Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there's plenty of great new/old music to float you into the weekend. It's a full '80s revival this week, including a rare Duran Duran track and some live cuts from Squeeze,and - whether you're ready for it or not - a batch of Christmas catalogue titles. Duran Duran, Ball and Chain (Tape Modern/BMG) (iTunes / Amazon) Duran Duran are back in a big way this fall, set
Since its initial 1961 releases produced by founder Creed Taylor, Impulse! Records has been synonymous with excellence in jazz. "The House That Trane Built" was stylish both in packaging (with its distinctive orange-and-black color scheme and exclamation point) and content, with a remarkable artist roster boasting not only John Coltrane but Charles Mingus, Ray Charles, Archie Shepp, Alice Coltrane, Quincy Jones, McCoy Tyner, Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson, Duke Ellington, Johnny Hartman, and Pharoah
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Reba McEntire, Rumor Has It: 30th Anniversary Edition (MCA Nashville) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Vinyl: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Exclusive Orange Vinyl: Wal-Mart Reba McEntire expands her 1990 album in a new anniversary edition with two bonus tracks on CD (an acoustic take of Bobbie Gentry's "Fancy" recorded at the Ryman Auditorium and a dance remix of the song by Dave Audé) and one on vinyl (the acoustic
Back in February, we reported on Blue Note Records' Tone Poet Reissue Series, a new initiative by label president Don Was and audiophile jazz expert Joe Harley that presents detailed vinyl reissues of Blue Note classics and overlooked titles from the label's 80-year history. Each title is an all-analog affair, mastered from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed onto 180-gram vinyl at RTI, then housed in deluxe gatefold packaging. The first titles - Wayne Shorter's Etcetera and
Cherry Red's Robinsongs imprint is turning up the Cool Heat with a new 2-CD, 25-track collection celebrating The Best of CTI Records and featuring many of the classic jazz label's most renowned artists including instrumentalists George Benson, Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, and Stanley Turrentine, and vocalists Nina Simone, Patti Austin, and Esther Phillips. Chances are, if you think of a jazz artist, it wouldn't take many degrees of separation to reach Creed Taylor. The esteemed producer
Earlier this year, Universal and Hip-o Select released a bold orange box set containing the first 6 LPs on the Impulse! label, all of which were produced by Creed Taylor. The ambitious producer didn't stay long at Impulse!, however, departing for the greener pastures of Verve, then A&M, where he founded his CTI label. Following a highly successful series of CTI albums under the A&M imprimatur, Taylor's mini-kingdom went the independent route and along the way practically defined the
Chances are, if you think of a jazz artist, it wouldn't take many degrees of separation to reach Creed Taylor. The esteemed producer began his career at Bethlehem Records overseeing a roster including Herbie Mann, Charles Mingus, Carmen McRae, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding. In 1956, he departed Bethlehem for ABC-Paramount, where in 1960 he launched the Impulse! label with artists like Johnson, Winding, Ray Charles and John Coltrane. It was at Impulse! that Taylor came into his own, emphasizing