Elvin Bishop

Time Life Music’s Singers & Songwriters: 1976-1977 collects 24 radio hits over the span of two discs. Despite the title, the compilation doesn’t just favor traditional singer/songwriters like Al Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, and England Dan & John Ford Coley, though they are represented here. Group contributions include Orleans (“Still the One”), Fleetwood Mac (“Say You Love Me”), Chicago (“If You Leave Me Now”), and Bread (“Lost Without Your Love”), but it’s the solo acts that provide the most recognizable hits.

Even after his death, Paul Butterfield's music didn't receive the accolades that were so deserved. Outputting styles adopted from Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters among other blues greats, Butterfield became one of the first white singers to rekindle blues music through the course of the mid-'60s…

Three decades ago Bruce Iglauer founded Alligator Records, selling his hero Hound Dog Taylor's records out of his car trunk. Since then, Alligator has become America's best-known and most prolific blues label, and many of the reasons for its success appear on this two-disc 30th anniversary collection. Much of the material, including Marcia Ball's "Louella" and Shemekia Copeland's "Turn the Heat Up," comes from relatively recent recordings, since the label also released anthologies honoring its 20th and 25th anniversaries.
But the 30th holds its own, presenting guitar greats like Lonnie Mack ("Stop"), Johnny Winter ("My Time After Awhile"), and Lonnie Brooks ("Two-Headed Man"), as well as harmonica heroes James Cotton ("When It Rains It Pours"), Junior Wells ("Keep Your Hands Out of My Pockets"), and William Clarke ("Broke and Hungry")…

This stalwart independent label, headquartered in San Francisco, began in a small Ann Arbor club and grew into one of the most important imprints in blues. Thirty-three tunes ricochet between the potent old-school Chicago stylings of Buddy Guy and Junior Wells's classic "Hoodoo Man Blues" and Big Walter Horton'ss swinging shuffle "Put the Kettle On" to the intriguing pop-folk hybrid of Roy Rogers and Norton Buffalo and the dashing retro-nuevo guitarisms of Nick Curran & the Niteflies to the brawny Texas-schooled sounds of Omar & the Howlers and Smokin' Joe Kubek & Bnois King. The label's Delta blues side is underrepresented, although James Cotton and Elvin Bishop offer two great flavors of cottonland grind.

Set sail with NOW That's What I Call Yacht Rock 2! Featuring tons of your favorite summertime yacht rock classics, making it's CD/vinyl debut on the Now Numbered Series! Yacht Rock was a term coined for smooth soft rock usually from the 1970s and early '80s. 'NOW That's What I Call Yacht Rock Volume 2' presents an ideal 18-track lineup of songs to float to this summer, including Kenny Loggins featuring Stevie Nicks, Michael McDonald, Gerry Rafferty, Chicago, REO Speedwagon, Air Supply, Eric Carmen, Paul Davis, Toto, Little River Band, Seals & Crofts, Gordon Lightfoot, Elvin Bishop, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Walter Egan, Exile, Captain & Tennille, Santana, and many more.