Kritzerland has just jumped headfirst into the holiday season with three exciting releases on the soundtrack front. Continuing the label's commitment to the Golden Age of Hollywood and beyond, the label has just made these three titles available for pre-order: John Wayne at Fox: The Westerns - Two CDs and three scores for the price of one CD! This double-disc anthology brings together three classic scores from films featuring The Duke: Elmer Bernstein's The Comancheros (1961), Lionel
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
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
All These Things: "Classified," From New Orleans Piano Great James Booker, Is Remixed, Remastered and Expanded
When it comes to New Orleans, there’s something about a piano. The Louisiana city has been home to some of the most famous players of that 88-keyed instrument: think Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Jelly Roll Morton, Professor Longhair, Harry Connick, Jr. or Fats Domino. But ask Dr. John or Connick to single out one N’awlins piano influence, and either might be likely to name one James Booker. The good Doctor – a.k.a. Mac Rebennack – described Booker as “the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano
Review: Paul Simon, "The Complete Albums Collection" and "Over the Bridge of Time"
I. Hello Darkness, My Old FriendMore than 45 years ago, Paul Simon dramatized a journey “to look for America” in the song boldly and simply called “America.” Over 3-1/2 gorgeously elegiac minutes beginning with hymn-like vocalizing, Simon abandoned conventional song structure and rhyme to portray two young people searching for the heart of this promised land. The conversational lyric is both deceptively simple and densely packed. Optimism (“Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes
Review: Tony Bennett, "Live at the Sahara: Las Vegas 1964"
It's been a busy week for Tony Bennett, one of the few artists today for whom "legendary" truly applies. Bennett, 87, supported the release of Live at the Sahara: Las Vegas, 1964 as well as the digital release of his entire Columbia Records catalogue with a "digital day" for the books. Bennett engaged in a HuffPost Live Chat, took questions on Twitter via the hashtag #AskTony, shared videos on Facebook, and even participated in a reddit AMA. Here's to the next 87, Tony! Though named for
Review: Pablo 40th Anniversary Series with Gillespie, Ellington, Tatum, Peterson, Grappelli and Sims
When impresario Norman Granz founded the Pablo label in 1973, fusion, funk and Latin sounds were at the forefront of jazz. Granz, founder of the Verve, Norgran and Clef labels, initially launched Pablo as a platform for his management clients Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson and Joe Pass, but soon its roster was filled out with the equally starry likes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan. Granz’ new label was an instant success and a safe haven for traditional jazz in this period
Review: The Alan Parsons Project, "I Robot: Legacy Edition"
How to follow an art-rock concept album based on the macabre tales of nineteenth-century author Edgar Allan Poe? For The Alan Parsons Project, the answer was apparently a simple one: look forward rather than back. So the second album by the progressive-rock "group" - in actuality producer-engineer Parsons, chief songwriter-executive producer Eric Woolfson, and a rotating cast of musicians and vocalists - was inspired by the writing of Isaac Asimov and explored artificial intelligence in a
Review: Harry Nilsson, "Flash Harry"
When Harry Nilsson's The RCA Albums Collection was finally unveiled earlier this year by Legacy Recordings, many finally stood up and took notice of the gifted singer-songwriter whose art deftly blended the high and the low, the angelic and the devilish, the euphoric and the melancholy. That astounding box set included each one of Nilsson's albums for the RCA label - in other words, his entire solo discography save one album. And now, that final missing link is finally here, on CD to join its
Short Takes, Christmas Edition: Glen Campbell, Judy Collins, Al Hirt Bring Holiday Cheer
At long last - Capitol Records has That Christmas Feeling. Glen Campbell’s first Christmas album, from 1968, has long been absent from CD, but the label has rectified that with the new release of Campbell’s ICON Christmas. Though retitled and with new artwork, ICON Christmas is, in fact, That Christmas Feeling as newly remastered by Mike Jones at Universal Mastering. (The previous, now-hard-to-find CD issue, from the Netherlands, also presented the album with new art.) Produced by Al De Lory
