The November 1969 arrival of the self-titled The Allman Brothers Band heralded the arrival of a group which would change the face of music. Duane Allman, Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Jai Johanny Johanson (a.k.a. Jaimoe), and Butch Trucks fused rock, blues, and country with jazz-inspired improvisation to become one of the most beloved bands of all time. On February 28, UMe and Mercury Records will celebrate 50 years of The Allman Brothers Band with a remarkable, career-spanning box
RPM Records Wraps Up Almost 30 Year Run; Label's Final Release Due in May
For nearly three decades, the RPM Records arm of Cherry Red Records has exemplified the finest in archival reissues. Here at The Second Disc, we've covered dozens of RPM's often ambitious titles over the last ten years - most of which shed light on artists and albums that would likely otherwise have languished in the vaults. RPM's releases gave equal consideration to all artists, whether the famous (Gene Pitney, Chad and Jeremy, The Spencer Davis Group), the soon-to-be- famous (the pre-ABBA Hep
Back to Kornfield Kounty: Craft Recordings Celebrates Roy Clark, Buck Owens, Susan Raye on New LPs
Yee Haw! Or more accurately, that should be Hee Haw! This Friday, January 17, Craft Recordings will release a trio of releases from three country greats associated with the long-running television show. The compilations Roy Clark's Greatest Hits, The Very Best of Buck Owens & Susan Raye, and Susan Raye's solo 16 Greatest Hits were originally released on CD by Varese Sarabande and are now making their vinyl debuts. A rural answer to Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Hee Haw premiered in 1969
Come On Up: Bruce Springsteen Announces LP Reissues of Five '90s and '00s Titles
Bruce Springsteen and Legacy Recordings have announced a new batch of vinyl reissues, this time stretching into the '00s, a decade that saw him release live material with a newly reunited E Street Band (Live in New York City, 2001), onstage forays into the folk songbook (Live in Dublin, 2007), a stark solo acoustic venture (Devils & Dust, 2005), and the critically acclaimed return of The E Street Band in the studio (The Rising, 2002). All these albums and the 1999 rarities compilation 18
Thank You For The Music: On 10 Years of The Second Disc
Ten years ago, I was writing my first post for The Second Disc, a website about music reissues I thought was a pretty bright idea. A lot has changed since then. The first posts were written in the bedroom of a suburban New Jersey home - the house I grew up in and moved back into after post-college economic downturn made it the best possible choice to live. This post was written in an apartment in Queens that I share with a lovely fiancée who is very cool about the amount of box sets
Release Round-Up: Week of January 10
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Laura Nyro, More Than a New Discovery [Limited Violet Vinyl Mono Edition] (Second Disc Records/Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Today's the day! We're so proud to reissue, for the first time ever on vinyl (and in homage to the artist's favorite color), Laura Nyro's 1967 debut More Than a New Discovery in a violet vinyl limited edition of 1,250 copies. This edition features the original, long out-of-print (and
The Importance of Your Love: Vince Hill Reflects on His "Legacy" with 1965-1974 Anthology
One of our favorite releases of 2017 was Cherry Red/Strike Force Entertainment's two-fer of Edelweiss (1967) and Look Around (1971) from the big-voiced British pop crooner. While the set didn't inaugurate the hoped-for series of reissues on CD (to date, at least), Hill followed it up with Legacy: My Hits and Rarities (1965-1974). We've caught up with this CD which is available exclusively through the singer's webstore. It's both a fine introduction to Hill's oeuvre and a welcome reminder of why
Playing In The Band: Real Gone Announces Vinyl Debut of Iconic Grateful Dead Gig, Jefferson Airplane Woodstock LP Reissue
Real Gone Music has announced a pair of exciting releases from legends of the San Francisco rock scene of the '60s. First up is a reissue of Jefferson Airplane's complete Woodstock set across three LPs. First released by the label on "new dawn" blue vinyl, the January 31 reissue will be pressed on a "vibrating" violet color variant. As one of the first acts to sign on for Woodstock, Jefferson Airplane embraced the spirit of the event from the start, but the band's Saturday night closing set
Let Us Cling Together: Queen Tap Japanese Fans For New Greatest Hits Collection
Imagine narrowing down your favorite band to just one song. We couldn't do it! But some very fastidious Japanese fans of Queen did - and their choices are forming a new compilation due this month. For Greatest Hits In Japan, Queen and Universal Music opened a vote in the country where just one track from the iconic British rock group could be selected for a compilation timed to the upcoming Japanese tour by Queen + Adam Lambert. Nearly 20,000 votes were collated, and the top 12 tracks made
Pictures from Life's Other Side - The Man and His Music in Rare Photos and Recordings
BMG salutes late singer-songwriter-legend Hank Williams with the release of Pictures from Life's Other Side - The Man and His Music in Rare Photos and Recordings. This lavish 6-CD collection presents all 144 tracks recorded by Williams for his 1951 radio show sponsored by Mother's Best Flour Company. The Mother's Best radio shows have been chronicled on various sets in the past, most notably in comprehensive form by Time-Life on the 16-disc box set The Complete Mother's Best Recordings...Plus!
