Match of The Day 20 April 2021

The Marshall Tucker Band is an American rock band from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Noted for incorporating blues, country, and jazz into an eclectic sound, the Marshall Tucker Band helped establish the Southern rock genre in the early 1970s. While the band had reached the height of its commercial success by the end of the decade, it has recorded and performed continuously under various lineups for 45 years. Lead vocalist Doug Gray remains the only original member still active with the band…

Ace does it again - of course. These two discs, The Complete Modern and Kent Recordings, contain every side that the young powerhouse Etta James cut for Modern, Crown, and Kent between 1955 and 1961. There are 42 cuts on these two discs, remastered and sequenced painstakingly according to release date. There are no less than seven previously unissued cuts, and two more that have appeared only on Ace compilations. (There's a killer alternate take of "Hey Henry" here that rivals the released version). Fans will have a lot of this material in various places, but this collection puts everything together in one slamming package. The first disc is comprised exclusively of sides recorded for Modern between '55 and '57…

"The man who was Django’s prestigious partner in the first, immortal Quintette du H.C.F. has made an appearance (on wax) for Barclay with a series of recordings in which you can rediscover his pretty sound and abundant, easy ideas; in a word, his style which, though with less of a bite than before, has lost none of its grace." Those were the first lines of the review that a certain Michel Delaroche (in fact Boris Vian) wrote for the November 1955 issue of Jazz Hot; the subject was this album, the first that Stéphane Grappelli ("Grappelly" at the time) had made on violin under his own name since he'd left England.
The violinist had celebrated his definitive return to France at the Club Saint-Germain on the night of April 25th 1954; he would appear there on and off for the next seven years…

It speaks well for the continued viability of their catalog (probably second only to Bob Dylan's among '60s folk artists) that this is only the sixth compilation ever done on Peter, Paul & Mary's music in four decades of musical activity - and since one of the others was a Readers' Digest mail-order release and two of the others were done for special markets outside of the United States, that low number is downright astonishing. This release effectively supplants the perennially popular Ten Years Together: The Best of Peter, Paul & Mary, from 1970, and also outdoes the 2003 WEA International Very Best Of, with more songs drawn from a much wider chunk of their history as well. The material at hand covers not only most of the key singles and a handful of important album tracks by the trio from the 1960s, but also acknowledges their less widely heard solo material from the 1970s…

This album may be laidback, but it's hardly mellow at all - thanks to the presence of Sonny Clark on piano! The session's one of those great 50s pairings of Clark's piano and the clarinet of Buddy DeFranco - proof not only that Buddy could sound pretty darn soulful when he wanted, but also that he was always willing to grow and bring in some new ideas to his music.
And the pairing with Clark is one of the best ideas that Buddy ever had - a mode that makes his instrument sound even more soulful than ever, almost like a soprano sax at times. Rhythm is rounded out by bass from Gene Wright and drums from Bobby White - who give the album a nicely easygoing groove - on tunes that include "Sonny's Idea", "The Bright One", "Minor Incident", and "I'll Remember April".

United by dalliances with purism as young men and an abiding love of classic blues and jazz, Eric Clapton and Wynton Marsalis are a more comfortable fit than it may initially seem. Both musicians are synthesists, not innovators, stitching together elements from their idols in an attempt to preserve the past while bringing it into the present, so their sensibilities are aligned and, in 2011, they’re amenable to a partnership that explores their common ground…

This 1954 studio date, a self-titled album recorded for Emarcy, was later reissued as Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown to denote the involvement of one of the top trumpeters of the day. Vaughan sings nine intimate standards with a band including Brown on trumpet, Herbie Mann on flute, and Paul Quinichette on tenor, each of which have plenty of space for solos (most of the songs are close to the five-minute mark). Vaughan is arguably in the best voice of her career here, pausing and lingering over notes on the standards "April in Paris," "Jim," and "Lullaby of Birdland." As touching as Vaughan is, however, Brown almost equals her with his solos on "Lullaby of Birdland," "Jim," and "September Song," displaying his incredible bop virtuosity in a restrained setting without sacrificing either the simple feeling of his notes or the extraordinary flair of his choices…

Former Kansas member Kerry Livgren was responsible for penning the group's two best-known tracks (which remain standards on classic rock radio): "Carry on Wayward Son" and "Dust in the Wind." But by the early 21st century, Livgren had put his Kansas days behind him and launched a new outfit, Proto-Kaw. 2006 saw the release of their third release overall, The Wait of Glory, which shows that Livgren is still an admirer of bombastic hard rock, with prog rock tendencies. The difference between the tracks on The Wait of Glory and the aforementioned Kansas hits are that those two aforementioned tracks possessed tight arrangements and were hook-heavy. The tracks here are simply not as immediately hard-hitting (as evidenced by such selections as "Relics of the Tempest")…