Rufus Thomas - The Second Disc

Release Round-Up: Week of August 8

August 8, 2025 by The Second Disc | 6 Comments

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. America, Hearts: 50th Anniversary Edition (Omnivore) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Omnivore) Omnivore Recordings is reissuing, remastering, and expanding America’s Hearts, featuring “Sister Golden Hair,” “Daisy Jane,” and “Woman Tonight,” for its 50th anniversary. This new edition adds six bonus cuts to the original album’s dozen tracks. Five of these are unreleased alternate versions and mixes of songs from Hearts including a unique arrangement of Bunnell’s “People in the Valley,”…

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Release Round-Up

Formats:

Blu-Ray Audio, CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

Genres:

Classic Rock, Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock

Tags:

America, Better Than Ezra, Bill Pitcock IV, Booker T. and the MG's, Carla Thomas, Chicago, Dwight Twilley, Fleetwood Mac, Lou Bond, Odyssey, Rufus Thomas, Traci Lords, William Bell

You Can’t Sit Down: Craft Offers Rare Memphis Soul in Concert on ‘Stax Revue: Live in ’65!’

June 12, 2025 by Mike Duquette | 2 Comments

The Southern soul of Stax Records truly knew no boundaries. This summer, a classic instance of its staying power, recorded live in concert, will be revisited on a new 2CD/2LP set. Stax Revue: Live in ’65! expands a pivotal pair of concerts undertaken at the 5-4 Ballroom in Los Angeles 60 summers ago when the Memphis label – newly bolstered by a distribution deal with Atlantic Records – took several of its marquee acts to the West Coast (many for the first time) for a spirited club set packed with favorites by…

Categories:

News

Formats:

CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

Genres:

R&B/Soul

Tags:

Booker T. & The MG's, Carla Thomas, David Porter, Rufus Thomas, William Bell, Wilson Pickett

I’m Dreaming of a “Stax Christmas”: New Collection Brings Together Holiday Favorites from Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Staple Singers, More

September 25, 2023 by The Second Disc | 2 Comments

‘Tis the season to be soulful: This Friday, September 29, Craft Recordings and Stax Records will celebrate the holidays with the CD, LP, and digital release of A Stax Christmas. This festive 12-track compilation features songs by the label’s most beloved artists including two previously unreleased tracks from Carla Thomas and Otis Redding. The venerable Memphis label has had a long association with the music of Christmas. House band Booker T. and The MG’s 1966 album In the Christmas Spirit is a holiday perennial, and the group appeared alongside other Stax and…

Categories:

News

Formats:

CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

Genres:

Holiday, R&B/Soul

Tags:

Albert King, Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, The Emotions, The Rance Allen Group, The Staple Singers, Various Artists

Craft Recordings Plans Staggering Box of Stax Demos

April 27, 2023 by Mike Duquette | No Comments

How do you follow up an essential document like this year’s comprehensive Wattstax box set? If you’re Craft Recordings, you plan a trip deep into the unheard history of the legendary Memphis label, through dozens of demos released for the first time anywhere. Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos is an impressive 7CD anthology including 146 demo versions of enduring Stax hits and fan favorites, songs written by label songwriters that ended up elsewhere as well as a number of songs unveiled here for the first time. Only six of…

Categories:

News

Formats:

Box Sets, CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming

Genres:

Pop, R&B/Soul

Tags:

Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Rufus Thomas, Steve Cropper, The Newcomers, The Staple Singers, William Bell

The Living Word: New Box Sets Chronicle Wattstax in Full, 50 Years On

December 12, 2022 by Mike Duquette | 2 Comments

One of the greatest music festivals of the ’70s is getting celebrated with an exhaustive array of reissues in 2023: Wattstax, the multi-dimensional Los Angeles celebration of soul, funk, blues and gospel courtesy of Stax Records. A half-century after the premiere of a Golden Globe-nominated documentary on the star-studded 1972 event, Craft Recordings, custodian of the Stax catalogue, will release the most definitive looks at Wattstax, most recently addressed in a 3CD box set in 2003 that took the highlights of both double albums from 1973 and added even more material. Soul’d…

Categories:

News

Formats:

Box Sets, CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

Genres:

Blues, Comedy, Funk, Gospel, Pop, R&B/Soul, Soundtracks

Tags:

Albert King, Carla Thomas, David Porter, Eddie Floyd, Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, Kim Weston, Mavis Staples, Richard Pryor, Rufus Thomas, The Bar-Kays, The Emotions, The Staple Singers, William Bell

Cherry Red, SoulMusic Round-Up, Part Two: Barbara Lewis and Carla Thomas’ Complete Atlantic Recordings Collected

October 29, 2020 by Joe Marchese | 3 Comments

In recent weeks, Cherry Red’s SoulMusic Records imprint has launched a series of mini-box sets drawn from the Atlantic vaults including titles available now from Solomon Burke, Esther Phillips, Barbara Lewis, and Carla Thomas. Yesterday we explored the releases from Burke and Phillips, and today’s spotlight is on Lewis and Thomas! If she had only recorded “Hello, Stranger” and “Baby I’m Yours,” Barbara Lewis‘ place in the pop pantheon would have been assured. But there’s much more to her short discography than just those two big hits. Cherry Red and SoulMusic’s Don’t…

