Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there's plenty of great new/old music to float you into the weekend. Enjoy a hometown birthday present from The Boss and a holiday collection first put on CD by The Second Disc - plus remixes from Madonna and The Art of Noise and so much more - all in this week's latest round-up. Bruce Springsteen, The Live Series: Songs of New Jersey (Columbia/Legacy) (Apple Music /
Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing weekly review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there's plenty of great new/old music to usher you into the weekend. We've got new remixes from David Bowie, old remixes from Madonna, an unheard Lou Reed song and much more - including another music writer who could use your help. David Bowie, Let's Dance (40th Anniversary Remix E.P.) / Let's Dance (Club Bolly Mixes) / China Girl (Riff & Vox
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores today. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, That Holiday Feeling! (Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Real Gone Music) Real Gone Music presents a newly-remastered and expanded edition of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme's 1964 Christmas classic That Holiday Feeling! This new edition adds eight bonus tracks including all three of Steve and Eydie's songs from the 1969 RCA
The Christmas season is upon us, and there are plenty of new titles coming your way to make spirits bright! Today's round-up looks at upcoming collections from Neil Diamond, Louis Armstrong, and Reba McEntire, as well as one various-artists set filled with heavy hitters. Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Kennedy Center Honoree Neil Diamond has been a Christmas music mainstay since the release of 1992's The Christmas Album. The Brooklyn-born superstar, whose story is coming soon to Broadway in
Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing weekly review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there's plenty of great new/old music to discover! A quick week brings us a great latter-day Hall & Oates track, a classic Lil Wayne mixtape, unreleased gems from The Art of Noise and more. Daryl Hall & John Oates, "Romeo is Bleeding" (U-Watch/BMG Rights Management (U.K.)) (iTunes / Amazon / Spotify) It's been 50 years since the world's bestselling duo
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! The Beatles, Let It Be: 50th Anniversary Edition [Various Formats] (Apple/Capitol/UMe) 5CD/Blu-ray: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 5LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 1CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 1LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada The Beatles' final album, Let It Be, arrives in deluxe editions to coincide with Peter Jackson's multi-part
Impulse! Records' 60th anniversary celebration continues all year with Verve/UMe and Acoustic Sounds' ongoing series of deluxe audiophile reissues drawn from the label's storied catalogue. The full 2021 slate of releases - 2-3 per month through December - has been announced. It features some of the heaviest hitters from the Impulse! discography including Ray Charles, Gil Evans, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane. A number of titles from the Verve catalogue will also be reissued
Throughout his remarkable and influential career, Louis Armstrong recorded in a variety of styles for a number of labels. In April, some of his most significant sides for both RCA Victor and Columbia are coming to CD in a new box set from the fine folks at Mosaic Records. The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966 is a sprawling and comprehensive 7-CD collection with all 29 of Satchmo's 1946-47 RCA sides plus his '50s Columbia LPs with producer George
With a new James Bond film set to shake (not stir) audiences in November, a longtime compilation of the super-spy's famed film themes is getting a new iteration on November 20. The Best of Bond...James Bond offers a stellar 25-track overview of the pop themes that scored nearly all of the films based on Ian Fleming's famed British secret agent. There are 14 U.K. Top 10 hits and two Academy Award winners herein - altogether, a formidable, half-century-plus musical portrait of one of cinema's
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! America, Half Century (America Records/Gonzo) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) The 50th anniversary celebration of America rolls on with a massive new box set. Half Century is an expansive 7-CD/1-DVD box packed with rare and previously unreleased material from the beloved band featuring Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and the late Dan Peek. There's a slew of unreleased demos circa 1970; a remastered full-length radio session in Bremen
Verve Label Group and UMe have announced a new collaboration with the audiophile reissue label Acoustic Sounds that finds the team offering up what's said to be "definitive audiophile grade versions of some of the most historic and best jazz records ever recorded." It's set to launch this Friday, July 31, on August 28 with two classic duets albums: Stan Getz and João Gilberto's landmark Getz/Gilberto (featuring Astrud Gilberto) and the singular Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar
What happens when you mix a bit of gris-gris with a touch of classic jazz? You get a party of an album such as Dr. John's Ske-Dat-Ske-Dat: The Spirit of Satch! The late Mac Rebennack, a.k.a. Dr. John, frequently drew on the classic sounds of New Orleans as he conjured his own musical voodoo. Most appropriately, his final studio album was a tribute to one of the most significant figures to ever emerge from the Crescent City. Louis Armstrong transformed the sounds of both jazz and popular music,
The late Mac Rebennack, a.k.a. Dr. John, frequently drew on the classic sounds of New Orleans as he conjured his own musical voodoo. Appropriately enough, his final studio album was a tribute to one of the most significant figures to ever emerge from the Crescent City. 2014's Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch celebrated the legendary Louis Armstrong as only Dr. John and his friends could do. Now, it's returning from The Last Music Company in a new vinyl pressing on June 5, one day before the
