From deep within the heart of Memphis to your stereo, the rich legacy of Stax Records will be honored this year as two label partners join forces to commemorate the label’s 60th anniversary. Rolling Stone reported yesterday a massive campaign to celebrate Stax artists and albums across physical and digital formats. Notably, this initiative will be carried out by both owners of the Stax catalogue: Rhino/Warner Music Group, which controls much of the label’s Atlantic-distributed output from 1957 to 1968, and Concord Bicycle Music, handler of the Stax masters released from 1968…
Do Your Thing: 20 Record Store Day Black Friday Essentials
Are you making a list and checking it twice? We are! Record Store Day Black Friday is here in less than a month, and this week we’re showcasing all of our favorite titles. We’ve shown you the goods from Legacy, Real Gone, Rhino and Omnivore; now, here are 20 more titles we think you should absolutely check out. There’s soundtrack goodies from Varese Sarabande and Light in the Attic; holiday favorites from Bob & Doug McKenzie, Frank Sinatra and “Dolemite” himself; lost gems from Isaac Hayes, The Runaways and Harry Nilsson; and…
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Release Round-Up: Week of October 28
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! Roy Orbison, The Ultimate Collection (Roy’s Boys/Legacy) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2-LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Legacy Recordings and Roy’s Boys, LLC deliver a newly-remastered, career-spanning anthology for the late Roy Orbison. The Ultimate Collection has 26 tracks drawn from The Big O’s halcyon years at Monument and MGM as well as his final solo recordings and collaborations with The Traveling Wilburys. Available on CD, DD and vinyl. Read more here! Otis Redding, Live at the Whisky…
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Release Round-Up: Week of October 7
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up which just might be the biggest slate of the year to date! Lou Reed, The RCA and Arista Album Collection (RCA/Legacy) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) Legacy brings together 16 Lou Reed albums from his RCA and Arista years on 17 CDs, all remastered directly under Reed’s supervision before his untimely passing in 2013. An 80-page hardbound booklet with detailed liner notes, five art prints and a poster round out this limited edition package. Read more here! Prince, The Prince Movie Collection (Warner Home Video) (Amazon…
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Good to Me: Otis Redding’s “Dictionary,” Complete Whisky A Go Go Recordings Due Next Month
Fans of Otis Redding have twice the reason to celebrate this holiday season with the release of two separate products celebrating The King of Soul’s output in 1966. First up, Rhino is reissuing Complete & Unbelievable…The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul as a double-disc set. Joe filled us in on this release back in August, but here’s a refresher: This album, Otis’ fifth and final released before his tragic passing the following year, is Memphis soul par excellence, recorded with an all-star lineup of session men that included Booker T. & The…
Try a Little Tenderness: Otis Redding’s “Dictionary of Soul” Expanded On CD and LP
Otis Redding famously ran the gamut of soul from A to Z on his 1966 album Complete and Unbelievable…The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul. Well, now the dictionary is getting even more complete on October 7 with Rhino’s release of a 50th anniversary edition! This 2-CD deluxe edition features both the stereo and mono mixes of the original album plus eight bonus tracks. The 1966 album, Redding’s fifth album, was cut in the summer of 1966 at Stax Studios in Memphis. Redding was joined by Isaac Hayes as well as The Memphis…
Our Big Record Store Day Black Friday Round-Up Featuring McCartney, Bowie, Wilson, Queen, Ronstadt, More
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve told you about the 2015 Black Friday Record Store Day offerings from Legacy, Omnivore and Real Gone Music. Well, the full list of releases which are coming out on November 27 has been announced and we’ve got the details below including new titles from Rhino, Varese Sarabande, Hear Music and more! The entire list is over 125 items long, so we’ve just highlighted some entries below in which you might be interested. The full listing can be seen at recordstoreday.com. As usual, with so many…
Release Round-Up: Week of October 30
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! Packed with over 30 titles including highly-anticipated reissues, a slew of box sets, collections and more, it just may be the mightiest of the year! The Velvet Underground, Loaded: Re-Loaded 45th Anniversary Edition (Rhino) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) The Velvet Underground’s 1970 album – and Lou Reed’s swansong with the band – gets the deluxe expanded treatment from Rhino in this new box set featuring the original stereo and mono albums plus a wealth of bonus material, two live concerts and a DVD featuring high…