Hangin' Out with Henry Mancini and Ferrante and Teicher: Intrada, Vocalion Revisit 1970s Gems
For fans of the legendary composer Henry Mancini, these really are the days of wine and roses. The soundtrack specialists at Intrada have just announced the CD release of Mancini's score to the 1974 adventure film The White Dawn for the very first time in a deluxe edition with bonus material. And the U.K.-based Vocalion label is looking to the same decade with the reissue of two of Mancini's never-before-on-CD RCA albums plus another pair from piano duo Arthur Ferrante and Lou
Review: Joanie Sommers, "Come Alive! The Complete Columbia Recordings"
On the opening track of Joanie Sommers' 1966 Columbia LP Come Alive!, the velvet-voiced singer seductively taunted, "You better love me while you may! Tomorrow I may fly away..." True, the Hugh Martin/Timothy Gray tune was originally sung by the late Elvira, a ghost haunting her husband in the musical High Spirits. But it could just as easily have applied to Sommers. Following a string of hit albums and singles for Warner Bros. Records, her home since 1960, the winsome "Pepsi Girl" and
A Match Made In "Hell": Cherry Red Revisits Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley
Ain’t no doubt about it: Ellen Foley achieved classic rock immortality via her role on “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” opposite Meat Loaf on his 1977 album Bat Out of Hell. Foley was the girl “glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife” in Jim Steinman’s rock opera in miniature, with Meat Loaf as the boy “praying for the end of time” and the end of their time together. All these years later, Foley and the former Marvin Lee Aday are together again - on CD shelves, at least, thanks to two
Review: Bob Dylan, "The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait"
Who is Bob Dylan? Today, he might identify himself as “a song and dance man,” a noble profession if there ever was one. But for decades, the man born Robert Zimmerman has been much, much more. Resistant though he might have been to the tag of “spokesman of a generation,” said generation could have done much worse. To describe Dylan’s role in the 1960s is certainly to paint with broad brushstrokes. But it can be said with some measure of truth that Dylan liberated popular music from the
Review: The Beach Boys, "Made in California"
If everybody had an ocean... Rarely have five simple words in pop music held such promise. The message at the time was an invitation squarely aimed at teens: “If everybody had an ocean, across the USA/Then everybody’d be surfin’ like Califor-ni-a...” But ultimately, the promise and California dream embodied by Hawthorne, CA’s native sons came to mean so much more than mere surfin’. The sound of The Beach Boys – Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, David Marks,
Back Tracks: John Mayer
This week saw the release of Paradise Valley, the sixth full-length album by singer/songwriter/guitarist John Mayer. The Connecticut-born performer remains one of the most intriguing figures in pop music since the dawn of the 2000s: educated at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, Mayer was the complete package for a generation - multifaceted in his musical talents (kind of an insane cross between James Taylor and Stevie Ray Vaughan), an unabashed encyclopedia of modern pop - and, as it
Original Jazz Classics Celebrates 60 Years of Riverside with Evans, Montgomery, Baker, More
From its headquarters at 553 West 51st Street in New York, New York, the Riverside Records label presided over an impressive roster of jazz talent. Founded in 1953 by Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer, Riverside was home at one time or another to Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Alberta Hunter, Johnny Griffin, plus a number of artists currently being recognized with deluxe reissues from the Riverside catalogue: Thelonious Monk and Gerry Mulligan, Cannonball Adderley and Milt Jackson, Chet Baker, Wes
Favorite Things: Concord Reissues, Expands John Coltrane's "Afro Blue Impressions"
