The late John Fahey might not be the first name associated with Christmas music. But the steel-string acoustic guitarist and pioneer of the American Primitive Guitar style recorded a number of albums of holiday music, one of which (1968’s The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Solo Christmas Album) remains the most successful release in Fahey’s catalogue. Fantasy Records’ new compilation Christmas Soli brings together fourteen songs from Fahey’s four holiday platters released between 1968
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
Turn On, Tune In, Turn Your Eyes Around: Strawberry Alarm Clock's First Two Albums Return to CD
Although the Summer of Love has long passed, the sound of The Strawberry Alarm Clock has never really left the American airwaves. Thanks to oldies radio, “Incense and Peppermints” – which spent sixteen weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 including one week at pole position – remains in frequent rotation on terrestrial and satellite stations. Though the California-based band released four albums and numerous singles on the UNI label between 1967 and 1970, the success of “Incense” was never matched
BBR Continues Its "Journey" With Salsoul Catalogue
If you're looking for another chance to "dance your ass off," look no further. Big Break Records has returned to the mighty catalogue of Salsoul Records for another three "made in Philadelphia" classics from the soulful disco label. "C'mon, Vince, play your vibes!" Loleatta Holloway exclaimed before the leader of The Salsoul Orchestra, Vince Montana Jr., stepped forward for a solo on "Run Away," the third track on the powerful unit's third non-holiday long-player. 1977's Magic Journey
Intrada Crosses Moon River In Style With Mancini's Original "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Soundtrack
In 1962, Henry Mancini scored a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with Breakfast at Tiffany’s: Music from the Motion Picture on the RCA Victor label. But that 12-track LP only told part of the story of Mancini’s Academy Award-winning score for the film starring Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Buddy Ebsen, Patricia Neal and Mickey Rooney. Like most of the scores from his classic period, Mancini re-recorded his Tiffany’s music in pop arrangements for its RCA “soundtrack” LP. Consequently, the
Beggars Archive Preps New Remasters, Expanded Reissues for "5 Albums" Series
This week, 4AD/Beggars Archive is giving goth-rock fans a trio of Christmas presents, in the form of box sets in their 5 Albums series devoted to Bauhaus, Gene Loves Jezebel and Lords of the Nephilim. Beggars Archive, like so many other labels this year, has found the best way to get certain products on stores (or, at the very least, in some sort of physical configuration) has been to combine multiple products into one neat box. But far from a corner-cutting affair, these boxes look to be a
Happy New Year: Real Gone Ushers In 2014 With Blood, Sweat & Tears, Grateful Dead, More
Real Gone Music is hoping to make you so very happy with its first release slate of 2014! On January 7, the Real Goners compile for the very first time The Complete Columbia Singles of jazz-rock pioneers Blood Sweat & Tears, offer up The Complete Atlantic Recordings of the soul great Bettye Swann (“Make Me Yours”), unearth another vintage Grateful Dead show, and recover the lone long-player of R&B singer-songwriter Samuel Jonathan Johnson. Despite 1968’s strong debut Child is Father of
As If She Never Said Goodbye: Barbra Streisand Goes "Back to Brooklyn"
1969’s lavish Academy Award-winning film Hello, Dolly! found Barbra Streisand’s Dolly Levi returning to the Harmonia Gardens restaurant where she was serenaded with Jerry Herman’s famous title tune: “It’s so nice to have you back where you belong…!” Some 43 years later, the same sentiments were applicable when Streisand – as herself, natch – took the stage at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center for two sold-out homecoming concerts. On Tuesday, Columbia Records will release Back to Brooklyn, available
Jazz It Up with New Verve Records Box Set
More than half a century after visionary music impresario Norman Granz founded his third and arguably most successful label, Verve Records, the label will be celebrated in style next month with a new book and a five-disc box set, The Sound of America: The Singles Collection. Granz had previously come to prominence in the jazz world a decade before, when he organized a diverse jam session of a concert at Los Angeles' Philharmonic Auditorium in 1944. This regular session turned into a
Kritzerland "Taps" Maurice Jarre For a Pair of Soundtracks
Three-time Academy Award-winning composer Maurice Jarre (1924-2009) makes his debut on the Kritzerland label with a newly-announced two-for-one release of his scores to 1981’s Taps and 1970’s The Only Game in Town. Hollywood couldn’t help but take notice of the French-born Jarre when he scored director David Lean’s 1962 epic drama Lawrence of Arabia, and the Lean/Jarre collaboration was so successful that Jarre was asked to score each of Lean’s subsequent films. He won his first Oscar for
