Continuing their trawl through the vaults of Joe Ruffino's legendary New Orleans R&B labels Ric and Ron, Ace pairs the complete Ric and Ron recordings of Tommy Ridgley with the complete sides of the singer's friend and follower Bobby Mitchell. The reason they're paired on a single disc instead of showcased on an individual title is simple: by 2015 standards, neither cut enough material to fill out a CD. Ridgley came much closer than Mitchell, though. Between 1960 and 1963, he put out six singles on Ric, which amounts to a total of 16 songs, none of which saw much circulation outside of New Orleans due to Ruffino's preference not to license his singles to larger labels.
This four-CD set has the exact same music as an earlier Mosaic five-LP box, but is highly recommended to those listeners not already possessing the limited-edition set. Trumpeter Clifford Brown is heard on the most significant recordings from the first half of his tragically brief career. Whether co-leading a date with altoist Lou Donaldson, playing as a sideman with trombonist J.J. Johnson, interacting with an all-star group of West Coast players, or jamming with the first (although unofficial) edition of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (a two-disc live performance with a quintet that also includes the drummer/leader, Donaldson and pianist Horace Silver), Brown is the main star.
This four-CD set brings together all the recordings made during the period of the Hot Five and Hot Sevens along with all the attendant recordings that Armstrong was involved in during this breakthrough period. Although this material has been around the block several times before – and continues to be available in packages greatly varying in transfer quality – this is truly the way to go, and certainly the most deluxe packaging this material has ever received with the greatest sound retrieval yet employed.
It is no exaggeration to call Little Walter the Jimi Hendrix of the electric harp: he redefined what the instrument was and what it could do, pushing the instrument so far into the future that his music still sounds modern decades after it was recorded. Little Walter wasn't the first musician to amplify the harmonica but he arguably was the first to make the harp sound electric, twisting twitching, vibrant runs out of his instrument; nearly stealing the show from Muddy Waters on his earliest Chess recordings; and so impressing Leonard Chess that he made Muddy keep Walter as his harpist even after Waters broke up his band. Chess also made Walter into his studio's house harpist and started to release Little Walter solo records with the instrumental "Juke" in 1952. "Juke" became a smash hit and turned Little Walter into a star, making him a steady presence on the '50s R&B charts.
It's a wonderful treat to find an album whose interest rests equally on its musical as well as historical merits. As such, the present two-disc sets of the complete Rachmaninoff concertos and Paganini Rhapsody cannot be beat. The three pianists heard here – Richter, Zak, and Oborin – represent the pinnacle of postwar Russian pianists. Richter is most likely the one still known to the majority of American listeners. But Zak (who was immensely influential not only as a performer but as a pedagogue) and Oborin (who was the first winner of the Chopin Competition) were recognized equally during their lifetimes. All three had a profound and obvious command of Rachmaninoff, and the performances heard here clearly demonstrate this fact.
The Complete Album Collection Vol. One is a forty-seven disc box set released on November 4, 2013 by Bob Dylan. It includes thirty-five albums released between 1962 and 2012, six live albums, and a compilation album unique to the set, Side Tracks, which contains previously released material unavailable on regular studio or live albums…
Del Shannon’s formidable hit list qualifies him as one of the truly great artists of the 1960s. Del made #1 on both sides of the Atlantic with his first 45, ‘Runaway’, and for the next few years he delivered the chart goods again and again with some of the best singles ever made – most of which he wrote or co-wrote. This new Ace set is, we believe, the first to present Del’s UK 45s, as released between 1960 and 1966, in the order they appeared here and in the same couplings used on the original London and Stateside pressings (which often differed from their US counterparts).