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Release Round-Up: Week of September 18
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up including a couple of spectacular new box sets, one acclaimed soundtrack, numerous reissues and anthologies, and the return of a few beloved artists! a-ha, Hunting High and Low: 30th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (Warner Bros./Rhino) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) The 1985 debut from a-ha gets super-sized with Rhino’s upcoming 4-CD/1-DVD edition. Disc One has the original, remastered album, while Disc Two boasts 25 demos, Disc Three has 15 singles, B-sides and extended versions, and Disc Four takes in ten previously unreleased alternate mixes. The DVD has…
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R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Rhino Reissues Deluxe “Otis Blue”, Preps Redding Albums Box
This September, Otis Redding’s album masterwork Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul celebrates its 50th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Rhino will reissue its out-of-print 2008 expanded edition on September 18; then, on October 30, the label will compile Redding’s original albums into a new box set. A testament to Redding’s power to reinvent a song, Otis Blue primarily features his interpretations of familiar melodies – plus three choice originals. The album, an R&B chart-topper, found Redding supported by the cream of the Stax crop, including Booker T and the MG’s, Isaac…
New “Rare Soul” Collection Features Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, Solomon Burke, Mary Wells and More
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 only soul connoisseurs would recognize. But once you hear these artists,…
(Don’t) Walk On By: Rhino’s Record Store Day Lineup Boasts a-ha, Bee Gees, Bowie, Doors, Dionne, More
Rhino isn’t resting on its laurels for Record Store Day! The label has announced its biggest slate ever for Record Store Day, with 30 limited edition 12-inch, 10-inch, and 7-inch vinyl releases due on Saturday, April 18. Full details as provided by the label for all titles can be found below. As always with RSD, these releases will be available exclusively at select independent music retailers on April 18, and you can find the list of participating shops here! a-ha – Take On Me 7-inch picture disc. Limited edition of 6,500 copies, $14.98 Air – Playground Love…
Review: Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, “The King of Soul” and “The Queen of Soul”
All hail The King and Queen. The careers of Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin have been inextricably linked since Franklin entered New York’s Atlantic Studios on Valentine’s Day, 1967, with producer Jerry Wexler to record Redding’s “Respect.” Even before that pivotal moment, however, the two artists shared a label in Atlantic Records (distributor of Redding’s Stax records) and an ability to invest any song with raw honesty and unvarnished emotion. Atlantic and Rhino Records have recently issued two newly remastered 4-CD retrospectives dedicated to Redding and Franklin: respectively, The King of Soul…
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Release Round-Up: Week of February 4
Burt Bacharach, Together? — Original Soundtrack Recording / Toomorrow: From the Harry Saltzman-Don Kirshner Film “Toomorrow” — Original Soundtrack Recording / The Mamas and the Papas, A Gathering of Flowers / Brotherhood, The Complete Recordings / Smith, A Group Called Smith/Minus-Plus / Troyka, Troyka / Jim Reeves, A Beautiful Life — Songs of Inspiration / The Grateful Dead, Dick’s Picks Vol. 20 — Capital Centre, Landover, MD 9/25/76 — Onondaga County War Memorial, Syracuse, NY 9/28/76 (Real Gone Music) What could be better than this Real Gone bounty, featuring a classic compilation by The Mamas and The Papas, an exciting compilation by Brotherhood, a post Paul Revere & The Raiders…
Rhino Gives The Royal Treatment To The King and Queen of Soul with New Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin Box Sets
Rhino is kicking off February’s Black History Month in a big way – with two new box sets dedicated to undisputed R&B royalty, Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding. On February 4, the label will release the 4-CD collections The King of Soul and The Queen of Soul, and despite the wealth of sublime soul music on these sets, both titles are priced with an eye to the budget-conscious. As of this writing, the Otis set is available at Amazon U.S. for $33.62, and the Aretha set for $34.05…or less than $0.40 per…
Personality Crisis: “Lipstick, Powder and Paint” Reveals New York Dolls’ Inspirations
