Eight And a Half 1963

Having released no less than six charting Christmas albums during his career including one of the Top Ten selling Christmas albums of all time (1958 s Merry Christmas, which hit the Christmas charts 16 times!), Johnny Mathis has probably sold more Christmas records than any other artist in pop music history. And, with a half dozen releases to date on our Real Gone Music label, he is also by far our biggest selling pop vocalist. Add to that the fact that Christmas music is such a big part of what we do here at Real Gone and you can see why the chance to do a truly comprehensive collection of his Christmas music has been a glimmer in our eye ever since we started the label back in 2011. Now, after years of preparation, we are finally ready to release such a collection…and it s turned out even better than we d hoped!

The Beatles: The Collection was a vinyl box set of UK released Beatles LPs, remastered at half speed from the original stereo master recordings. Each album was pressed on virgin vinyl by the Victor Company of Japan (JVC) ensuring the best sound quality possible…

The Beatles: The Collection was a vinyl box set of UK released Beatles LPs, remastered at half speed from the original stereo master recordings. Each album was pressed on virgin vinyl by the Victor Company of Japan (JVC) ensuring the best sound quality possible…

At the heart of Courage: The Atlantic Recordings (2006) are the four out-of-print LPs that multi-instrumentalist Rufus Harley (bagpipes/flute/sax) cut for the label during the mid- to late 1960s. Also featured are a previously unissued cover of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" as well as "Pipin' the Blues," a Harley/Stitt duet from Sonny Stitt's Deuces Wild (1967) platter. Although criminally dismissed by many as a novelty, Harley successfully integrated the seemingly limited B flat and F drone of the bagpipes into the realm of (concurrently) modern jazz.

This admittedly pricey - but by all means mandatory - Grammy Award-winning box set is the final word on the "songbooks" recorded by Ella Fitzgerald between 1956 and 1964. The audio contents have been completely remastered and each title has been expanded - wherever possible - to include previously unissued material. In terms of packaging, the producers went to extreme lengths to create exact reproductions of all the vintage LP jacket artwork. Even going so far as to precisely miniaturize the entire hardbound text The Gershwins: Words Upon Music that accompanied their 1959 collection as well as the booklet that came with the Ellington anthology…

This two-CD set is volume 3 in the Landmarks of Recorded Pianism series, and comprises piano solos, concerti, and two spoken reminiscences. Producers Gregor Benko and Ward Marston have selected these recordings because of their intrinsic musical and historic importance, hoping that they will merit the attention of music lovers, scholars, and collectors. Most of the offerings in this set will be completely new to collectors and enthusiasts since they are available here for the first time.