Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Grateful Dead, Workingman's Dead: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Grateful Dead/Rhino) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Often hailed as one of Grateful Dead's most accessible albums along with its follow-up, American Beauty, Workingman's Dead placed its focus on tighter songcraft in a country/folk-oriented vein that would later be described as "Americana." It introduced the group's
Barbara Mandrell wasn't yet 27 years old, but she had already spent a lifetime in music when she signed to ABC/Dot Records in 1975. The Houston native was born into a musical family, and was playing accordion by the age of five. By ten, the precocious talent had mastered the steel guitar, and one year later, she began appearing on the famed Town Hall Party television show. Throughout high school, she entertained military audiences as a member of The Mandrell Family. A subsequent, impromptu
Get Along Down to Town Bakersfield, California is a long way from Nashville - a little under 2,020 miles west, actually. But the distance isn't quite as great when one considers how much significant country music came out of the city in Kern County. Recent years have seen numerous reissues from legendary Bakersfield artists like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, as well as a fine exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame. But now Bear Family Records has delivered the ultimate tribute to the
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up featuring the lost songs of a country-pop superstar, two more entries into an underrated SoCal songbook, new music from veteran artists, and much more! Barbara Mandrell, This Time I Almost Made It: The Lost Columbia Masters (Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) We all know Barbara Mandrell did make it...as one of the most successful country crossover superstars of all time. Now, Real Gone has rescued the legendary
Real Gone is in a country mood this February, with the majority of their slate devoted to the country and western genre. But that is not all you will find on the label's mix of CDs and vinyl for the month. Kicking things off is collection drawn from Barbara Mandrell's tenure at Columbia Records: This Time I Almost Made It - The Lost Columbia Masters. This CD features liner notes by our very own Joe Marchese based on a fresh interview with Mandrell, and is centered around Mandrell's final