As fans prepare for the release of the new Disney+ documentary Beatles '64, chronicling The Fab Four's legendary inaugural trip to America, U.K. label Ace Records has an exciting release coming that same weekend, featuring nearly two dozen Black artists paying tribute to a series of songbooks that owed so much to soul music and rhythm and blues traditions. Here, There and Everywhere: Black America Sings Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, available November 29, is the seventh of Ace's "Black
Over the years, there have been countless collections of Beatles covers. Cherry Red's Grapefruit imprint threw its hat into the ring late last year with a fulsome new 3-CD set. We Can Work It Out: Covers of The Beatles 1962-1966 concentrates only on the Fab Four's first years, arranging its 85 songs in the order of the original Beatles song releases. Most, though not all, of the versions are contemporaneous, making this set a particularly enjoyable tour through the rapidly shifting pop 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 discover! Some classic compilations, a Who-related soundtrack and a posthumous Notorious B.I.G. appearance are all part of the experience this week. Various Artists, The Sound of the R&B Hits (Motown) Original: iTunes / Amazon Deluxe: iTunes / Amazon As a new wave of British rockers from The Beatles and The
It's What's Happening, Baby! That's the name of the 1965 television special hosted by influential New York disk jockey Murray Kaufman, a.k.a. Murray The K. Over the course of 90 minutes, the jocular, hep-talking Murray (who christened himself The Fifth Beatle as an early friend and supporter of the Fab Four) shared musical performances by the day's biggest pop and soul acts including The Supremes, Dionne Warwick, Ray Charles, The Righteous Brothers, The Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Johnny Rivers,
For its 60th anniversary year, Universal Music Enterprises has begun reminding fans that "Motown Did It First"; now, the label that launched The Sound Of Young America is revisiting a box set that was released in celebration of its 50th anniversary a decade ago. Motown: The Complete No. 1s is being reissued and expanded on June 28. Motown: The Complete No. 1s featured more than 200 international chart-toppers, plus a handful of bonus masters that went to No. 1 through cover versions or
Back in 2013, Ace Records launched its first collection of Motown Girls, spotlighting previously unreleased tracks from the legendary ladies of Motown Records. A second installment arrived in 2015, and now, we're finally the recipient of a third volume in the series. The 24-song anthology Baby I've Got It! More Motown Girls boasts 16 previously unreleased tracks, with the remaining eight drawn from the Motown Unreleased compilations (all of which have been digital-only except for the one
If there was ever any doubt as to the versatility, adaptability and endurance of the songs of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, it would certainly be dispelled by Ace’s new release of Let It Be: Black America Sings Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. The latest volume in the label’s Black America Sings series (also encompassing volumes dedicated to Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, and the team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David) and the second dedicated to the music of The Beatles,
If Rare Soul is what you're looking for, PopMarket has an exclusive release just for you. The online shop has recently released A Crate Digger's Collection of Rare Soul, a 3-LP set pressed on heavyweight180-gram vinyl presenting 35 tracks culled from the Warner Music Group family of labels including Atlantic, Cotillion, Loma, Atco and Warner Bros. itself. This handsome package, a limited edition of 1,000 units, features 35 tracks from some of the labels' heaviest hitters as well as names that
On the evening of March 25, 1983, the Pasadena Civic Auditorium was alive with the sound of music – the Sound of Young America, to be more specific. Motown Records was celebrating its 25th anniversary, and producer Suzanne de Passe wasn’t pulling any stops. “Once in a lifetime” was as overused in 1983 as it is today, but the galaxy of stars assembled by de Passe couldn’t be described any other way: Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Lionel Richie and the Commodores, Smokey Robinson and
“Prince” Phillip Mitchell is in some mighty good company. The Kentucky-born singer and songwriter, who rose to prominence composing songs for deeply soulful artists including Millie Jackson and Bobby Womack, is the latest to receive a career retrospective from Ace Records’ Songwriters and Producers series. With the Ace/Kent release of Something New to Do: The Phillip Mitchell Songbook (CDKEND 394), he joins such illustrious talents as Dan Penn, Burt Bacharach, Randy Newman, Jerry Leiber and
Thanks to the dedication of labels like Ace Records, it would be impossible to "forget the Motor City." Along with the U.S.' flagship Hip-O/UMG Select imprint, Ace has led the charge in issuing vintage 1960s-era Motown material, much of it unreleased. The recent release of Finders Keepers: Motown Girls 1961-1967 compiles 24 tracks from girls both famous (The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Mary Wells) and all-too-unknown (LaBrenda Ben, Thelma Brown, Anita Knorl) for a potent overview of
When Motown: The Musical opens at Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on April 14, it will mark yet another career landmark for Berry Gordy, the songwriter-producer-entrepreneur who turned Detroit, Michigan into Hitsville, USA some fifty-five years ago. The musical, written by Gordy and directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, depicts the rise to prominence of the Sound of Young America, with Brandon Victor Dixon (The Color Purple, The Scottsboro Boys) starring as Gordy. He’s joined by a cast of
The third major Mary Wells release in recent months has arrived courtesy Ace Records’ Kent label. The One Who Really Loves You/Two Lovers combines Wells’ second and third Motown long-players on one remastered CD, with every track taken from the original mono masters for the first time in the compact disc era. Though Wells’ time at Motown was relatively brief, her star burned brightest there. The first true superstar to emerge from Hitsville, she was also the first of the company’s artists to
Wow! Was it just over a year ago when a rather dubious report began circulating (that, shockingly, was picked up by many otherwise-reputable publications) that proclaimed the death of the CD was secretly scheduled by the major labels for 2012? Well, 2012 has come and (almost) gone, and it might have been the most super-sized year in recent memory for reissues, deluxe and otherwise, from labels new and old. Here at the Second Disc, we consider our annual Gold Bonus Disc Awards a companion
Mary Wells had a number of firsts under her belt. The first true Motown superstar, she became the first of the company’s artists to net a Grammy Award nomination. She also was the first superstar artist to leave Berry Gordy’s empire at the height of her fame. In 1965, Wells departed for a lucrative deal with 20th Century Fox Records, but her greatest successes were already behind her. Yet despite her death at just 49 years of age in 1992, Wells’ star still burns bright, largely thanks to her