Heavy "Drama": SoulMusic Slate Includes The Dramatics, Nancy Wilson, D.J. Rogers
As the old expression goes, all good things must come to an end. And so Nancy Wilson's 37-album, 20-year tenure at Capitol Records ended in 1980 with the release of Take My Love. At Capitol, Wilson had proved her mastery of Broadway, Hollywood, traditional vocal jazz, fusion jazz, pop and soul, and had collaborated with the likes of George Shearing, Cannonball Adderley, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Thom Bell, and Oliver Nelson. On her final Capitol LP, Wilson enlisted producers Larry Farrow
Slices of Bread: David Gates and James Griffin's Solo Records, Reissued and Remastered
Bread occupied a unique place on the Elektra Records roster. The so-called “soft rock” band shared a label with the likes of Love, The Doors, The Stooges and The MC5, and regularly visited the charts with such signature songs as “Make It with You” (No. 1, 1970), “It Don’t Matter to Me” (No. 10, 1970), “If” (No. 4, 1971), “Baby I’m-a Want You” (No. 3, 1971), “Everything I Own” (No. 5, 1972) and “The Guitar Man” (No. 11, 1972). All of those staples were written and sung by David Gates, the
Review: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Miami Pop Festival"
By the time Jimi Hendrix took the stage at Hallandale, Florida’s Gulfstream Park on May 18, 1968, the 25-year old guitarist, songwriter and visionary’s reputation preceded him. He had already released two studio albums (1967’s Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love released in 1967 in the U.K. and 1968 in the U.S.) and established himself as an unpredictable performer not to be missed when he set his guitar ablaze amidst the peace and love of the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. With
Legacy Expands Orbison's "Last Concert" with Rare Video, Reissues "A Black and White Night"
Roy Orbison's catalogue has been the subject of some interesting reissues of late from Legacy Recordings: the label recently reissued In Dreams: The Greatest Hits, a 1987 compilation of newly recorded versions of his old classics, and will reissue all three of his Monument Records albums (with a bonus "fourth," posthumously assembled by his family) in a vinyl box set for Record Store Day. Legacy now adds two more latter-day archival projects to the schedule: a DVD reissue of the 1988 special A
Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye): Final "The Complete Motown Singles" Volume Bows
They did it. Nearly nine years after the first volume in Hip-O Select's The Complete Motown Singles box set series was released, the 14th and final entry in the series, Volume 12B: 1972, will be released on December 10, just in time for the holidays. The year 1972 marks, for many, the end of the "classic Motown" period. Label founder Berry Gordy moved label operations from Detroit to Los Angeles, and many of his most treasured acts were in periods of transition. Diana Ross was long a solo
Black Oak Arkansas Rarities Sail Under the Radar
Surprise! While we were focusing on the biggest of box sets over at The Second Disc, Atlantic quietly released a disc of unreleased vintage material from Southern rockers Black Oak Arkansas. One of the top touring acts of the early 1970s, Black Oak Arkansas - with its triple-guitar lineup and idiosyncratic vocal style of Jim "Dandy" Mangrum - earned a great deal of acclaim in studio and on the road. Earlier this year, Mangrum reunited with original members Rickie Lee "Risky" Reynolds (rhythm
Review: Miles Davis, "The Original Mono Recordings"
“Mono featured less audio trickery and fewer audio distractions, so you can actually hear the musical conversation between Miles and the other musicians as it occurred in the studio.” That’s producer George Avakian as quoted in the liner notes for Columbia and Legacy’s new nine-album box set Miles Davis: The Original Mono Recordings. And that purity of sound - further described by the producer of Davis’ first two Columbia albums as “truer to the studio sound and the original intent” – is
Dido Says "Thank You" with First Compilation
At the arguable height of controversy over Eminem in 2001, the Detroit rapper released, from his sophomore album The Marshall Mathers LP, one of the greatest and most haunting singles in the genre's history. "Stan," told from the perspective of an increasingly unhinged fan of Mathers, whose erratic (and ultimately fatal) rants are counterpointed by a minor-key refrain - the first verse of "Thank You" by British singer Dido Armstrong. Her debut album, No Angel, had been available in the U.S. for
Magic in a Box: Decades of Disney Compiled on New Set
A new box set released today chronicles the musical legacy of The Walt Disney Company with a variety that hasn't been seen in quite awhile. The new Disney Classics celebrates nearly every medium of entertainment the animation studio-turned-film-titan has dabbled in, from film and television to revolutionary theme park attractions. Disney Classics is touted in a press release as being released in honor of 90 years of musical history as it pertains to the work of Walter Elias Disney (1901-1966).
