"rock Instrumentals"

Various Artists - 20 Original Debut-Albums by 20 Rock & Roll Stars (2015) {10 CD Box Set Documents 600222 rel 1956-1960}
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© 1956-60, 2015 Documents / The Intense Media | 600222
Rock & Roll / Rock / Early R&B / Rockabilly / Honky Tonk

This 10 CD box contains the debut albums by twenty rock 'n' roll stars, including Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Wanda Jackson, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and others. 246 songs in total from 1950 to 1960. It's a first-class collection of ballads, boogies, instrumentals, Rockabilly and Twist, from a fascinating array of rock 'n' roll's most influential artists.

Rhino closes its five-volume rock instrumentals series with an 18-track outing devoted to surf guitar. This fast-paced, prickly, and frequently exciting form may not be among the most diversified structurally, but if does offer some surging playing from its practitioners. They range from founding father Dick Dale to its most popular bands, the Surfaris, Belairs, Ventures, and Chantays. While not particularly a hardcore surf collection, this disc certainly outlines its virtues, and the tunes were long enough to display guitar proficiency, but short enough to prevent self-indulgence and repetition.

The most consistently enticing disc in the Rock Instrumental Classics series, this is both a great party and driving record and a window on the rhythms that powered soul music in the '60s (and early '70s, in two cases). In addition to some obvious choices (the four Booker T. & the MG's tracks, the Mar-Keys' "Last Night"), it also offers some left-field picks, such as the varied approaches to Latin music offered by Ray Barretto, Mongo Santamaria, and El Chicano. The stock of virtuoso performances here is all but endless: the bass-and-drums breakdown on Cliff Nobles and Co.'s "The Horse," the glinting guitar solo on the Bar-Kays' "Soul Finger," Hugh Masekela's questing trumpet on "Grazing in the Grass".

The four-disc set Surf-Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals 1959-1966 plays like the flip side to Rhino's classic surf music box set Cowabunga!, and for good reason: that set's co-producer, James Austin, helmed this project, and his passion and encyclopedic knowledge of surf music from its greats to its most obscure acts is a big part of what makes this collection such a thrill. Where Cowabunga! concentrated on surf's stars, Surf-Age Nuggets digs deep; for every song by Dick Dale, there are many more by lesser-known but just as devoted acts such as the Ramrods, the Telstars, the Mosriters, and the Elite U.F.O. (!).