Richard Whiteman Old Prose (2020) HD

We continue our highly popular and successful America’s Greatest Hits series as we work back through the 1950s, now reaching the point at the turn of the decade, this time with an expanded 4-CD edition to sit alongside the existing single CD 1950 edition (ACRCD176) originally released in 2006 before we introduced the 4-CD format in recent years. This great-value 104-track collection comprises every record which charted in the Top 15 of the Billboard Best Sellers and Honor Roll Of Hits and the Top 10 in the Cash Box chart during 1951. It omits certain records which peaked in 1951and which have already appeared in our America’s Greatest Hits 1951 collection and some which were big hits in 1949, and had already peaked, so will appear in that collection. As with all these collections it features all the biggest hits of the year and all the biggest names in American pop of that era, at a time when the USA was emerging from post-war austerity into a more optimistic decade but was about to become embroiled in the Korean War, and it very much captures the spirit of the times. It also includes a number of lesser known records which are not heard very often and which have not been readily available on CD. As always, it includes a substantial 15,000-word booklet with a commentary on every track, and it’s a must for collectors of our completist chart-based anthologies.

“Blues for Blanche” Art usually started his sets with an uptempo blues. In this case, it’s his original about our cat, Blanche (see photo). Art adored this cat. When he was at home, Art generally spent his time fully dressed, on his bed, prone, watching the news, sports (whatever), reading the paper, occasionally rising to sit on the edge of his bed to play the clarinet. When he was lying down, Blanche would join him and sometimes she’d go after the newspaper Art was reading. And he'd encourage her. He’d start waving it, and she’d go nuts, ripping at the paper and at him. Drawing blood! Art loved her passion and murderous beserk-a-tude, and he’d chuckle with delight.

“Phenomenally good … Dreisig’s voice [is] youthful yet assured, agile yet fluid, and powerful through its entire range … We can certainly expect much more to come from this singer,” wrote BBC Music Magazine in its five-star review of Miroir(s), Elsa Dreisig’s debut album of operatic arias and scenes. It was subsequently nominated for two top awards, Gramophone and Opus Klassik.

zeitkratzer goes Jazz! zeitkratzer is as always good for a surprise and finally goes Jazz! Looking at the line-up of the “modern composition supergroup” (The Wire) it seems astonishing that it took so long. Saxophonists Frank Gratkowski and Hayden Chisholm both won independently the German Radio SWR Jazz award; the French horn virtuoso Hild Sofie Tafjord grew up with Jazz, as her father and uncle are members of the famous Norwegian jazz group Brazz Brothers…