60's Kitsch

Five CD box set containing a quintet of their albums housed together in an attractive slipcase: Chicago Transit Authority (1969), Chicago II (1970), Chicago V (1972), Chicago VI (1973) and Chicago VII (1974). While Chicago are oft remembered as a Pop/Rock hit making machine, their musical roots were Jazz-oriented and this quintet of albums features the band blending their commercial sensibilities with their excellent Jazz/Rock musicianship

Carole King - A Natural Woman: The Ode Collection 1968-1976 (1994) {2CD Set, Epic–Legacy E2K 48833}
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© 1968-76, 1994 Ode / Epic / Legacy / Sony Music | E2K 48833
Pop / Contemporary Pop / Soft Rock / Singer-Songwriter / Adult Contemporary

Carole King had already written an enormous amount of pop classics by the time she began her solo career in earnest in the late '60s. With her second album, Tapestry, King became one of the most popular and artistically successful singer/songwriters of the early '70s. King never matched the consistent brilliance of Tapestry, yet managed to record many fine songs during the rest of the decade. A Natural Woman collects all of her finest moments over the course of two discs. Tapestry is included in its entirety, along with the highlights from her other albums, making A Natural Woman the one essential King album – apart from Tapestry itself, of course.

Though John Barry achieved popular recognition for the swinging, loungey, noir-ish soundtracks he composed for the James Bond films, he moved to the front rank of film composers with his score for 1966's BORN FREE. Stylistically, the music of BORN FREE is miles removed from Barry's Bond soundtracks, though the composer's fondness for brass fanfares, stirring strings, and lush, intricate charts with stunning dynamic range is still intact. On the whole, however, the music to BORN FREE has a playful, innocent quality, evoking the nature of the wild animals at the film's center. As the movie is set in Africa, Barry employs a range of African percussion instruments, and sections of flute music (which often seem to echo the sounds of birds or other creatures). The arrangements are expansive and sweeping, giving rise to the sensation of open plains, and Barry's recurring musical themes parallel the film's action (the track titles indicate plot events). The score is, for the most part, surprisingly subdued, with occasional bursts of energy (mirroring tumultuous events onscreen) and its stirring title theme the exceptions. Barry won an Academy Award for the score in 1966.

After the surprise success of 1962's Dr. No, the producers of the budding James Bond series began to establish what would become its trademark elements, with its debonair anti-hero frolicking libidinously through increasingly amped-up foreign intrigue and exotic locales. Musically, this soundtrack represents perhaps their most crucial decision: hiring band leader/budding composer John Barry as scorer. Abandoning the first film's calypso kitsch for an orchestra powered cocktail of elegance and jazzy sophistication, Barry immediately gave the Bond saga a focused musical language that would become arguably its most consistent element over the decades and amidst a revolving series of lead actors and increasingly improbable cinematic predicaments. While anchored by a medley that includes Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme," this soundtrack also introduced another longstanding Bond tradition, the pop-ballad title track/single, here penned by Lionel Bart and sung with urgent conviction by British crooner Matt Munro. This digitally remastered new edition features new liner notes, as well as artwork and stills from the film.

Various Artists - Hillbillies In Hell: Country Music's Tormented Testament 1952-1974 - Tribulations (2019) {OMNI - 198}
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© 1952-74, 2019 The Omni Recording Corporation | OMNI - 198
Country / Folk / World Music / Gospel / Hillbilly

Deep in the woods this smokey catalog of Nashville icons and hayseed misfits births 'Hillbillies In Hell: Tribulations' - a subterranean collection of deathly Nephilim, swampy graves, teenaged suicidal ideation, tormented Gospel tales, grisly mountain murders, craven lustmords, Apocalyptic visions and problematic parenting. Often originally waxed on microscopic labels and distributed in minuscule amounts, these troubled and sometimes forgotten troubadours sing of lustful homicides, masonic assassinations and Satan's perpetual slaves. Years in the making - 'Hillbillies In Hell: Tribulations' presents 32 testaments of timeless tribulations - sinful succubi, axe-wielding cuckolds, vengeful Hill-folk and the eternal quest for blistered redemption.

Although not the owner of conventional high-level vocal skills, Bardot invested her frivolous songs with a contagious sense of playful fun, and a refusal to take the music or herself too seriously. Certainly some of the tunes – and their breathy delivery – capitalize on her iconic sex kitten persona. But the guileless joy she projects is reminiscent of some of the early work by France Gall (one of the finest '60s French pop singers), though Bardot's voice is less girlish and more adult in tone.