Al Atkins

It's tough to live down one's past, especially if that past incorporates one of music's biggest "coulda been a star" stories since Pete Best. Al Atkins has been trying to escape the shadow of Judas Priest, the band he formed in the late '60s, ever since the band took off to stardom without him, but it's been a rough road that even 2007's Demon Deceiver couldn't entirely smooth. For that solo set, his fifth, Atkins joined forces with Budgie guitarist Simon Lees, bassist Pete Emms, and drummer Mick Hales, with Diamond Head's Brian Tatler and Danté Fox's Mike De Jager among the guest support. The album was a self-financed/self-produced labor of love, and suffered somewhat from the lack of money and big-production values, but only some.

Though incredibly busy running RCA Victor's Nashville operation, Chet Atkins still found some time and enterprise to perform some musical experiments on his own. It was a simple idea, really, replacing the two lower strings on his electric guitar with the E and A strings from an electric bass, thus lowering the tone by an octave and creating a fuller balance. With this idea, Atkins' disarmingly easygoing fingerpicking facility threatened to put every bass player in Nashville out of business, but the so-called "Octabass Guitar" evidently wasn't pursued much further. Indeed, only on side one of this LP do listeners hear the new instrument on a series of mostly jazz and pop standards – including the newly minted Joe Zawinul soul/jazz vehicle "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy."

King’s College Choir are the most famous choir in the world. This 29-CD set of the complete Argo recordings celebrates David Willcocks’ tenure from 1957-1973 and includes some of the most beautiful choral music sung with the choir’s trademark richness and purity of sound. Six albums are released on CD for the first time – David Willcocks’ 1964 Festival of Lessons & Carols and Tye Masses and four albums from Boris Ord, Willcocks’ predecessor. Also includes works by Bach, Tallis, Haydn and others.

The year was 1947: World War II was over and there was music in the air, with Frank Sinatra making teenagers swoon. On other airways, primarily black radio stations, another, earthier music was being played which would become the foundation for what is now called rock & roll. Back then it was called the blues and rhythm & blues, and its voices had names like Wynonie Harris, Willie Dixon, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Among its musicians were Big Bill Broonzy, Hosea Sapp, and Thunder Smith. This CD is part of a series that chronicles the history of this music that was to have such an impact on rock & roll. This volume collects some of the great hits of 1947, when many baby boomers were born, who would go on to become the major supporters of the idiom…