Real Band

For those who attended any concert on the Warren Haynes Band's tour in support of the brilliant Man in Motion, this three-disc package – one DVD and two CDs – is your keepsake. The set features stretched-out versions of all but one track from that album performed live at Austin's Moody Theater in 2011. In addition, his killer sextet offers readings of two tracks from Haynes' first solo album, Tales of Ordinary Madness, a new version of Gov't Mule's "Frozen Fear," and a host of great covers: from Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and Jimi Hendrix's "Spanish Castle Magic" to Steely Dan's "Pretzel Logic." Haynes' live band is a crack outfit.

Through his soft, lush instrumentals of the 1950s and '60s, he essentially created what became known as easy listening.
Percy Faith was one of the most popular easy listening recording artists of the '50s and '60s. Not only did he have a number of hit albums and singles under his own name, but Faith was responsible for arranging hits by Tony Bennett, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, and Burl Ives, among others, as the musical director for Columbia Records in the '50s.

This box set is drawn exclusively from the years 1932 to 1939. You get 75 tracks of prime Ellington from the 30s, including the first recordings of a number of undisputed masterpieces, such as 'Sophisticated Lady', 'Solitude', 'Prelude to a Kiss', 'Clarinet Lament', 'Echoes of Harlem' and 'Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue', among many more. There are of course other great Ellington recordings from the 30s not represented here - his elegy for his mother, 'Reminiscing in Tempo', for one - for Ellington recorded for a bewildering variety of labels, and these are just the ones currently owned by Sony. There are no sleeve notes, and no listings of the musicians, which is a bit frustrating. But for a 3 disc survey of the period in question, you really can't do better than this.

Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker, Miles Davis and many more.