Audio Fidelity

With 1971's Fragile having left Yes poised quivering on the brink of what friend and foe acknowledged was the peak of the band's achievement, Close to the Edge was never going to be an easy album to make. Drummer Bill Bruford was already shifting restlessly against Jon Anderson's increasingly mystic/mystifying lyricism, while contemporary reports of the recording sessions depicted bandmate Rick Wakeman, too, as little more than an observer to the vast tapestry that Anderson, Steve Howe, and Chris Squire were creating…

This was Jimmy's best selling album ever but the title is very misleading in that these are all studio recordings, not live recordings, which means they weren't recorded at Carnegie Hall, but the tracks are in the order he performed them at a Carnegie Hall concert one week prior to recording the first dozen in the studio of this double album. This is actually the first time all of the original master tapes of this album were used as the songs recorded in mono were on all previous issues in rechanneled stereo while the true stereo tracks on this disc have always been in true stereo on every release. Steve Hoffman searched high and low for the first generation tapes of each song on the album in the Vee Jay vaults and as a result, Audio Fidelity has issued the definitive release of the album. Audiophiles and casual blues fans who like quality sound must pick up this issue of Jimmy Reed At Carnegie Hall as it contains most of his biggest hits in the best possible quality sound due to the work of Steve Hoffman.

As the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) had done a year earlier, Super Session (1968) initially ushered in several new phases in rock & roll's concurrent transformation. In the space of months, the soundscape of rock shifted radically from short, danceable pop songs to comparatively longer works with more attention to technical and musical subtleties. Enter the unlikely all-star triumvirate of Al Kooper (piano/organ/ondioline/vocals/guitars), Mike Bloomfield (guitar), and Stephen Stills (guitar) - all of whom were concurrently "on hiatus" from their most recent engagements. Kooper had just split after masterminding the groundbreaking Child Is Father to the Man (1968) version of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Bloomfield was fresh from a stint with the likewise brass-driven Electric Flag, while Stills was late of Buffalo Springfield and still a few weeks away from a full-time commitment to David Crosby and Graham Nash…