Following on from the phenomenal success of the recent “Italo House” and “Remixed With Love” compilation plus more Joey Negro compiled albums including “GoGo Get Down”, “Backstreet Brit Funk”, “Destination Boogie” and the ever popular Soul of Disco series Z Records continues to release high quality compilations filled with lesser known disco, funk and boogie.
Paavo Berglund (1929-2012) recorded the complete symphonies of his great compatriot Sibelius no fewer than three times. This set, central in every respect, was made in the 1980s with the Helsinki Philharmonic. Berglund, a former music director of the Helsinki Philharmonic, was renowned internationally as a master interpreter of Sibelius’s extraordinary music. In Gramophone’s words, he conducted it “with an unhurried, controlled inevitability that allows the music to unfold in its own time without any loss of tension or excitement”.
Fortepiano phenomenon Kristian Bezuidenhout begins his multi-volume traversal of Mozart’s music for solo keyboard.
With the exception of the late Amos Milburn, all of the artists presented here have proved to be survivors. None of them is young any more and each has suffered years if not decades of neglect and hardship. But on the brighter side, Charles Brown and Floyd Dixon are now receiving the sort of recognition and honours that equal and perhaps in some ways surpass the fame they enjoyed in their heyday. As for H-Bomb Ferguson, bis own resurgence has ensured that his wigs are made from the best materials.
Ah, Beale Street. lf you‘re into the blues, there are locations that conjure with the imagination. In Chicago, it‘s Maxwell Street, in Detroit, Hastings Street, in Los Angeles, Central Avenue. But for longevity and romance, incident and especially music, most bluesfans would set their feet on Beale Street‘s weaving sidewalk in any decade between the 20s and the 50s. Not that many white people did until the latter decade, for the area was as lawless as it was libidinous. Authorities left Beale Streeters to their own devices, sending in the wagons after dawn to clear away the bodies accrued from another night‘s misadventures…..
Rhino's first box set of doo wop classics was obviously successful enough to bring about a second, four-CD set. This time around, with all of the hits covered on the first box, the compilers have dug deep into the genre's history to put together a selection of some of the music's great sides, lesser-known hits, and rarities.