The Complete Keen Years (1957-1960)
ABKCO's release of The Complete Keen Years (1957-1960) kicks off a year-long celebration of Sam Cooke, who would have turned 90 years old on January 22, 2021. This 5-CD box showcases Cooke's early work as a pop craftsman at the end of the 1950s. Cooke recorded three albums for Keen: a self-titled debut (also known as Songs By Sam Cooke), Encore, and Tribute To The Lady ("the lady" in this case being Billie Holiday, who died the same year). Those LPs were mostly built around standards from The
He Sends Us: Sam Cooke's Keen Years Collected In New Box
Sam Cooke would have turned 90 on January 22, 2021, but that's not stopping the party from starting a little early! This month, The King of Soul will be celebrated with a new box set featuring five of his albums for the Keen label. The Complete Keen Years (1957-1960) showcases Cooke's early work as a pop craftsman at the end of the 1950s. At the beginning of the decade, Cooke was a teenage sensation as a member of gospel group The Soul Stirrers. But his interest in R&B and pop could not
Year-End Review: Bob Dylan, "The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings"
As we continue to look back on the year that was, it's hard to disagree that Bob Dylan was 2019's king of the reissue. Since releasing More Blood, More Tracks in time for the holidays in 2018, Legacy Recordings and the Dylan team approved MoFi's deluxe audiophile version of Blood on the Tracks; celebrated the first leg of the famed Rolling Thunder Revue with a new film, CD box set, and LP reissue; delivered a new Bootleg Series installment focusing on his time in Nashville in the late '60s; and
The Year in Review: The 2019 Gold Bonus Disc Awards, From A to Z
Happy 2020 and welcome to The Second Disc's 10th Annual Gold Bonus Disc Awards! It's time once again to recognize this year's cream of the crop - those exemplary reissues and box sets big and small that proved to be truly outstanding products for music lovers worldwide. There was no shortage of great reissue titles in 2019; in fact, by our count, we covered over 700 releases in all! And after much deliberation, we're excited to unveil our favorites. This isn't your run-of-the-mill Top 10,
You Can Handle It: Real Gone Announces Vinyl Reissues of Soul Classics
Happy New Year, everybody! 2020 is shaping up to be a great year for Real Gone Music. There's the upcoming standalone version of Johnny Mathis' The Island, the return of Laura Nyro's More Than A New Discovery in mono...and that's just the Second Disc Records slate so far! In addition to titles from Rod McKuen and Barbara Eden, Real Gone has also announced remastered vinyl editions of Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band's enduring Express Yourself and It's Just A Matter of
In Memoriam: Jerry Herman (1931-2019) and Allee Willis (1947-2019)
This week, popular music lost two of its titans: Jerry Herman, 88, and Allee Willis, 72. Today, we pay tribute to them. "There is no tune like a showtune," went the lyric of Jerry Herman's sprightly song for the 1960 off-Broadway revue Parade starring Dody Goodman, Richard Tone, and the young Charles Nelson Reilly. And there is certainly no tune like a Jerry Herman showtune: bright, bouncy, heartfelt, optimistic, moving, exciting. While Herman's oeuvre was relatively small compared to many of
Holiday Gift Guide Reviews: A Rhino Round-Up with Bad Company, Rush, Van Halen, Hootie, STP and The Notorious B.I.G.
