Sleigh bells ring – are you listening? Legacy Recordings certainly hopes you are, as a bounty of new holiday-themed collections is coming your way. The first Classic Christmas Album arrived last year, a compilation of Christmas favorites from Tony Bennett (including a previously-unreleased version of “What Child is This?”). More titles are on the horizon to make spirits bright this year, and we have details on five of them to share right now, with more news to come! On October 2, Legacy will
As we welcome the expanded release of Aretha Franklin's Who's Zoomin' Who? from Funky Town Grooves today, it's a thrill to report two more expansions of Aretha's underrepresented Arista material on CD from Big Break Records. The label will release 1982's Jump to It and 1983's Get It Right on May 21 with a total of nine bonus tracks, all single edits, dance mixes and instrumentals. After her first two cover-heavy LPs for Clive Davis' label, the Queen of Soul elected to take things in a more
Janis Joplin, The Pearl Sessions (Columbia/Legacy) Essentially a new double-disc deluxe edition of Joplin's final album, with mono single mixes and a heap of mostly unreleased session outtakes as bonus tracks. Little Richard,
If you miss the smooth, soulful voice of Luther Vandross - and, perhaps, wish to dig deeper than his greatest hits - a new compilation from Epic Records and Legacy Recordings might have you covered. On April 17, just three days before what would have been the singer's 61st birthday, the label will release Hidden Gems, a compilation of album cuts and non-LP tracks intended to showcase one of the greatest male voices in contemporary R&B history. The 15-track compilation, compiled and
On March 25, 2012, Aretha Franklin will turn 70 years old. That hardly means she's ready to slow down, however. 2011 found the Queen of Soul looking trim and sounding vibrant as she returned to the concert stage and released a new studio album. Surely her landmark birthday will be celebrated with countless airings of her 1960s golden hits like "Respect," "Natural Woman" and "Chain of Fools." But Legacy Recordings and Arista Records are seeing to it that a latter-day hitmaking period for the
It's a crime that when you talk about CHIC, many of the players who made up arguably the greatest band of the disco era aren't alive to hear your words of praise. Bernard Edwards, CHIC's bassist and co-producer, died in 1997; drummer Tony Thompson passed away in 2003. Nile Rodgers, guitarist, co-producer and keeper of the CHIC flame, could easily have met the same early fate had he not been lucky enough to discover the cancer that he's been since late last year. (Rodgers, one of the best users
If you're itching for some vintage R&B from around the way, a few labels have some new releases to keep you satisfied. One is a classic soul LP making its debut on CD, the other two are some solid disco efforts with some bonus cuts to boot. Iconoclassic Records has planned a June 22 reissue of It's Our Thing by The Isley Brothers. Released on the Isleys' own label after leaving a solid but fleetingly successful tenure at Motown, this disc includes the funky, anthemic "It's Your Thing." This