“While I was layin’ in a hospital bed/A rock ‘n’ roll nurse went to my head/She says, ‘Hold out your arm, stick out yo’ tongue/I got some pills, boy, I’m ‘a give you one!” It was no surprise that The New York Dolls – crown princes of debauchery, seventies-style – would include a cover of Bo Diddley’s oddly jaunty 1961 single “Pills” on their 1973 debut album. While The Dolls – lead vocalist David Johansen, rhythm guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane, lead guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan (who…
Review: Otis Redding, “The Complete Stax/Volt Singles Collection”
Otis Redding was just 21 years of age when Volt Records issued his first single for the label, “These Arms of Mine” b/w “Hey Hey Baby,” in October 1962. The latter is a solid if unremarkable riff on rockabilly (“Hey, hey, pretty baby/Baby, you sure is fine…Every time I look at you/You drive me out of my mind!”) but the torrid, smoldering A-side reveals a singer-songwriter far older than his years. Otis Redding couldn’t have known then that he was living on borrowed time; he would, in fact, perish just five years…
Release Round-Up: Week of July 23
Otis Redding, The Complete Stax/Volt Singles (Shout! Factory) A triple-disc set featuring every one of Otis’ single sides in mono – a striking statement on a short but iconic soul career. (Amazon U.S.) Smashing Pumpkins, The Aeroplane Flies High: Deluxe Edition (Virgin/UMe) The Pumpkins’ 1996 box set of Mellon Collie-era singles is massively expanded, with bonus tracks on each of the five original discs and an unreleased live CD and DVD. CD box: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. LP box: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. Dionne Warwick, second wave of expanded reissues (Rhino/WEA Japan) This week, 11 Dionne Warwick…
Stax, Motown, Chess Go Country with Second Volume of “Where Country Meets Soul”
Ace’s first volume of Where Country Meets Soul arrived late last year, proving that those two venerable genres intersect more often than one might think. After all, many of the most enduring records in both styles revolve around the vagaries of heartbreak, so the fine folks at Ace’s Kent imprint brought together 23 tracks from artists well-versed in the torrid ways of love: Solomon Burke (“He’ll Have to Go”), Percy Sledge (“Take Time to Know Her”), Clarence Carter (“Set Me Free”), Esther Phillips (“I Saw Me”), Al Green (“I’m So Lonesome I…
Jerry Lee Lewis, The Ronettes, Del Shannon, Louis Armstrong Feature On “The London American Label 1964”
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 1956 and 1964) may be the most…
Otis Gets Respect with “Complete Stax/Volt Singles” Set
It’s shaping up to be a soulful summer with the release of Otis Redding’s The Complete Stax/Volt Singles Collection on Shout! Factory Records. This triple-disc set will feature every single side released by Redding in life and death. Born in Georgia, Redding was a singer/songwriter who went from stints on the chitlin circuit to a brief tenure in Little Richard’s band The Upsetters before a chance session at Stax Studios in Memphis put him on the soul music map. With songs like “These Arms of Mine,” “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and…
Release Round-Up: Week of March 5
Jimi Hendrix, People, Hell & Angels / The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced (200-Gram Mono Vinyl) / Axis: Bold As Love (200-Gram Mono Vinyl) (Experience Hendrix/Legacy) Not only does today see the release of a new posthumous Hendrix compilation, comprised of newly unearthed outtakes from the vaults, but the original mono mixes of his first two LPs (including both U.S. and U.K. editions of Are You Experienced) make their first appearances on vinyl since their initial releases. Read Joe’s review of People, Hell & Angels here! People, Hell & Angels CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. People, Hell &…
Review: Otis Redding, “Lonely and Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding”
Please, let me sit down beside you…I’ve got something to tell you, you should know… From the very first elongated cry of “please,” Otis Redding’s voice drips with pain, the kind of pain rendered impossible to keep underneath the surface. The singer of “I Love You More Than Words Can Say” pleads, prods and cajoles, all the while at an utter loss. This woman who haunts him, who lingers in his mind, seemingly can’t understand the depth of his affections. Yet we the listeners certainly can feel the depth of Redding’s well…
Otis Redding’s “Deepest Soul” Explored on New Concept Album
When is a lost album not a lost album? In the case of Lonely and Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding, the answer is, “when the album has been created in 2013 to look, sound and feel like a Stax/Volt release from almost five decades prior!” On March 5, Stax and Concord Records will release this newly-created concept album of the late soul shouter’s most torrid ballads on both CD and a special blue vinyl LP. Compilation producer David Gorman set out with one goal in mind: “to find the saddest,…
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Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention
September 25, 2026
