2022 07 21 Pick Me Up

After she mixed post-bop, soul-jazz, and jazz-funk with nimble ingenuity over three albums for the Prestige label, Patrice Rushen moved to Elektra, and with labelmates Donald Byrd, Lenny White, and Dee Dee Bridgewater extended the imprint's commercial reach while continuing to obscure the distinctions between jazz and R&B. Elektra VP Don Mizell promoted the term jazz fusion. Musician James Mtume referred to his similar approach as sophisti-funk. Whatever the category, Rushen was in the top tier. She continually moved forward as a keyboardist, vocalist, songwriter, arranger, and producer with the five LPs – Patrice and Pizzazz, which hit the Top Ten of the jazz chart, followed by Posh and the Top Ten R&B albums Straight from the Heart and Now – expanded and gathered for this boxed set.

Three CD set. 2022 instalment of Grapefruit's popular year-by-year overviews of the more melodic end of the early 70s UK progressive rock scene. A four-hour compilation featuring big hits, key album tracks, cult classics and rarities from 1973. 1973 was another significant year in British pop, with the recent arrival of glam inspiring many underground bands to adopt a more streamlined sound. That more song-based approach helped give the 1973 singles chart a new energy, with memorable 45s from Mott The Hoople, Manfred Mann's Earthband, Faces, Status Quo, Medicine Head and Nazareth.

Issued in 2020, ‘Bubblerock Is Here To Stay’ shone a spotlight on the lost and often murky world of early 70s British Pop, a scene largely controlled by old-fashioned, Denmark Street- based production/songwriting teams as the Rock world concentrated on the album market. Another four-hour 3CD set, ‘Bubblerock Is Here To Stay Volume Two’ treads the same neglected path to deliver more mouldy old dough from the era's backroom boys: crack songwriting teams (Cook/Greenaway, Carter/Lewis, Chinn/Chapman), hit-or-bust producers (Phil Wainman, Jonathan King), session singers (Tony Burrows, Sue And Sunny), and writers-turned-performers (Lynsey de Paul, Barry Blue, Phillip Goodhand- Tait).

Three CDs. Four-hour anthology of recordings that anticipated the late 70s Power Pop movement. Featuring Badfinger, Slade, The Move, Stealers Wheel, Pilot, Dave Edmunds, Brinsley Schwarz, Honeybus, The Kinks, The Who, etc. While the early 70s musical landscape in Britain was largely dominated by introspective singer/songwriters, Bubblegum Pop and underground Rock bands, a handful of acts bravely continued to pursue the classic mid-60s group sound. With the aid of increasingly sophisticated recording studios, they majored in crisp, muscular, hook-laden three-minute pop songs, bursting with chiming Rickenbacker guitars, irresistible choruses and Beatles/Beach Boys-inspired close harmonies. A few (Slade, Pilot, the ill-starred Badfinger) found commercial success, but the likes of Starry Eyed And Laughing, Shape Of The Rain and Octopus proved to be the right bands at the wrong time - too late for the British Invasion that had swept America in the mid-60s, too early to hitch a ride on the late 70s Power Pop bandwagon.

Sammi Smith sang soulful, melancholy country music. One of the highlights of Ace’s acclaimed “Choctaw Ridge” compilation earlier this year was her ‘Saunders’ Ferry Lane’, an eerie tale of doomed romance in a chilly backwater. Her low, distinctively husky voice was built for sad songs, and she has been described as country music’s Dusty Springfield. Compiled and annotated by Bob Stanley, “Looks Like Stormy Weather” is a collection built for winter nights.

British rock band formed in 1977 by Mark Knopfler, David Knopfler, John Illsley and Pick Withers. The group first split up in 1988 but reformed in 1991 and then disbanded again in 1995…