Le Chat Bleu (expanded)

US R&B/rock & roll band (1974-1986) fronted by Willy DeVille. Passed away august 6 2009 .Though starting out in San Francisco playing gay leatherbars as "Billy de Sade and the Marquis" (Billy being Billy Borsey, Willy DeVille's original name), the band changed its name To Mink DeVille (and Borsey became Willy DeVille) in 1975 and became one of the housebands in the famous NY club CBGB. CBGB was the epicenter of NY punk - and other house bands such as Blondie, Television and Talking Heads got Mink DeVille categorized as part of the punk/new Wave underground to which they never belonged musically…

This 22-track import collection of Mink DeVille tunes contains over two-thirds of the tracks cut by the original band – before Louis X. Erlanger and crew left and Willy DeVille continued with different musicians – and culled from Cabretta, Return to Magenta, and Le Chat Bleu. Issued in the E.U. and distributed by Caroline Records in the United States, this collection was produced and annotated brilliantly by former Creem editor and writer Ben Edmonds…

After Le Chat Bleu, this Mink DeVille record foretold the depth and dimension of Willy DeVille's talent and the lengths he would go to as a vocalist and songwriter to get the right mix of emotion, drama, and rock & roll attitude. Featuring the core band from Coup de Grace – Louis Cortelezzi on sax; Kenny Margolis on keyboards, including accordion; DeVille and Rick Borgia on guitars; and Tommy Price on drums – the seam in the album comes on the second track, "River of Tears," with its stunning soprano saxophone lines, marimbas, accordions, and howling, raw, Gato Barbieri-like tenor lines in the choruses. When DeVille sings, "Every night lonely, empty dreams/Here comes that tide washing over me/Not again/Oh no/Not again/I don't want to cry/But there's tears in my eyes/I don't want to cry/That river of tears," the horns and accordion swirl around him until the final 16 measures, when the guitars and marimbas envelop all his loss in their warmth. His voice is the grain of every rock & roll lothario's Waterloo. DeVille follows this with a scorching Cuban son called "Demisado Corazon," featuring full salsa horn and percussion sections.

Widely regarded as the singer who fused the traditions of the French chanson with the energy and verve of American jazz, Claude Nougaro was born in Toulouse on September 9, 1929. The son of an opera singer and a piano teacher, he was raised largely by his grandparents, devouring not only classical music but also the homegrown pop of Charles Trenet and Edith Piaf, and the American swing of Louis Armstrong and Glenn Miller broadcast via Radio-Toulouse.

Oud virtuoso and composer Anouar Brahem returns to ECM with an inspired trio. In the company of pianist François Couturier and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, he emerges more as guiding wind than guiding light, forging a quietly original program that feels at once unprecedented and timeless. Brahem’s writing is especially intuitive on this outing, teetering from stream-of-consciousness currents to insightful themes in the steady arc of a summer fan.

This two-disc set marks the beginning of a new project devoted to Tchaikovsky's ballet scores. We start the survey with the complete score of The Sleeping Beauty, recorded on SACD. Swan Lake and The Nutcracker will follow in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Tchaikovsky was approached by the Director of the Imperial Theatres in St Petersburg, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, in 1888 about a possible ballet adaptation of Charles Perrault's La Belle au bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty).

Master Series is the title of a line of greatest hits albums, released in European countries primarily by PolyGram International, as well as A&M Records, Deram Records, FFRR Records, Mercury Records, and Polydor Records. In addition, some albums were reissued by Universal Music Group under the Universal Masters Collection and Millennium Edition titles.