Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Johnny Mathis, Close to You/Love Story: Expanded Edition (Second Disc/Real Gone) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music continue their journey through Johnny Mathis' seventies catalogue with this expanded, remastered two-fer of Mathis' 1970 and 1971 albums. Close to You finds the singer reinterpreting hits by Bacharach and David, Antonio Carlos Jobim, The Beatles, and even Santana, while Love Story
2018 is already shaping up to be a great year for music documentaries; one such movie, Elvis Presley: The Searcher, recently debuted on HBO to rapturous notices. Soundtracks to two more probing films are on the way from Universal On June 8, the label will deliver both Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars and Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story. No single compilation can successfully capture the entirety of Eric Clapton's remarkable career, though many from various labels have tried. Life in 12
Lulu's first album promised Something to Shout About, and indeed, throughout a career now spanning six decades, the Scottish pop singer has always delivered with her full-throated, soulful belt. In 1972, Lulu wrapped up her tenure at Atco Records - in which she reinvented herself in full southern soul mode - and signed to Wes Farrell's RCA-distributed Chelsea label. At Chelsea, she released two albums: 1973's Lulu and 1976's Heaven and Earth and the Sky. Both of those LPs have just returned