When John Coltrane's Afro Blue Impressions was released on LP by Pablo Records in 1977, it marked the tenth anniversary of the saxophone great's 1967 passing. Capturing his classic quartet in its prime, Afro Blue was recorded live in 1963 in Stockholm and Berlin. Now, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of its recording, and the fortieth anniversary of Pablo, Concord Music Group has remastered and expanded Afro Blue Impressions. The roots of Coltrane's great quartet can be traced to
Review: Dionne Warwick, "We Need to Go Back: The Unissued Warner Bros. Masters"
We need to go back to the songs we used to sing... - Nickolas Ashford and Valarie Simpson, “We Need to Go Back” What’s remarkable about the 19 outtakes on Dionne Warwick’s We Need to Go Back: The Unissued Warner Bros. Masters (Real Gone Music RGM-0170) is that they’re every bit as good as – and in many cases, superior to - the music actually released during Warwick’s stormy five-year stay at the label. Every one of the soulful stylist’s Warner albums is represented with outtakes save 1972’s
Review: Dionne Warwick, "The Complete Warner Bros. Singles"
Dionne Warwick’s 1972-1977 tenure at Warner Bros. Records has long been a subject of much confusion. Why couldn’t the Burbank giant yield any hit records with the superstar artist after signing her to a record-breaking deal? Sure, the “triangle marriage” of Warwick, Burt Bacharach and Hal David was breaking up, but Warner paired her with some of the most famed names in soul music: Holland-Dozier-Holland, Jerry Ragovoy, and Thom Bell among them. Bell scored a hit for Warwick with “Then Came
Paul Allen and the Underthinkers' "Everywhere at Once" Welcomes Joe Walsh, Chrissie Hynde, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Derek Trucks
For years, Paul Allen has been leading a double life. By day, he's known as the co-founder of Microsoft, a company which needs no introduction. He currently heads Vulcan, Inc.; its holdings include Ticketmaster, the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers. With an estimated net worth of $15 billion, Allen routinely ranks high on the Forbes 400, and his philanthropic activities add up to lifetime giving of over $1.5 billion. But that's only part of the story. Allen is also a lifetime
Are You Ready: Now Sounds Expands "The Association," Real Gone Uncovers "Hexagram 16"
“Where have I gone, where have I gone?” pondered Terry Kirkman on the haunting opening track to The Association’s 1969 long-player. Though the group’s fifth album, it was simply titled The Association, signifying an artistic rebirth. Gone were the session players and ornate Bones Howe production that marked their previous album, 1968’s Birthday. Taking the production reins themselves in tandem with John Boylan, The Association – Kirkman, Russ Giguere, Brian Cole, Jim Yester, Larry Ramos, Ted
Review: Elvis Presley, "Elvis at Stax"
The distance from 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard , or Graceland, to Stax Records' headquarters at 926 East McLemore Avenue is just a little over 5 miles. So when RCA Records came calling on the once and future King in mid-1973 to fulfill an obligation to record 24 songs (a 10-song album, four single sides, and a 10-song "religious album"), the studio founded by Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton seemed to be the perfect locale. Recording at home in Memphis had always brought something special to
SoulMusic Records Is "Born to Love" With Reissues from Peabo and Roberta, Nancy Wilson and Tavares
With its latest batch of reissues, including titles from Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack, Tavares, and Nancy Wilson, Cherry Red's SoulMusic Records imprint can truly be said to cover a wide swath of the soulful spectrum. Duets have long been staples of great R&B. Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, James Ingram and Patti Austin, and Otis Redding and Carla Thomas - just to name a few in the pantheon - all proved that "it takes two." (That title, in fact, gave
Ho Hey! Folk Upstarts The Lumineers to Expand and Reissue Debut LP
One of the most inescapable songs of last year was immediately identified by two words: "Ho Hey." The best-selling single by Denver-based folk band The Lumineers gradually earned a steady stream of airplay after some choice ad placement and a performance on Saturday Night Live, ultimately sending the tune to No. 3 on Billboard's Hot 100. Next month, The Lumineers' self-titled debut is being reissued and expanded as a CD/DVD set, with five extra tracks, music videos and featurettes from the
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