Putting Off Stars

Neil Young is rightly regarded as one of the most influential singer-songwriters, ranking with Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney in influence and prolificacy. And much like the other two, he has amassed an extensive archive of unpublished and unreleased songs which he’s begun to touch with his massive Archive series of box sets. Road Of Plenty is perhaps the most ambitious unofficial Neil Young release in recent memory. It is a comprehensive six disc collection of songs which have never been released (and probably never will). A majority are sourced from excellent live audience recordings (since that is the only source we have for them), but there are other excellent quality studio outtakes included as well.

Bruce Springsteen once said he intended to make an album with words like Bob Dylan that sounded like Phil Spector where he sang like Roy Orbison, a nifty summary of many, but not all, of his artistic ambitions and a key to his appeal.

Recognized worldwide as "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald is arguably the finest female jazz vocalist of all time. Blessed with a highly resonant voice, wide range, and near-perfect elocution, Fitzgerald also possessed a deft sense of swing, and with her brilliant scat technique, could hold her own against any of her instrumental contemporaries. She came to initial popularity as a member of drummer Chick Webb's band in the 1930s, scoring a hit with a "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," before ascending to wide acclaim in the 1940s with Jazz at the Philharmonic and Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band, and issuing landmark performances like "Flying Home" and "How High the Moon." Working with producer/manager Norman Granz, she gained even more acclaim with her series of albums on Verve, recording definitive versions of the music of the Great American Songbook composers, including 1956's Sings the Cole Porter Songbook. Over her 50-year career, she earned 13 Grammy Awards, sold over 40 million albums, and picked up numerous accolades including a National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A hugely important cultural figure, Fitzgerald made an immeasurable impact on the development of jazz and popular music, and remains a touchstone for fans and artists decades after her passing.

The voices of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong are among the most personal and beautiful that the history of music has given us, transcending eras, genres and languages. In this wonderful 6-CD box we can find the legacy of this immortal duet including all their key tracks and also some rarities that connoisseurs will surely appreciate. With remastered sound and beautiful cover art, The Complete Anthology is the definitive album of Ella & Louis, which should be on every music collection.

This set brings together the finest R&B instrumentals recorded in 1957, putting the spotlight both on long-forgotten records by established artists and fabulous obscurities by long-forgotten ones! It's a cracking compilation from start to finish: Mid-West electric blues, Southern swamp rock, spicy New Orleans rhythms, sophisticated West-Coast productions and East Coast city blues, dominated by guitarists and saxophonists but interspersed with a few organists, accordionists, pianists and harmonicists .

The Real… Toots Thielmans features 60 of the jazz musicians finest songs across 3CDs.
Toots Thielemans virtually introduced the chromatic harmonica as a jazz instrument. In fact, beginning in the mid-'50s, he never had a close competitor. Thielemans simply played the harmonica with the dexterity of a saxophonist and even successfully traded off with the likes of Oscar Peterson.

Pianist Kathryn Kaye once again, as she has on every recording, displays an uncommon grace and elegant simplicity on Reflected In A Flowing Stream. Kaye's music is suffused with not just ear-pleasing melodicism but also straightforward sincerity, untarnished by the need to show off through pianistic pyrotechnics. The warmth woven into Kaye's playing has been one of her calling cards since her first release, Dreaming Still (2011), and it's this musical characteristic that continues to set her apart from many of her contemporaries. Reflected…is a bit darker at times than her previous albums, not in any kind of off-putting fashion, but in a more introspective way, some of the songs here are like delving deep into memory and perhaps recalling harder times.