performing a concert on Broadway with a new line-up of Seasons. The
La-La Land Releases "Dave," "The Relic" Scores
Following a strong 2012 release slate, La-La Land Records looks to be keeping the spirit of catalogue soundtracks alive with their first releases of the new year: one an expansion of a score to a modern comedy classic, the other a premiere release of the music to a '90s sci-fi flick. Dave Kovic (Kevin Kline) is a simple businessman with a bizarre trait: he's the spitting image of the President of the United States of America. When that president falls ill, his team decides to use Dave to their
Morning of Their Lives: Bee Gees' Original Australian Albums Reissued on CD by Festival Label
Though Bee Gees’ First introduced Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb to the world at large, the album title was actually a misnomer. The Bee Gees’ first album was, in fact, The Bee Gees Sing and Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs, released in Australia in 1965 on Festival Records’ Leedon label. Two albums were released in Australia before the Gibbs’ international debut, with a third “odds-and-ends” collection having arrived in late 1967 just months after Bee Gees’ First. The Bee Gees’ Australian output has
Stephen Stills Turns Back the Pages with New Retrospective Box Set
If, like me, there’s a gaping hole in your box set shelf between “C” (for David Crosby’s 2006 Voyage) and “N” (for Graham Nash’s 2009 Reflections), fear no more. That hole is ready to be filled with a March 26 release from the third member of the Crosby, Stills and Nash triumvirate. Carry On celebrates the career of guitarist-singer-songwriter Stephen Stills in a new 4-CD box drawing on his legendary associations with CSN, CSNY, Buffalo Springfield, Manassas and of course, his solo projects
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
Otis Redding's "Deepest Soul" Explored on New Concept Album
When is a lost album not a lost album? In the case of Lonely and Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding, the answer is, “when the album has been created in 2013 to look, sound and feel like a Stax/Volt release from almost five decades prior!” On March 5, Stax and Concord Records will release this newly-created concept album of the late soul shouter’s most torrid ballads on both CD and a special blue vinyl LP. Compilation producer David Gorman set out with one goal in mind: “to find the
Numero is (Possibly) Purple on Forthcoming LP Reissue
Nearly 35 years after the unceremonious release of The Lewis Conection, a local Minneapolis band's sole funk LP, The Numero Group is resurrecting the disc, giving it a premiere release next month. (It's part of an forthcoming phase at Numero to unearth significant and rare recordings from the early days of the Minneapolis sound.) What makes this set so special? According to popular lore, while recording the album at Minneapolis' Sound 80 Studios, The Lewis Connection invited an 18-year-old
Say Their Name: "Love Songs" Arrives from Destiny's Child, Includes New Song
The upbeat dance-pop/R&B of Destiny’s Child successfully updated the girl group sound for the late 1990s and early 2000s, and launched the careers of Kelly Rowland, Michelle Williams and Beyoncé Knowles. In late 2012, Legacy Recordings marked the fifteenth anniversary of the group’s No. 1 debut single with the release of Playlist: The Very Best of Destiny’s Child. That disc soon became the most successful entry in the Playlist series. So it might come as no surprise that the label will
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: Jack White's Label Issues Rare Blues Masters on Vinyl
Jack White's Third Man Records label, not merely content to issue unique offerings of the ex-White Stripe's music on a variety of formats, is now getting into the historical catalogue business with three forthcoming LPs of vintage blues masters. The new venture, Document Records, will present "the building blocks and DNA of American culture," as the announcement put it. This first wave of recordings features the early works of Charley Patton, the lauded "Father of the Delta Blues"whose powerful
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
Duran Duran's TV Mania Project Resurrected for Release in Spring
As previously reported, TV Mania - the short-lived, little-heard side project of Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes and former guitarist Warren Cuccurullo - is finally getting a release after years in the vault. The concept sounds surprisingly relevant: a musical treatise on an overly media-saturated couple, culled from snippets of original studio creations and found sound. But it's not something crafted by an upstart artist in 2013 - it was finished nearly 15 years ago, before the Internet really took
Grammy Time: Music's Biggest Night Honored with Annual Compilation
