With his long mane of white hair, Edgar Winter has long cut one of the most striking profiles in rock. Like his older brother Johnny, Texas-born Edgar was steeped in the blues. Emerging onto the scene with the 1970 Epic album Entrance, Winter fused blues with many of the styles with which he would become known, including rock, pop, soul, and jazz. Funk and even disco would come later, but one thing remained constant in whatever genre Edgar Winter was recording: virtuosic musicianship. A
For his first live album, the 1978 double-LP Back to the Bars, singer/songwriter/sonic auteur Todd Rundgren returned to his roots with a collection of lean, tight, intimate performances recorded in the clubs of New York, Los Angeles, and Cleveland. This was Rundgren at his most accessible, playing his most universally beloved songs over his first decade of music-making, with a band including Utopia veterans Mark "Moogy" Klingman, John Siegler, and Willie Wilcox, plus his old friends from
Cherry Red has recently collected up the albums of two very different artists from the 1970s as compact clamshell box sets. The label's Hear No Evil Recordings imprint is taking listeners on a Joy Ride with four Epic solo albums from guitar great Rick Derringer, while 7Ts Records has expanded editions of five Dawn albums from the group Mungo Jerry as The Dawn Albums Collection. Joy Ride: Solo Albums 1973-1980 follows the release earlier this year of The Blue Sky Albums from Rick's band
Cherry Red Records has recently continued its series of "complete albums"-style box sets with a set from Derringer on its Hear No Evil Recordings imprint, and a continuation of the Hawkwind story from its Atomhenge imprint. Guitarist/songwriter/producer Rick Derringer has one of the most enviable C.V.s in all of rock and roll - as lead singer of The McCoys' classic oldie "Hang On, Sloopy," as writer of the hit "Rock 'n' Roll Hoochie Koo," as producer of "Weird Al" Yankovic's beloved parodies
Holland-Dozier-Holland: The Complete 45s Collection: Invictus/Hot Wax/Music Merchant 1969-1977 (Harmless) The H-D-H compositions/production didn't stop after the trio left Motown; they in fact created several labels and did an awful lot of work for them, as evidenced by this massive eight-disc box set of their works for three labels through the late '60s and '70s. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) KISS,