Sometimes it’s okay to judge a book by its cover. Depicting a down-and-out Frank Sinatra entrenched in his own private world while glamorous couples dance and swirl around him, oblivious to his presence and condition, the artwork to the aptly titled No One Cares testifies on behalf of the music and moods within the record’s grooves. One of the crooner’s top-flight ballads efforts, the 1959 Capitol effort again finds him pairing with sympathetic arranger Gordon Jenkins and inhabiting each note of every song.
Often viewed as the sister album to 1957’s Where Are You?, this third pairing of Sinatra and Jenkins yields slower tempos, more deliberate textures, and lonelier emotions. A profound sense of tragedy burrows into both the luscious strings and Sinatra’s timbre, laced with ache, wanderlust, and dismay…
On this, their second album for A&M, Humble Pie proved that they were not the "minor league Rolling Stones" as people often described them. Led by the soulful Steve Marriot, the Pie was a great band in every sense of the word. Although Peter Frampton elevated himself to superstar status in just a few years, this album proves what an excellent lead guitarist he was. The record has an undeniable live feel to it, due in part to Glyn Johns' humble yet precise recording, framing the group as if they were a boogie version of the Band. When all of these elements come together on songs such as "Sour Grain" and "Stone Cold Fever," it's an unbeatable combination.
Drive is an album by American banjoist Béla Fleck. The album was produced toward the end of Fleck's New Grass Revival career and before the Flecktones were formed and included an all-star list of bluegrass performers…
Guitarist Jim Hall is the sort of musician who displays such technical expertise, imaginative conception, and elegance of line and phrase that almost any recording of his is worth hearing. Still, Concierto ranks among the best albums of his superb catalog. For starters, the personnel here is a jazz lover's dream come true…
This is a true classic. Altoist Art Pepper is joined by an 11-piece band playing Marty Paich arrangements of a dozen jazz standards from the bop and cool jazz era. Trumpeter Jack Sheldon has a few solos, but the focus is very much on the altoist who is in peak form for this period…
Vangelis' electronic score for a film set in 1930s Britain seemed an odd match at first, but the title theme, with its echoing, manipulated rhythm box and melodic hook, became one of the most popular theme songs of the early '80s…