We're just a few weeks from the 55th Annual Grammy Awards - or as I like to call it, "how many times can my music geek friends and I make cutting jokes on the Internet?" - and, as is customary, next week will see the release of a compilation of Grammy-nominated songs for your perusal. The 22-track compilation, distributed this year by EMI, has quite the cross-section of cuts from what is a rather diverse year for the awards ceremony. Altogether, six different artists - Dan Auerbach of the
Mary Wells' Early Motown Albums Collected in Mono on New Release
The third major Mary Wells release in recent months has arrived courtesy Ace Records’ Kent label. The One Who Really Loves You/Two Lovers combines Wells’ second and third Motown long-players on one remastered CD, with every track taken from the original mono masters for the first time in the compact disc era. Though Wells’ time at Motown was relatively brief, her star burned brightest there. The first true superstar to emerge from Hitsville, she was also the first of the company’s artists to
Don't Cry For Me, Princess Leia: John Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber Go Disco
What do a beloved Broadway musical and an iconic sci-fi epic have to do with dance music pioneer Boris Midney? Plenty, as it turns out. Midney, a producer and arranger who came to prominence in the disco era with his expansive 48-track productions, recorded under a number of guises: Caress, Beautiful Bend, Masquerade, Double Discovery, to name a few. And The Demon Music Group’s Harmless Records imprint indeed does have a double discovery! On January 26 in the U.K. and one week later in the
Release Round-Up: Week of January 15
New Order, The Lost Sirens (Rhino) (Amazon U.S./Amazon U.K.) A cadre of outtakes from the Waiting for the Siren's Call sessions, this marks the last New Order material with original bassist Peter Hook. Johnny Mathis, A Special Part of Me: Expanded Edition (Amazon U.S./Amazon U.K.) (Funkytowngrooves) FTG's latest R&B expansion has a Michael Jackson connection: the future King of Pop co-wrote for Mathis "Love Never Felt So Good" with Paul Anka! Talk Talk, Natural History: The Very Best of
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
Getting Away with It: Sumner and Marr's "Electronic" Gets a Confusing Expansion
It's not enough for Johnny Marr to be one of the greatest guitarists of the modern era (one with a solo album bowing today in the U.K.); this March, his acclaimed foray into dance music with Bernard Sumner will be reissued. But brace yourself, fans: it's a little weird. Frustrated by New Order's resistance to a more synth-based direction, Sumner began work on the Electronic by himself, but called longtime friend Marr - whose departure from The Smiths caused the band to dissolve - to
Real Gone Announces Hendrix-Produced LP from Cat Mother, Plus Grateful Dead, Rod McKuen, The Hello People, Freddie King, More
From a lost classic produced by Jimi Hendrix to Grateful Dead playing Warren Zevon, Real Gone Music’s February release slate has a little bit of soul, rock, pop, blues and even poetry! The label founded by Gordon Anderson and Gabby Castellana has an impressive line-up of titles due on February 26, including the first-ever standalone CD reissue of the Richard Perry-produced Reprise debut of Fanny (the first all-female rock group signed to a major label), a definitive 2-CD singles collection from
Beat The Boots: Digital Volumes of "Motown Unreleased 1962" Quietly Released Online
There's been much talk this week of Bob Dylan's 50th Anniversary Collection, a (very) limited edition title released in Europe to protect the singer's 1962 recordings from entering the public domain there. But we can report that it's not alone. On December 18, Universal Music very quietly released six exciting, digital-only compilations under the umbrella of Motown Unreleased: 1962. The New York Times has been among those speculating that the 120 tracks contained on the six "albums" have all
Short Takes: Tabu, TV Mania, Living Colour All Have Plans
Some small morsels of potential catalogue-oriented stuff coming your way on this fine Thursday: Demon Music Group promised back in July a slew of reissues from the Tabu Records catalogue, a label that included R&B hits by Cherrelle, Alexander O'Neal and The S.O.S. Band. It looks like those plans may be moving further forward: the label's official Facebook page yesterday teased "huge plans for the label" in 2013. Though not out of reissue ideas for their own proper catalogue, Duran Duran
So Nice: Light in the Attic Remasters, Expands Four Albums From Brazilian Bossa Legend Marcos Valle
After The Walter Wanderley Trio introduced “Summer Samba (So Nice)” to American record buyers in 1966, the breezy bossa nova tune immediately caught on, transporting listeners to the tropics via recordings by Johnny Mathis, Vikki Carr, Connie Francis and the original voice of “The Girl from Ipanema,” Astrud Gilberto. But “So Nice” is just one of the musical gifts bestowed over the years by Brazilian composer Marcos Valle. Beginning next Tuesday, January 15, Light in the Attic is beginning a
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