Although Alberta Hunter, who had briefly come out of retirement, gets first billing on this CD reissue, in reality she shares the spotlight with two other veterans of the 1920s: Lucille Hegamin and Victoria Spivey. Each of the singers is featured on four songs apiece while backed by such top players as clarinetist Buster Bailey, trombonist J.C. Higginbottham, and Cliff Jackson or Willie "The Lion" Smith on piano. Hunter is in superior form on such numbers as "You Gotta Reap Just What You Sow" and "I Got a Mind to Ramble," although she would soon be out of music for another 15 years, continuing her work as a nurse. Hegamin (who had not recorded since 1932) was having a brief last hurrah, despite sounding good, and Spivey, reviving her "Black Snake Blues," would soon be launching her own Spivey label. This is a historic and enjoyable set recommended to both classic jazz and blues collectors.

If one were to compile a list of iconoclastic and innovative guitarists who came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, the list would have to include such names as Michael Hedges, Adrian Belew, David Torn and Steve Tibbetts. While Tibbetts is probably the least known of the four, his work is easily on par with that of the others. What makes Tibbetts unique among these is that he is equally prone to playing acoustic and electric guitars. He has released several all-acoustic albums, but most of his albums feature a good mixture of both, as well as judicious use of electronic effects and a heavy reliance on a variety of exotic and familiar percussive instruments. Safe Journey is all of the above in a nutshell.

Originally cut for the Japanese Baystate label and then later released by French RCA, this trio set by pianist Duke Jordan (with bassist Harry Memmery and drummer James Martin in Holland) differs from his usual recordings in putting an emphasis on blues, although not exclusively. Jordan performs six of his originals (including "No Problem," "Ben Sugar Blues," "Jordu" and "From Duke to Duke") plus "All the Things You Are," "C Jam Blues" and "St. Louis Blues." The classic bebop pianist's consistency holds up on this set (cut when he was 61), making the obscure LP worth searching for.

This is the second album of The Jamaica Boys - a Queens based funk trio. Although marketed in rap circles, The Jamaica Boys were really more of a fusion trio with composer/multi-instrumentalist Marcus Miller, drummer Lenny White, and singer Mark Stevens combining forces. They made pleasant music, and occasionally Miller would come up with an inspired riff. But the most distinctive thing about this album in retrospect was the fact that Stevens was Chaka Khan's brother.

Esoteric Recordings are pleased to release the classic lost album by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Strangelands. Recorded in the Autumn of 1969, the sessions were an attempt to resurrect the Crazy World by Arthur Brown and featured some classic material. Divided into four sub-headings, (The Country, The City, The Cosmos and The Afterlife), Strangelands was certainly ahead of its time but failed to gain a full release for nearly two decades. In hindsight, the material can be seen as the blueprint for Arthur s next project, the innovative Kingdom Come.
This Esoteric Recordings reissue also adds the legendary Replicas sessions by Rustic Hinge. Featuring Crazy World drummer Drachan Theaker and guitarist Andy Rickell, the project was originally intended to feature Arthur Brown as vocalist and also featured the legendary High Tide guesting on one track…

It is almost exactly a quarter of a century since Pierre Boulez recorded his complete Webern survey. This new collection, apart from being useful for anyone who doesn't want to buy three whole CDs of Webern, offers an interesting insight into how Boulez's way with a composer probably more central to him than any other has changed. For a start he gives him a little more time: most of the pieces here are slightly but significantly slower than they were in 1970. This allows lines to be more subtly moulded, phrases to acquire a touch more poise. This is not to say that Boulez has softened and now phrases Webern as though he were Chopin, but grace and even wit (the second movement of the Quartet) are now noticeable alongside his customary precision. The Ensemble InterContemporain have been playing these pieces constantly since they were first founded, and it shows in the absolute assurance of their performances.

The 1970s saw a plethora of great funk and jazz albums that for somewhat mystifying reasons have failed to be reissued. Sitting at home one night it occurred to me that we had better get a move on and get them out. With this in mind we are launching BGP Funk and Soul Classics: long out-of-print albums on CD featuring the very best mastering, great packaging and some nifty sleeve notes to let you know where the album fits into the scheme of things. Our first batch of releases come from the extensive catalogue of Fantasy Records and feature a host of albums that are sought after by collectors the world over.

