Today, we're taking a look at three recent releases from Demon Music Group's Edsel and Driven by the Music imprints! From the 1961 release of his first-ever single "Runaway," a chart-topper on both sides of the Atlantic, to the time of his death in 1990, Del Shannon was rock-and-roll royalty. Demon Music Group's Edsel label has been giving Shannon some long-overdue attention lately with a reissue of his final album, the posthumously-released Rock On! and with the announcement of an
We've already filled you in on Ace's recent anthology collecting works by Philly soul maestro Thom Bell; now we're looking to the American South with another release! Way back in 2012, Ace Records collected the multifaceted sounds of Chips Moman and Don Crews' American Studios on Memphis Boys: The Story of American Studios. The 24-song tribute collection featured such visitors to Memphis as Dusty Springfield, Wilson Pickett, B.J. Thomas, and Solomon Burke as well as Elvis Presley, one of the
As a member of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, Eddie Hinton played on countless recordings by the likes of Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, and Otis Redding. But there was another side of the guitarist that led Jerry Wexler to once proclaim him "the next big thing." Hinton was a persuasive performer and moreover, a fine songwriter. In collaboration with Donnie Fritts, he penned what's likely his most famous song: "Breakfast in Bed," first recorded by Baby Washington but made
For Alex Chilton, coping with the legacy of The Box Tops wasn’t always easy. As the band’s frontman – and future cult hero as leader of Big Star – once ruminated to the San Francisco Chronicle, “I guess my life has been a series of flukes in the record business. The first thing I ever did was the biggest record that I’ll ever have.” He was, of course, speaking of “The Letter,” the Wayne Carson Thompson song that opens Raven Records’ new 2-CD collection The Original Albums 1967-1969 containing
The Pretenders, 1979-1999 (Edsel) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) This mega-box features all of Edsel's expanded Pretenders reissues, totaling the band's eight Sire/Warner Bros. albums across 14 CDs and 8 DVDs (with six of the titles as 2-CD/1-DVD sets and two as 1-CD/1-DVD sets). Wow! All of the box set's albums are also available individually (see below)! All track listings and discography can be found here. The Pretenders, 1979-1999 individual CD/DVD reissues
Fleetwood Mac, Rumours: Expanded/Deluxe Editions (Warner Bros.) Ahead of the band's forthcoming tour, a new 4CD/1DVD/LP deluxe box set edition of their most popular album, featuring the original album on CD and vinyl, two discs of studio outtakes (including the one from the 2004 reissue) and an unreleased documentary. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) A three-disc edition collects the album and the two new bonus CDs, so if you own the last expansion and can live sans DVD, you can pick the rest up for
The latest wave of Playlist releases is almost here from Legacy Recordings, and the series dedicated to collecting “the hits plus the fan favorites” doesn’t look to disappoint. On January 29, Playlist volumes will be released for an eclectic cadre of artists in a variety of genres: vintage metal (Accept), traditional pop (Andy Williams), blue-eyed soul (The Box Tops), classic rock (Mountain, The Doobie Brothers, Harry Nilsson), country (Sara Evans, The Highwaymen), hip-hop (G. Love and Special
Just as we noted the box sets and other catalogue sets that were nominated for Grammys this year, we would also like to tip the hat to the recordings that were put into the Grammy Hall of Fame, as announced Monday. Thirty recordings, including nine LPs, have been added to a group that now includes 881 classic pieces of music. The oldest recordings on the list are two singles, "Dark Was the Night - Cold Was the Ground" by Blind Willie Johnson and "My Mammy" by Al Jolson (both released in 1927);
A potentially embarassing confession: it took the death of Big Star frontman Alex Chilton for me to realize just what I knew about him. I knew his name was the title of a Replacements song (thanks, Rock Band), I'd known of Big Star thanks to the justifiable hype over last year's box set from Rhino and I'd known a handful of his most famous, very solid compositions that he either wrote or popularized ("Thirteen," "The Letter," "In the Street") through inevitable cultural osmosis (thanks, That