Bobby Brown Bobby

Steamboats and BBQ, ice cream cones and Mardi Gras - are you ready to laissez les bons temps rouler with the "gateway" to the Grateful Dead? Meet us, won't you, in St. Louis for seven complete and previously unreleased Dead concerts that capture the heart of the band's affinity for the River City.

The album range from pop standards like Kurt Weill’s "Mack the Kinife" and Nat Cole’s "Straighten Up and Fly Right" to soul classics like Rev. Al Green’s "Love and Happiness" and Marvin Gaye’s "Sexual Healing". Speaking of "sex", Alexander lays down the funk on an extended "soul/yard meeting" of James Brown’s "Sex Machine". Speaking of special guests, in addition to the younger Cole, another famous son, John Pizzarelli, takes his turn at the mike for a Jamaican-tinged zephyr through Johnny Mercer’s "Summer Wind", and Kevin Mahogany does the honors for the Ray Charles classic "Hallelujah I Love Her So". That is not to say that this is strictly a standards and soul album, however. In tribute to his early cowboy heroes, Alexander opens the set with Cole Porter’s jaunty "Don’t Fence Me In", and in honor to the country he is now proud to call home, he closes with a triumphant build into "Battle Hymn of the Republic".

Entitled Recital, this disc compiles numbers from 1952 and 1954 which were recorded with various accompanists.

As he enters his third decade as one of Canada’s most celebrated blues artists, Shawn Kellerman continues to find new ways to play the music that has fuelled his creativity since his early teens. He’s taken another major step forward on his latest album, Kell’s Kitchen, a 14-track collection that highlights all of his influences, with his incendiary riffing tying it all together.

Clive Hunt’s Blue Lizzard is the first reggae instrumental album of its kind to come out of Jamaica since the heyday of Channel One and Joe Gibbs’ studios in the late 1970s and Rico Rodriguez’s influential Man From Wareika

Heavenly Cream An Acoustic Tribute To Cream features Ginger Baker, Cream lyricist the late Pete Brown, Free front man Paul Rodgers, Bernie Marsden, Joe Bonamassa, Bobby Rush, Malcolm Bruce (son of Jack Bruce), Debra Bonham, Maggie Bell and others.

Featured on drums is Joe Morello of Dave Brubeck fame, and top percussionists Bobby Christian and Gary Burton with some very tasty vibes work. Robert Wessberg is outstanding on tubaphone (a soft marimba-like instrument). Wessberg, incidentally, is the Schory band's number one percussionist on tour and a master of all percussion instruments. The orchestra is sizable with full brass and woodwind sections and everybody doubling like mad.