Helen Shapiro is remembered today by younger pop culture buffs as the slightly awkward actress/singer in Richard Lester's 1962 debut feature film, It's Trad, Dad. From 1961 until 1963, however, Shapiro was England's teenage pop music queen, at one point selling 40,000 copies daily of her biggest single, "Walking Back to Happiness," during a 19-week chart run. A deceptively young 14 when she was discovered, Shapiro had a rich, expressive voice properly sounding like the property of someone twice as old, and she matured into a seasoned professional very quickly.
Gentleman Jim Reeves was perhaps the biggest male star to emerge from the Nashville sound. His mellow baritone voice and muted velvet orchestration combined to create a sound that echoed around his world and has lasted to this day. Detractors will call the sound country-pop (or plain pop), but none can argue against the large audience that loves this music. Reeves was capable of singing hard country ("Mexican Joe" went to number one in 1953), but he made his greatest impact as a country-pop crooner. From 1955 through 1969, Reeves was consistently in the country and pop charts – an amazing fact in light of his untimely death in an airplane accident in 1964. Not only was he a presence in the American charts, but he became country music's foremost international ambassador and, if anything, was even more popular in Europe and Britain than in his native America.
Trumpeter Baikida Carroll was once again in the company of alto saxophonist Julius Hemphill for a January 1982 recording with pianist Anthony Davis, bassist Dave Holland, and drummer Pheeroan Ak Laff for Soul Note called Shadows & Reflections. The material here sounded like it could have been a late Blue Note recording; in fact, there were times when the horns brought back flashbacks of the Jackie McLean-Charles Tolliver front line of the '60s. And for all their avant-garde credentials, this group sounded very comfortable and at home with the squirrelly free bop displayed here.
Though the Seeds' third album, 1967's Future, was pegged by critics as the band's attempt to ride the wave of baroque/psychedelic/orchestral magic the Beatles defined with Sgt. Pepper's, the recording was actually complete before the release of the Beatles' far more popular breakthrough album, making it impossible for the influence to touch the uncannily similarly minded flower power tones of Future. The Seeds had their own relatively huge smash with the raw high-pressure garage thumper "Pushin' Too Hard" the year before, and saw nothing wrong with recycling that tune's melody on more than a few songs on their first two albums…
Another epic release from Virgin in the Best of Series. This release containing 3CD of classic Air Guitar tracks from Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody, Boston – More Than a Feeling, 52 Tracks in all.