In Memoriam: Steve Cropper (1941-2025)

It’s a sad fact that so much of America’s musical infrastructure – the men and women whose session work powered thousands of pop chart hits and significant recordings – exists in near-obscurity. Consider The Funk Brothers, that collective of R&B musicians in Detroit who powered nearly every Motown session in the label’s golden age. Fans and collectors still sift through the vagaries of paperwork and memory to determine who lent their instruments to which song; the unofficial group’s members would be credited by name at the insistence of Marvin Gaye on his…

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The Weekend Stream: June 7, 2025

Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc’s review of notable catalogue titles (and some new ones, too!) making digital debuts. This week brings posthumous recordings by Prince and Donna Summer, a new spin on Star Wars disco, and plenty of cast recordings leading into the Tony Awards this Sunday! And just a quick programming note: our Unplugged series is taking the week off, but will be back with some new and exciting Weekend Stream extra content very soon! Prince, “Free” (Acoustic) (NPG/Legacy) (Apple / Amazon) “The Vault is now…

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Release Round-Up: Week of October 18

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores today.  As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Long After Dark: Deluxe Edition (Geffen/UMe) 2CD/Blu-ray Audio: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2CD/Blu-ray Audio (with Amazon-exclusive stickers): Amazon U.S. 2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Tom Petty Store (Exclusive) Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ fifth studio album has gotten a deluxe makeover.  Geffen/UMe have revisited 1982’s oft-overlooked Long After Dark, originally released on Backstreet Records, in various formats including 2LP and 2CD+Blu-ray. The bonus disc, featuring outtakes…

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Blues At Sunrise: Stax Expands Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s ‘In Session’

An intergenerational meeting between two late blues guitar gods – Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan – will be revived on CD and vinyl in a new expanded package. Originally recorded in 1983 and first released in 1999, In Session features the six-stringers trading licks on a Canadian television program of the same name, when King was a 60-year-old living legend and Vaughan a young upstart who’d turned heads with his licks on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance before releasing his own powerful debut Texas Flood with his trio Double Trouble. As King recounts in one…

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I’m Dreaming of a “Stax Christmas”: New Collection Brings Together Holiday Favorites from Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Staple Singers, More

‘Tis the season to be soulful: This Friday, September 29, Craft Recordings and Stax Records will celebrate the holidays with the CD, LP, and digital release of A Stax Christmas.  This festive 12-track compilation features songs by the label’s most beloved artists including two previously unreleased tracks from Carla Thomas and Otis Redding. The venerable Memphis label has had a long association with the music of Christmas.  House band Booker T. and The MG’s 1966 album In the Christmas Spirit is a holiday perennial, and the group appeared alongside other Stax and…

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The Living Word: New Box Sets Chronicle Wattstax in Full, 50 Years On

One of the greatest music festivals of the ’70s is getting celebrated with an exhaustive array of reissues in 2023: Wattstax, the multi-dimensional Los Angeles celebration of soul, funk, blues and gospel courtesy of Stax Records. A half-century after the premiere of a Golden Globe-nominated documentary on the star-studded 1972 event, Craft Recordings, custodian of the Stax catalogue, will release the most definitive looks at Wattstax, most recently addressed in a 3CD box set in 2003 that took the highlights of both double albums from 1973 and added even more material. Soul’d…

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Holiday Gift Guide: Vinyl Me, Please – A Year in Review

Over the past few months you’ve probably heard us mention Vinyl Me Please. The subscription-based record club frequently partners with the major labels to create exclusive pressings from across genres. They also curate Records of the Month for subscribers – available in three tracks: Classics, Essentials, and Hip Hop – specially selected by their staff to spotlight albums of importance in pop, rock, soul, world music, jazz, and beyond.  This year, the offerings ran the gamut from The Stooges, Errol Garner, Stevie Nicks, John Mayer, McCoy Tyner, Gabor Szabo, Otis Redding, and…

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I’ve Been Loving You: Vinyl Me, Please Spotlights Stax Classics in New VMP Anthology Box

Vinyl Me Please is at it again! Following their celebrations of Blue Note, Motown, and Ghostly International, the subscription service is set to release a new volume of their acclaimed VMP Anthology Series. This time, they’re shining a light on the history of Stax Records. As with previous volumes, The Story of Stax Records will be told in four chapters. The eight albums included in the box will be wrapped in “secrecy sleeves” that can be unveiled at specific points in the journey. Though titles have not been revealed, VMP has announced…

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Off The Handle: Rory Gallagher Rarities Collection “Blues” Arrives From UMC

Eric Clapton once described Rory Gallagher as “the man who got me back into the blues.” Though he never reached the same “household name” fame as Clapton or other contemporaries, Irish guitar legend Gallagher led a movement back to blues roots that began with his band Taste and continued on throughout his solo career from 1971 to 1994. To commemorate 50 years since Gallagher began his recording, UMC has released a new collection that mines the vaults of the celebrated singer and instrumentalist in search of his most bluesy fare. Appropriately titled…

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I’ve Got A Sure Thing: Craft Presents “Soul Explosion” Vinyl Reissue, Plus A Month of Stax Digital Rarities

Craft Recordings has announced the next phase of its campaign to honor one of the great labels of soul – Stax Records.  Entitled “Soul Explosion,” the campaign began with their Record Store Day releases of Boy Meets Girl: Classic Stax Duets, Stax Does The Beatles and the first-ever mono reissue of Albert King’s Born Under A Bad Sign.  The next phase begins on May 31 and will see new vinyl and digital reissues of classics from 1969, which proved to be a watershed year for the label, and beyond. Fifty years ago, the…

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Record Store Day Spotlight: Craft Recordings Plans Violent Femmes, Stax Classics, Psych Pop Collections

Record Store Day announcements are coming fast and furious, and one of the first out of the gate hails from Craft Recordings.  The label has a variety of packages coming soon for the RSD festivities at your local independent retailer on Saturday, April 13! Here’s the full list from Craft with descriptions provided by the label. Violent Femmes, Hallowed Ground (LP): Hallowed Ground is the follow up to the Violent Femmes’ legendary self-titled 1983 debut. As with the first album, all of the songs were written by lead singer Gordon Gano while…

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Review: “Stax ’68: A Memphis Story”

Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” the first Stax single of 1968, should have been a new beginning for the artist and label.  Instead, the posthumous release ushered in a tumultuous year for the Memphis institution.  The death of Redding and members of The Bar-Kays on December 10, 1967 was a tremendous loss for Stax and popular culture, but no one could have predicted the upheaval that would affect Stax and the city of Memphis in the following twelve months.  That time has just been chronicled in a new…

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A 60th Anniversary Celebration “Stax” Up in 2017

From deep within the heart of Memphis to your stereo, the rich legacy of Stax Records will be honored this year as two label partners join forces to commemorate the label’s 60th anniversary. Rolling Stone reported yesterday a massive campaign to celebrate Stax artists and albums across physical and digital formats. Notably, this initiative will be carried out by both owners of the Stax catalogue: Rhino/Warner Music Group, which controls much of the label’s Atlantic-distributed output from 1957 to 1968, and Concord Bicycle Music, handler of the Stax masters released from 1968…

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