Categories:

News

Formats:

Box Sets, CD

Genres:

Pop, R&B/Soul

Tags:

Barbara Lewis, Carla Thomas, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas

Review: “Stax ’68: A Memphis Story”

October 29, 2018 by Joe Marchese | 2 Comments

Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” the first Stax single of 1968, should have been a new beginning for the artist and label. Instead, the posthumous release ushered in a tumultuous year for the Memphis institution. The death of Redding and members of The Bar-Kays on December 10, 1967 was a tremendous loss for Stax and popular culture, but no one could have predicted the upheaval that would affect Stax and the city of Memphis in the following twelve months. That time has just been chronicled in a new…

Categories:

Reviews

Formats:

Box Sets, CD

Genres:

R&B/Soul

Tags:

Albert King, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Sam and Dave, The Staple Singers, Various Artists, William Bell

Review: “Stax Singles Vol. 4: Rarities and the Best of the Rest”

March 6, 2018 by Joe Marchese | 1 Comment

Stax Records is rightfully renowned for its catalogue of deep southern soul straight from the heart of Memphis. But, like its famous Detroit competitor Motown, the label founded by Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton released music in a variety of sounds and styles. The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968 (released in 1991 and reissued by Rhino in 2016 was the first major archival box to begin to address the Stax legacy in record-by-record fashion. It was followed by The Complete Stax-Volt Soul Singles, Vol. 2: 1968-1971 (1993, reissued 2014) and The Complete Stax-Volt…

Categories:

News

Formats:

Box Sets, CD

Genres:

Country, Gospel, Pop, R&B/Soul

Tags:

Barbara Lewis, Big Star, Billy Eckstine, Carla Thomas, Delaney and Bonnie, Isaac Hayes, O.B. McClinton, Rufus Thomas, Various Artists

From Memphis To New Orleans: Ace Collects Stax, DeLuxe Rarities

February 25, 2016 by Joe Marchese | No Comments

Bring on the B-sides! Despite its title, the massive, indispensable box set The Complete Stax/Volt Singles 1964-1968 concentrated on A-sides, presenting only a fraction of the labels’ valuable flips. The box left many worthy B-sides overlooked in the CD era, but Ace Records’ Kent imprint has redressed that situation with the release of The Other Side of the Trax: Stax-Volt 45 RPM Rarities 1964-1968. All but one of the 24 tracks on this new compilation are all making their official CD debuts – which is even more unbelievable considering the caliber of…

Categories:

News, Reviews

Formats:

Genres:

R&B/Soul

Tags:

Carla Thomas, Dave Bartholomew, Isaac Hayes, Rufus Thomas, Various Artists, William Bell

Get Rhythm! Third Man Records Reissues Vintage Sun Singles

May 16, 2013 by Mike Duquette | No Comments

Though Jack White’s Third Man Records imprint is known for doing some wacky pressings of things on wax – take, for example, the opulent-even-for-the-jazz-age gold and platinum pressings of the soundtrack to the new film version of The Great Gasby – their latest series, just recently announced, should appeal to a wide swath of rock fans. Third Man is licensing material from the Sun Records discography to repress on vinyl. Sam Phillips’ Memphis label was, of course, a hotbed of activity for some of the best country, rock and soul acts of the…

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News

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Genres:

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Rufus Thomas, The Prisonaires, Vinyl

Review: Rufus Thomas, Shirley Brown and The Dramatics, “Stax Remasters” Series

September 22, 2011 by Joe Marchese | No Comments

When Stax Records severed its distribution deal with Atlantic in 1968, it was time to rebuild from the ground up. The entire back catalogue went to Atlantic, as did Sam and Dave’s contract. Gone was the “Stax o’wax” label logo; in its place was a new, finger-snapping Stax. The stewards of the Stax legacy at Concord Music Group have recently launched a series branded as Stax Remasters, and the three latest additions to the reissue program have arrived from Rufus Thomas, Shirley Brown and The Dramatics. Do the Funky Chicken, Woman to…

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News, Reviews

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Genres:

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Rufus Thomas, Shirley Brown, The Dramatics

Stax Remasters Continue with Thomas, Brown and The Dramatics (UPDATED 8/5 WITH TRACK LISTINGS)

August 5, 2011 by Joe Marchese | No Comments

While Berry Gordy was defining “The Sound of Young America” in Detroit, Jim Stewart, Estelle Axton and Al Bell were pioneering deep, gritty Southern soul in Memphis. To many, Motown and Stax were two sides of the same coin, both offering powerhouse R&B sounds that spoke directly to the country’s youth. Since acquiring Stax from Fantasy Records in 2004, Concord Music Group has relaunched Stax as an active concern with new artists and has introduced a number of healthy catalogue initiatives to celebrate the classic sounds of Stax, circa 1968-1975. (The majority…

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News

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Genres:

Tags:

Rufus Thomas, Shirley Brown, The Dramatics