Looking for our usual Release Round-Up? Alas, there's not much new in the way of catalogue music this Friday (and we've already filled you in on Billy Paul and Leon Russell!), but for a very good reason: tomorrow sees releases a-plenty as part of Record Store Day! Without further ado, welcome to our annual rundown of Must-Haves for this year's RSD event! Once you're through reading, let us know what you're most looking forward to picking up tomorrow at your favorite local independent
On December 7, Verve/UMe will release The Founder, a 4-CD box set in honor of Norman Granz's centennial earlier this year (August 6, 1918). The collection will also be available as a digital download and on streaming services. The set includes 44 tracks, some appearing on CD for the first time ever. It presents a chronological overview of the first two decades of the jazz impresario's impressive career by way of recordings of the musicians he recorded. The booklet includes new liner notes by
Verve/UME celebrate the career of a jazz impresario for the ages. As founder of the Clef, Norgran and Verve labels, Granz helped bring jazz to the masses and launched the careers of many of the genre's brightest stars. The 4-CD set includes 44 tracks, some appearing on CD for the first time ever. The booklet includes new liner notes by Tad Hershorn, author of Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz For Justice. On the discs, you'll find incendiary performances by the likes of Coleman Hawkins
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! David Bowie, Changestwobowie (Parlophone) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada David Bowie's 1981 compilation spanning the period between Hunky Dory and Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) returns to print for the first time in three decades in a newly remastered edition. Its ten tracks include "Starman," "Oh! You Pretty Things," single versions of "Fashion," "Ashes to Ashes," and
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, and one of the biggest Release Fridays of the year to date! Chicago, VI Decades Live: This is What We Do (Rhino) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Chicago celebrates 50 years on the road with this expansive new box set featuring 4 CDs and 1 DVD of previously unreleased live music recorded between 1969 and 2014. This set includes two complete concerts - The Isle of Wight, 1970 on CD and a Rockpalast broadcast from Germany in 1977 on
When The Library of Congress established a Prize for Popular Song in 2007, one name was affixed to it: Gershwin. With no disrespect to Messrs. Berlin, Porter, Rodgers and company, George and Ira’s surname is synonymous with the gold standard in American popular song. The recipients of the award to date – Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Carole King and Billy Joel – have all followed in the Gershwins’ footsteps of marrying smart, sophisticated and incisive
Various Artists, Chicago Hit Factory: The Vee-Jay Story 1953-1966 (Charly) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) This import box set tells the story of great R&B label Vee-Jay Records via a whopping 10 discs, 269 tracks (including 112 hits) by more than 120 different artists, and a 72-page book. Artists include Jerry Butler, The Four Seasons, The Beatles, Gene Chandler, Little Richard, Betty Everett, The Dells and The Standells! Jazz, gospel, blues and doo-wop all figure prominently along with the
More than half a century after visionary music impresario Norman Granz founded his third and arguably most successful label, Verve Records, the label will be celebrated in style next month with a new book and a five-disc box set, The Sound of America: The Singles Collection. Granz had previously come to prominence in the jazz world a decade before, when he organized a diverse jam session of a concert at Los Angeles' Philharmonic Auditorium in 1944. This regular session turned into a
1964 will forever be remembered on American shores as the year of Beatlemania, when those four moptops from Liverpool led the British Invasion to the top of the pop charts. That tale has been chronicled many times, but one of the most recent releases from U.K.-based label Ace tells the story of the year's American Invasion - via the American records imported to London on the London American label. This latest volume in the long-running series (which now features an entry for each year between
The legendary composer-arranger-pianist-bandleader Duke Ellington is In Grand Company on a new collection of the same name from Starbucks Entertainment, Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings. Much has been written of Ellington’s fertile creative partnership with “Take the ‘A’ Train” composer Billy Strayhorn, and indeed, Strayhorn is represented on this disc. But he’s just one of the many, varied artists represented on this collection’s fifteen tracks. Spanning four decades of recording on
Duke Ellington famously stated, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing,” but without Louis Armstrong, Duke would assuredly have had to pose some other question. Bing Crosby, the man owed a debut by every popular singer of the past eighty or so years, described Armstrong as “the beginning and end of music in America” while fellow trumpeter Miles Davis acknowledged that “you can’t play anything on a horn that Louis hasn’t played.” Yet Armstrong is arguably most remembered today by the
Steve Winwood, Arc of a Diver: Deluxe Edition (U.S./U.K.) (Island/UMC) While you see a chance, take one on this new edition of Winwood's 1980 album, expanded with a handful of bonus tracks and a lengthy audio documentary. Louis Armstrong & The All-Stars, Satchmo at Symphony Hall 65th Anniversary: The Complete Performances(U.S.) (Hip-O Select/Verve) A classic 1947 performance first released in 1951 is fully expanded to include both complete performances from that lauded night, with new