CD Review: Modern Jazz Quartet, Original Album Series: Pyramid, Third Stream Music, The MJQ & Orchestra, Lonely Woman, The Sheriff.
(Warner Jazz 8122797197. CD Review by Alison Bentley)
‘…all that Bach stuff.’ Modern Jazz Quartet vibes-player Milt Jackson often complained about having to play the band’s distinctive jazz counterpoint, according to their bassist, Percy Heath. In this 5-CD mid-period box set, the chord sequences and cadences are often Bach-like, but the improvising is pure bebop: Lewis and Jackson met in Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, drummer Connie Kay worked with Miles and Lester Young, and Heath with Charlie Parker.

Two CD collection from the French vocalist. Gall arrived on the music scene in the early '60s and achieved her first major success in 1965. In the decades that followed, her musical career rose to new heights, especially her collaborations with husband (and songwriter) Michel Berger.

The seventh album from Charley Crockett is perhaps even more potent proof of his literal heartbreak than the scar on his chest. After undergoing open heart surgery that saved his life, Charley says he considered calming down for “just a minute” but once he recovered he did just the opposite. He states boldly with one eyebrow raised, “I wanted to make an album that would change the entire conversation about country music.” That album is Welcome to Hard Times, an aptly-named collection that perfectly fits these troubled days even though it was made just before the pandemic hit. The music was shaped by his heart issues and producer Mark Neill’s desire to make “a dark gothic country record.” Charley certainly knew how to deliver that.

Beauty & Crime is the seventh studio album by singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. It is her first album of new material since 2001's Songs in Red and Gray and her first for Blue Note Records. It was released on July 17, 2007. Beauty & Crime won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, on February 11, 2008. On Beauty & Crime, Suzanne Vega's Blue Note Records debut, the Manhattan native uses New York City as the backdrop for a collection of eleven new songs that juxtapose acoustic guitar-driven melodies with coolly synthesized beats; intensely personal lyrics with compelling, short story-like narratives; images of today's scarred cityscape with memories of Vega's old Upper West Side 'hood and Lower East Side haunts. The past commingles with the present, the public with the private, familiar sounds with the utterly new, just like the city itself. Making her first new studio album in six years, Vega says, "I feel like I really stretched my limits. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone–to sing in keys I wouldn't have sung in before, to work with different textures, to be unafraid of doing what ever sounded good to me. I wanted to make a modern classic."

Fabulous guitar in name and fabulous guitar in sound; along with a carefully selected repertoire, which shows off a refined panorama of the Flamenco toque offering an intelligent variety of genres for this his first full length album as a solo artist. The titles of the tracks selected show his great connection to the land, offering us a selection of the fundamental styles of the Flamenco geography: ‘Triana’, ‘Cádiz’, ‘Punta Umbría’, ‘Jerez’, ‘La Unión’, ‘La Caleta’ and ‘El Tajo’. Recorded when Paco was just 19, in addition to the use of the Flamenco techniques of the time (reverb, echo, etc.), here there is a superb sense of the compass of Flamenco, a fabulous right hand technique (thumb, alzapua, strumming), dizzying picados and perfect legato of the left hand.

After two late-'60s albums on Columbia, Johnny Winter hit his stride in 1970 working with Rick Derringer and the McCoys, now recruited as his sidemen and collaborators (and proving with just about every note here how far they'd gotten past "Hang on Sloopy"). In place of the bluesy focus on his first two albums, Winter extended himself into more of a rock-oriented mode here, in both his singing and his selection of material. This was hard rock with a blues edge, and had a certain commercial smoothness lacking in his earlier work. Derringer's presence on guitar and as a songwriter saw to it that Winter's blues virtuosity was balanced by perfectly placed guitar hooks, and the two guitarists complemented each other perfectly throughout as well.

When We'll Be Together Again was recorded in 1976, a 31-year-old Pat Martino was four years away from being operated on for the brain aneurysm that would wipe out his memory. The Philadelphia guitarist was also very much at the height of his creative powers - a fact that's hard to miss on this excellent session. Forming an intimate duo with electric pianist Gil Goldstein, Martino is at his most introspective on sparse interpretations of the standards "You Don't Know What Love Is" and "Willow Weep for Me" as well as Henry Mancini's "Dreamsville," J.J. Johnson's "Lament," and Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns." Martino's lyricism was never more personal than it is on this album.

First 2,000 copies are numbered and pressed at Quality Record Pressing. Mastered from the original analog master tape.