Dorothy Dorothy

No matter where Big Daddy Wilson travels on this big, beautiful, mixed-up planet of ours, he takes the South with him. Listening to the soulful storytelling of the man born Wilson Blount in a small town in the Inner Banks region of North Carolina, it's impossible not to conjure images of dusty back roads, cypress groves, a Saturday night juke joint or Sunday morning revival meeting. It's a nostalgic and – some might say – glorified image of rural America. Yet in an age of ruthless demagogues and divisive politics, Big Daddy Wilson chooses to celebrate the simple things that bond us as human beings – a smile, a shared meal, a helping hand – along with cherished values like faith, perseverance and devotion to family. For more than two decades, he has been carrying his message of hope and unity to each and every show, whether in New York, Paris, Auckland or – in the case of his new live album Songs From The Road – the village of Rubigen in central Switzerland.

The third and final collaboration between flutist Bobbi Humphrey and Larry Mizell also marked the end of Humphrey's five-album run with Blue Note Records. Humphrey began recording with Larry and his brother Fonce (who provides arrangements and plays clavinet and trumpet here) in the aftermath of Donald Byrd's Black Byrd, the collaborative jazz-funk effort that resulted in a massively successful (and influential) commercial breakthrough for the trumpeter and the label. While not as well known as her Blacks and Blues album, her stellar debut with the pair from 1973, Fancy Dancer is every bit its aesthetic equal.

Filling in a gap in Frank Sinatra's history, Legacy's 2015 box A Voice on Air collects over 100 radio broadcasts recorded between 1935 and 1955. This is the first collection to chronicle this era – over 90 of its 100 tracks are previously unreleased – and it's pulled from a variety of sources, including the Sinatra estate's vaults, the Library of Congress, and the Paley Center for Media, each strand assisting in sterling re-creations of original broadcasts from Frank's bobbysocks days, World War II, and the nascent saloon singer of the '50s. Sinatra wound up singing some of these songs in the studio but not necessarily in these arrangements, a wrinkle that would be tantalizing enough but a good portion of A Voice on Air is devoted to songs he only sang on the air.

RCO - Anthology of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Volume 4, 1970-1980 (2006) {14CD Box Set, RCO 06004} (Complete Artwork)
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 5.16 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 2.42 Gb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 362 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1970-80, 2006 Radio Netherlands Music / RCO LIve | RCO 06004
Classical / Orchestral

Naturally, this 14-disc set of live recordings of the Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1970 through 1980 is only for the hardest of hardcore collectors. Who else would be interested in a collection that mixes Beethoven with Boulez, Baird and Berio, Tchaikovsky with Lutoslawski, Ginastera and Caplet, Rachmaninov with Reger, and Martin and Walton? But for the hardest of the hardcore, this set will be filled with delights. Where else could one find Karel Ancerl's suave account of Haydn's "Oxford" Symphony, Eugen Jochum's sweet account of Reger's Serenade in G major, Kiril Kondrashin's thrilling account of Sibelius' En Saga, Elly Ameling's seductive account of Berg's Der Wein, or Paul Badura-Skoda's evocative account of Martin's Second Piano Concerto?