Review: The Beatles, "On Air: Live at the BBC Volume Two"
Meet the Beatles...again. The new Apple/Capitol/Universal release On Air: Live at the BBC Volume Two sets the Wayback Machine at Destination: 1963 and 1964, when four Liverpool lads named John, Paul, George and Ringo ignited a British Invasion that continues to this very day. All 63 tracks (both spoken-word introductions and songs) on this new 2-CD time capsule date back to those two years, when the Fabs recorded unique performances for such BBC programs as Saturday Club and Pop Go the
Wild Swans' "Coldest Winter" Heats Up on Occultation Recordings
British postpunk band The Wild Swans, led by singer/songwriter/keyboardist Paul Simpson, have recently reissued their most recent album with a raft of bonus material. The haunting work of Simpson first came to prominence in the late '70s as member of the short-lived A Shallow Madness, which featured two future frontmen from the same genre: Julian Cope of The Teardrop Explodes and Ian McCulloch of Echo & The Bunnymen. His Wild Swans project has existed in three phases: once from 1980 to
Back To Muscle Shoals: Ace Revives Classic Southern Soul From Dan Penn, James Govan
Director Greg “Freddy” Camalier’s 2013 documentary Muscle Shoals brought some long-overdue attention to Rick Hall’s Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama – a hotbed of southern soul that attracted some of the most notable artists in rock and soul, from The Rolling Stones to Aretha Franklin. But the folks at Ace Records have never overlooked Muscle Shoals’ immeasurable contribution to the sound of American soul. Two recent compilations cast further light on the historic music that made the
Purple Reign: Numero Anthologizes Early Minneapolis Funk Bands
It was something like Sly Stone or James Brown for the New Wave set: tight, sparse R&B jams peppered with funky guitar and pulsating bass, sweetened with electronic accoutrements in the percussion section and dazzling synthesizers where a horn section might be. The "Minneapolis sound" changed soul music dramatically in the '80s, with Prince and his collaborators, associates and followers (The Time, Andre Cymone, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Alexander O'Neal) helping rewrite musical style for
BBR Completes Pointer Sisters' Planet Catalogue with "Priority" and "Black and White" Remasters
Between 1978 and 1988, The Pointer Sisters recorded a stunning series of nine albums with producer Richard Perry (Barbra Streisand, Harry Nilsson), first for his Elektra-distributed Planet Records label, and then for RCA, to whom Perry eventually sold Planet. During this period, June, Ruth and Anita finally were able to Break Out on the U.S. charts - to quote the title of the group's multi-platinum 1983 album which introduced four U.S. Top 10 hits. Previously the Pointers had mastered jazz,
Review: Bob Dylan, "The Complete Album Collection Volume One"
Tucked away on Bob Dylan’s 23rd studio album Empire Burlesque, the troubadour sings simply but sternly, “Trust yourself/Trust yourself to do the things that only you know best/Trust yourself/Trust yourself to do what’s right and not be second-guessed...” Dylan had trusted himself since he first arrived on the scene in 1962, engaging in a series of transformations that enthralled, angered, transfixed and bewildered those that followed his career – from folk troubadour to electric rocker to
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