Hot Thrills And Warm Chills (1967) Dale Berry, Rita Alexander, Lorna Maitland, Susan Branson

Steve Lacy walked into the ESP-Disk offices in New York in 1966 and offered to sell Bernard Stollman a tape of a concert he had recorded with his quartet during a concert in Argentina (where they had been stranded). That band was truly an international one: Lacy and Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava made up the front line, and the rhythm section included South African expats Johnny Dyani on bass and drummer Louis Moholo - who had both been members of the Blue Notes and the Brotherhood of Breath with Chris McGregor. The musical interaction that takes place over 40 minutes here is compelling, fraught with openness and the willingness to explore the margins. Unlike a lot of the other "new thing" recordings made at the time, the focus here is unusually rich, expressive, colorful, and easy on the ears - though it may not have been at the time…

Laurindo Almeida, a brilliant Brazilian guitarist who was equally skilled at both classical music and bossa novas, gained famed originally for his work with Bud Shank in the mid-1950s. However, in the 1960s, his string of LPs for Capitol were generally quite commercial and overly brief. This album is fairly typical in that the material contains a few songs used widely in jazz (such as "Secret Love" and "Here's that Rainy Day"), current pop tunes ("Call Me" and "Goin' Out of My Head") and a few lesser-known numbers. All 11 performances clock in between two and four minutes, as Almeida is joined by an anonymous string section, background horns and rhythm players, all arranged unimaginatively by Lex de Azevedo. The playing is pleasing but very predictable, and at best these soothing sounds work well as background music.

When the Love Generation (which, truthfully, did no better with that emotion than any other generation) got its first real glimpse of soul giant Otis Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 backed by Booker T. & the MG's, a powerhouse band if there ever were one, they saw love with a capital L, because Redding sang love songs like the world was about to end, wringing the emotion out of them like a soulful, urgent hurricane. He was, simply put, an unstoppable force on-stage, taking all the energy of gospel and upping the ante until it seemed like the very sky itself was about to fly off into space from the very power of it. Redding was soul, and soul in every fiber of his being. The two sets included here, which predate the Monterey performance by a couple of months, were recorded in London (March 17) and Paris (March 21) on the Stax/Volt package tour of Europe in 1967…

Chuck Berry - Rock And Roll Music: Any Old Way You Choose It (2014) {16CD Box Set Bear Family Records}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 6.53 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 2.90 Gb | Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 37 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2014 Bear Family Records | BCD 17273 PL
Rhythm & Blues / Blues / Rock & Roll / Early R&B

Chuck Berry fanatics, your ship has come in, and it’s the Queen Mary — or maybe we should call it the Queen Maybellene. As you’d expect from the Bear Family label, which specializes in gargantuan reissues, this 16-CD, 396-song box doesn’t simply span Berry’s career, it embraces virtually every musical note the man has ever issued. You’ll find all of his released album tracks and singles, starting with an obscure 1954 recording and including everything from the Chess, Mercury and Atco labels, plus every surviving alternate take. Also here are five CDs’ worth of concert performances from 1956 to 1972.