'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
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
Producer-compiler Bob Stanley's last couple of compilations for Ace have placed him squarely within the 1970s. Earlier this year, Saint Etienne Present Songs for the Fountain Coffee Room (compiled by Stanley, Sarah Cracknell, and Pete Wiggs) conjured "the soundtrack for a bar in mid-'70s Los Angeles," or a St. Etienne-style spin on "yacht rock" with Stephen Bishop, Ned Doheny, Boz Scaggs, and Seals and Crofts among those featured. Stanley has followed Fountain Coffee Room up with a trip to a
Today, we're looking at another trio of recent releases from the team at Ace Records! If you missed Part One of our Ace Round-Up, click here! While The Beatles are no doubt Liverpool's most famous musical export, Merseyside - spanning 249 square miles (or 645 square kilometers) bordering Lancashire to the northeast, Greater Manchester to the east, Cheshire to the south and southeast, and The Irish Sea to the west - yielded an abundance of groups like The Cryin' Shames, Gerry and The
SoulMusic Records has recently brought together the five Columbia/ARC albums of the beloved R&B trio The Emotions on one 3-CD set with a selection of eight bonus tracks. Don't Ask My Neighbors: The Columbia/ARC Recordings (1976-1981) has Flowers (1976), Rejoice (1977), Sunbeam (1978), Come Into Our World (1979), and New Affair (1981) in one clamshell case. Sisters Sheila, Wanda and Jeanette Hutchinson first recorded on the small Brainstorm and Twin Stacks labels before receiving national
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Here's what arriving today, August 23. Elvis Presley, American Sound 1969 (RCA/Legacy) (Amazon U.S.) The Elvis 1969 celebration continues! In January of that year, Presley and his band began sessions with producer Chips Moman at American Sound Studios in Memphis, which resulted in his acclaimed From Elvis In Memphis album and its lead single "In the Ghetto." He also laid down such iconic songs as "Suspicious Minds," "Kentucky Rain,"
Rarely has a group's name been as befitting as that of The Emotions. Sisters Sheila, Wanda and Jeanette Hutchinson couldn't help but touch a wide spectrum of emotions with their spirited, soulful recordings. Blessed: The Emotions Anthology 1969-1985, released earlier this year on Cherry Red Group's Big Break Records imprint, is a deliciously comprehensive, 2-CD, 40-track collection drawing on the vaults of Stax/Volt, Columbia/ARC, Red Label and Motown to paint the fullest portrait of The
We have plenty of news coming your way from Big Break Records as the Cherry Red soul specialists have closed out 2013 and already announced plans for 2014 in a big way. Before we dive into recent releases from Joe Bataan, The Salsoul Orchestra, Chris Jasper and Herbie Mann, we wouldn’t want you to miss two recent disco-flavored releases from The Emotions and Foxy! The BBR label welcomes The Emotions, appropriately enough, with the R&B girl group’s 1979 album entitled Come Into Our World.
A new compilation of music from Stax Records is coming courtesy of a most interesting source: rapper/producer/actor/director RZA of The Wu-Tang Clan. The man born Robert Fitzgerald Diggs has rarely slowed down in the 20 years since Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) was released in the winter of 1993. Besides producing most of his group's early records and solo projects (including ODB's Return to the 36 Chambers, GZA's Liquid Swords, Method Man's Tical and Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...),