Pan Alley

This release includes 16 rare and previously unissued Otis Spann tracks recorded between 1964 and 1969. Featuring the blues piano genius in both a solo context and supporting a bevy of Chicago artists in a variety of settings, this plows through Pete Welding's old Testament tape vaults to uncover new treasures by the carload. Muddy Waters is listed on the front cover and, indeed, 12 of the 16 songs here are played in his company, most of it in the unusual role of backup musician to Spann. The compilation begins with five songs from a Martin Luther King tribute concert in 1968 featuring Spann and Waters on acoustic guitar performing as an "unplugged" duo, including a heartfelt "Tribute to Martin Luther King" standing next to his own tribute to Big Maceo Merriweather, "Worried Life Blues"…

When jazz, cabaret, and traditional pop artists speak of the Great American Songbook, they are usually referring to Tin Pan Alley treasures of the 1910s, '20s, '30s, and '40s. But worthwhile American popular music didn't end with Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Harry Warren, or the Gershwin siblings. Rock and R&B gave us subsequent generations of American musical poets, and British cabaret singer Barb Jungr obviously had that fact in mind when she called this album The Men I Love: The New American Songbook. Jungr's 2010 release is not a celebration of the Tin Pan Alley era, but rather, a tribute to songwriters (most of them American) who made their mark in the '60s, '70s, or '80s.

The Jazz Club series is an attractive addition to the Verve catalogue. With it's modern design and popular choice of repertoire, the Jazz Club is not only opened for Jazz fans, but for everyone that loves good music.
The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. More than a half-century after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing…

The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. More than a half-century after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band…

The concept behind Blues at Sunrise is a good one: collect ten of SRV's best slow blues numbers, primarily from the official studio albums but also a couple of unreleased cuts and rarities, and sequence them as if they were a lost studio album. It's a neat idea, especially when it's packaged in artwork that deliberately evokes memories of classic blues albums from the '60s (there's even a fake, faded record ring on the front and back covers), and it's hard to fault the music here. All the obvious selections are here – "Ain't Gone 'N' Give Up on Love," "The Things (That) I Used to Do," "Leave My Girl Alone."