Many of this year's finest box sets came courtesy of the Rhino label. Here, Joe and Randy take a look at a few more of our favorites! First up are Randy's three picks... First up is Rhino's 25th anniversary 3-CD/1-LP Super Deluxe Edition of Stone Temple Pilots' Purple. Initially hitting shelves on June 7, 1994, the band's sophomore album would debut atop the Billboard 200 and stay there for three weeks, eventually becoming the group's second best-selling album after their debut effort,
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Nat King Cole, "Hittin' the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943)"
The first voice you hear on Resonance Records' exhilarating new box set Nat King Cole - Hittin' the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943) isn't that of the famous artist. Rather, it's his older brother and bassist Eddie Cole warbling teenaged Nat's sprightly composition "Honey Hush." Nat, of course, is the one tickling the ivories with confidence, grace, and an already sure sense of swing. Although he hadn't yet formed his famous trio (and the lineup here credited as "Eddie Cole's Solid Swingers" is
Let It Snow: Omnivore Breaks Away with Murry Wilson and Snow EP
With its latest release, Omnivore Recordings might as well as be singing "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" The intrepid label has unearthed a true rarity for a new digital EP: four previously unreleased songs produced in 1969 by Murry Wilson for an all-but-unknown harmony-pop outfit named Snow. Freshly unearthed from The Beach Boys' vault, Murry Wilson & Snow: The Break Away EP features Snow's lush and fully-produced and orchestrated renditions of two songs from Brian Wilson's
Release Round-Up: Weeks of December 20 and 27, and January 3
Welcome to our final Release Round-Up of 2019! This edition covers today's releases as well as those of the next two weeks, the quietest time of the year for new releases. The weekly Release Round-Up will be back on January 10. In the meantime, Happy Holidays to all! Frank Zappa, The Hot Rats Sessions (Zappa/UMe) 6CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada This 6-CD box set explores Frank Zappa's 1969 primarily instrumental solo
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Mariah Carey, "Merry Christmas: Deluxe Anniversary Edition"
Sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 this week is a song which took a quarter-century to reach that peak: Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You." The song achieved a couple of milestones with that ranking: it now holds the record for the longest time between a song's debut and its reaching the top of the charts, and it's the first Christmas song to reach the peak in 60 years since The Chipmunks did it in 1959. Before this new milestone for Carey's tune, the song and the album of its
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Margaret Whiting, "Let's Fall in Love: The Lost Recordings Vol. 2"
Three years ago, Sepia Records and My Ideal Music celebrated the late, great Margaret Whiting with Dream: The Lost Recordings, a 2-CD collection of rare radio performances. Now, the long-awaited follow-up has arrived. Let's Fall in Love: The Lost Recordings Vol. 2 has been worth the wait. Like the first volume, the recordings premiering on Let's Fall in Love - a whopping 56 songs, complementing the 57 on Volume 1 - have been culled from The Barry Wood Show, a syndicated radio program for
Extravagant Gestures: Cherry Red, SoulMusic Box Up Dionne Warwick's Arista Albums on New 12-CD Set
Over 40 years ago, Dionne Warwick left Warner Bros. Records and signed to Clive Davis' Arista label to begin a new chapter in her remarkable career - a career which happens to be going as strong as ever today. Now, Cherry Red's SoulMusic imprint has announced a 12-CD box celebrating Warwick's Arista period. Due on February 28, 2020, Déjà Vu: The Arista Recordings (1979-1994) collects all of her acclaimed albums for the label and rounds up over two dozen previously released bonus
Holiday Gift Guide Review: David Bowie, "Conversation Piece"
The new David Bowie box set is entitled Conversation Piece - and it's an apt one, as this set is certain to inspire conversations punctuated with cheers. Quite simply, this slipcased, hardcover-book style collection featuring five CDs of material recorded by the late superstar in 1968-1969 is one of the year's best boxes: an exquisite, museum-quality release that exceeds all expectations. Necessity may indeed be the mother of invention, as the set ostensibly exists because of the desire to
UPDATE: Things That Come Back Again: Cat Stevens "Back To Earth" Box Set and Vinyl Reissues Announced
UPDATE: It's been nearly a year since our initial coverage of the Cat Stevens Back To Earth box set featuring a new remaster done at Abbey Road and a wealth of rare audio and visual material. Since then, lots of changes have affected how the box will reach listeners. Now that Pledge Music is out of the equation, BMG and their new Cat-O-Log division will release the elaborate set more conventionally on April 10. The box won't have all the bells and whistles described last year - just the discs
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