Cherry Red's Robinsongs imprint is turning up the Cool Heat with a new 2-CD, 25-track collection celebrating The Best of CTI Records and featuring many of the classic jazz label's most renowned artists including instrumentalists George Benson, Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, and Stanley Turrentine, and vocalists Nina Simone, Patti Austin, and Esther Phillips. Chances are, if you think of a jazz artist, it wouldn't take many degrees of separation to reach Creed Taylor. The esteemed producer
Cherry Red's SoulMusic Records label has added another quintet of releases to its rapidly-growing Anthology series, and this batch is among the most eclectic yet, blurring the lines of jazz, pop, and R&B with Esther Phillips, Levert, Tom Browne, Kashif, and Mtume. As the premier vocalist on CTI Records' Kudu imprint, Esther Phillips (1935-1984) played a key role in producer Creed Taylor's "Cool Revolution" at CTI. A gifted vocalist, Phillips nonetheless struggled with personal demons
Two late legends of soul - Brook Benton and Esther Phillips - have recently been feted on a pair of reissues from SoulMusic Records and Cherry Red. By the time Brook Benton signed with Atlantic Records' Cotillion imprint in 1968, he had already enjoyed an illustrious career at labels including OKeh, Epic, RCA, Mercury and Reprise. The move to Atlantic paid off when his recording of Tony Joe White's "Rainy Night in Georgia" not only reached No. 1 but became a signature song for the vocalist.
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up featuring a host of deluxe reissues, box sets, and more! Phil Collins, Face Value: Deluxe Edition (Atlantic/Rhino) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Phil Collins' 1981 classic featuring "In the Air Tonight" gets expanded to two CDs or DD with the addition of eight live tracks and four demos (plus a new, modern cover photograph echoing the original). Ten of the twelve bonuses are new
As the premier vocalist on CTI Records' Kudu imprint, Esther Phillips (1935-1984) played a key role in producer Creed Taylor's "Cool Revolution" at CTI. A gifted vocalist, Phillips nonetheless struggled with personal demons throughout her too-short life. The former "Little Esther" had her first taste of success in 1949, just fourteen years old, and a taste of heroin not long after; stories of her mercurial behavior have entered into legend. But her talent was never in doubt. CTI recorded
When he established Kudu as an offshoot of his titanic jazz label CTI, Creed Taylor wore his ambitions on his sleeve. The label was named after the long-horned African mammal and its logo adorned with Afro-centric colors, as Taylor intended to do no less than make Kudu a home for releases "indigenous to the black popular music of the United States." Taylor always knew the importance of a visual, and much as CTi releases were recognizable for their striking, provocative cover photographs and
Tuesday, August 9 brought the most recent quartet of CTI jazz titles to CD from Sony's Masterworks Jazz division. For the next batch, due October 4, the label has turned its attention to CTI's offshoot label, Kudu. Named after the long-horned African mammal, Kudu was launched by CTI's Creed Taylor in 1971. Taylor described his new endeavor as "a black awareness label, more commercial oriented than CTI and indigenous to the black popular music of the United States." Even the logo's familiar