1952 Season

Charlie Walker - Pick Me Up On Your Way Down (1999) {5CD Set, Bear Family BCD15852EI rec 1952-1971}
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© 1952-71, 1999 Bear Family Records | BCD 15852 EI
Honky-Tonk / Hillbilly /Country / Country-Pop / Nashville Sound

The hillbilly shuffle and the honky tonk song are still the cornerstones of real country music. Some pioneers, like Ray Price, are getting their due these days, but others, like Charlie Walker, tend to be overlooked.
The facts are these: Charlie Walker's early hits, like Who Will Buy The Wine, Pick Me Up On Your Way Down, Wild As A Wildcat, and Little Ol' Winedrinker Me are simply as good as it gets when it comes to heartbreakin', cheatin', beerhall country music and state-of-the-art hillbilly shuffles. The 154 sides represented in this five-CD collection chronicle the development of Charlie Walker's style from his earliest recordings in 1952 for Imperial Records to his classic sides for Columbia and Epic Records.

Maria Callas - Callas At La Scala (1955) {Warner Classics 0825646340125 rel 2014}
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© 1955, 2014 Warner Classics | 0825646340125
Classical / Opera / Soprano

Callas first sang at Milan’s legendary La Scala for the opening of the 1951–1952 season (in Verdi’s I vespri siciliani) and she became closely identified with the theatre, notably in productions directed by Luchino Visconti and his protégé Franco Zeffirelli. Spontini’s La vestale was staged for her there in 1954, Bellini’s La sonnambula in 1955, and her final La Scala performances came in 1962 with Cherubini’s Medea. ‘This wonderful record gives us … Callas at her most spell-binding and enthralling,’ wrote Gramophone. ‘Callas at La Scala … shows the diva at her most exciting and most beautiful.’

John Cage - Complete Piano Music, Vols. 1-10 - Steffen Schleiermacher (2004) {18CD Set MDG 613 1731-2 rec 1997-2002}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.95 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 2.73 Gb
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© 1997-2002, 2004 Musikproduktion Dabringhaus Und Grimm | MDG 613 1731-2
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Piano

Steffen Schleiermacher's monumental traversal of the complete piano music of John Cage will be essential for the collection of any fan of the composer's, unless he or she has already purchased the previously released ten volumes (a total of 18 discs) that are boxed together here and reissued in recognition of the composer's 100th anniversary in 2012. The 20-hour compilation is a testimony to Cage's hugely prolific output, and certainly constitutes one of the most significant collections of keyboard music of the 20th century. There could hardly be a more sympathetic and skillful interpreter of Cage's oeuvre than German pianist/composer Steffen Schleiermacher.

Dancer, actor, and singer Fred Astaire worked steadily in various entertainment media during nine decades of the 20th century. The most celebrated dancer in the history of film, with appearances in 31 movie musicals between 1933 and 1968 (and a special Academy Award in recognition of his accomplishments in them), Astaire also danced on-stage and on television (garnering two Emmy Awards in the process), and he even treated listening audiences to his accomplished tap dancing on records and on his own radio series. He appeared in another eight non-musical feature films and on numerous television programs, resulting in an Academy Award nomination and a third Emmy Award as an actor. His light tenor voice and smooth, conversational phrasing made him an ideal interpreter for the major songwriters of his era, and he introduced dozens of pop standards, many of them written expressly for him, by such composers as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Arthur Schwartz, Harry Warren, and Vincent Youmans.