Revival: Live at Pookie's Pub is a thrilling previously unissued live recording of Elvin Jones’ quartet that captures the legendary drummer’s emergence as a bandleader at a little-known club in New York City where he had a weekly residency after leaving John Coltrane's band in the late 1960s. Featuring Joe Farrell on tenor saxophone, Billy Greene on piano, and Wilbur Little on bass, Revival was recorded between July 28-30, 1967, just two weeks after Coltrane died on July 17.
In early 1961, the 16-member Count Basie band lost a few key soloists (Billy Mitchell, Joe Newman, and Al Grey), but that did not slow them down. By June of that year they quite adequately reloaded. In fact, it could be said they were re-energized, and this live set at Birdland, the self-proclaimed "Jazz Corner of the World," provides proof of how great they continued to be. This CD reissue contains the original nine tracks, plus an additional eight more. There are repeats, but included are some restored piano intros that were previously edited out, and a correction on the misidentified jam "Discommotion."
Ella Fitzgerald didn't lack for live recording opportunities in the late '50s, which on the surface, would make this first issue of a 1958 Chicago live club date an easy one to pass on. Verve label head Norman Granz recorded her often in the '50s with an eye to releasing live albums, which he did with her shows at Newport in 1957 and Los Angeles' Opera House in 1958 (not to mention another 1958 concert in Rome that was released 30 years later to wide acclaim). Those shows, however, differed widely from this one, which found her in front of a very small audience at Chicago's jazz Mecca Mister Kelly's (Sarah Vaughan's landmark At Mister Kelly's was recorded there four months earlier). Fitzgerald's artistry is basically a given in this situation, but much of the material recorded here was rare and obscure; "Your Red Wagon" had only been released as a single, her delightfully melodic "Across the Alley from the Alamo" never appeared elsewhere, and for a pair of Sinatra evergreens – "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" and "Witchcraft" – the former had never appeared, and the latter only appeared later, on a 1961 return to the site of her Berlin live landmark.
Recorded in February of 1978, this performance was only available as a bootleg until the folks at Shout! Factory expertly cleaned it up for an official release by going back to the original tapes and creating one of the best-sounding live ELP records on the market. The two-disc live set captures Emerson, Lake & Palmer at a crucial point in their careers: they were on their final tour, and though things would soon turn sour, these recordings show that on-stage they were still at the peak of their powers.
British rock legends Procol Harum are captured here at their finest in concert at London's Union Chapel. The band performed tracks from their latest album, The Well's on Fire, alongside many of their classics including Pandora's Box, Homburg, Conquistador, A Salty Dog, Quite Rightly So and the rarely heard full length version of A Whiter Shade of Pale. It was the last night of a tour that had taken them from London through Europe, Japan and North America then back again to London, and the band celebrated with a truly magical performance.
UMC and Island are reissuing Amy Winehouse At The BBC, originally released as a box set in 2012, and now available as a 3LP and 3CD. As the original product was predominantly a DVD release, this will be the first time that the two discs 'A Tribute To Amy Winehouse by Jools Holland' and 'BBC One Sessions Live at Porchester Hall' are available as audio-only and so a high proportion of the tracks will be new to DSPs, plus it is the first time the tracks are available on vinyl. The set features tracks from Later with Jools across the years, notably Amy's first performance on the show in 2003 with 'Stronger Than Me', as well as two performances from the Mercury Prize - Take The Box in 2004 and Love Is A Losing Game in 2007.