Bonus disc from new release - inspiration from Jarre & Tangerine Dream! Narration by Les Penning.
Robert Nighthawk was one of the most influential blues guitarists of the post war period, a stature he achieved without the benefit of many hit records. His song Sweet Black Angel Blues became a blues standard when B.B. King covered it as "Sweet Little Angel" and B.B. went on to do the same with "Crying Won't Help You". Across the 23 tracks presented here are top blues musicians such as, Roosevelt Sykes, Sunnyland Slim, Willie Dixon, Brownie McGhee and Pinetop Perkins. Robert Nighthawk was an important and very underappreciated bluesman whose evocative slide guitar influenced a remarkable number of musicians who followed in his wake.
Robert Anthony Plant CBE (born 20 August 1948) is a British singer and songwriter, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the English rock band Led Zeppelin…
Sharecropper’s Son is the career-defining new album from Robert Finley, “the greatest living soul singer” who in a bizarre twist, found overnight success after 67 years of hard work. Following Finley’s semi-finalist appearance on America’s Got Talent, he returned to the studio to follow-up his critically acclaimed record, Goin' Platinum! The resulting Dan Auerbach produced album is a soulful masterpiece, rooted in the vintage sounds of southern harmony, rhythm and blues. Recorded at Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville with legendary music studio veterans, Finley’s formidable vocals and lyrical stylings take center stage, sharing personal stories inspired by his Louisiana country childhood during the Jim Crow era south. His tales of pain and joy uplift as Finley reflects on his belief that you are never too young to dream and never too old to live.
While Pollini's Schumann is not to everyone's taste – some find his virtuoso playing too cool and his bracing interpretations too intellectual – for those who revere Pollini, his Schumann is a tonic after nearly two centuries of sloppy and sentimental performance practice. Pollini's Davidsbündlertänze may not be as poetic as Arrau's and his Kreisleriana may not be as fantastic as Argerich's, but he finds meanings and significances in the works that no one ever has before. Pollini's Concert sans orchestre and Allegro in B minor are second to none in technical panache and interpretive aplomb. DG's piano sound is as real as playing the piano.
This 14-song collection, consisting of tracks recorded on July 12, 1951, and October 25, 1952, completely transforms the landscape where Robert Nighthawk's music is concerned. Up to now, apart from seeking out his prewar, unamplified work as Robert Lee McCoy (or McCullum) on Bluebird or grabbing a few tracks from some Chess reissues, there hasn't been a lot of Robert Nighthawk in one place. Now there are 14 hard-rocking tracks, cut for United Records in Chicago and showing Nighthawk in his prime and loving it, playing a mean slide underneath some boldly provocative singing that could have given Muddy Waters a run for his money…
Robert Glasper is a jazz pianist with a knack for mellow, harmonically complex compositions that also reveal a subtle hip-hop influence. Since debuting as a leader during the mid-2000s, the Houston native has been crucial to the enduring relevance of Blue Note Records, blurring genre distinctions and regularly topping Billboard's Jazz Albums chart with highly collaborative recordings such as the Grammy-winning Black Radio (2011) and Black Radio 2 (2013), as well as ArtScience (2016), all credited to the Robert Glasper Experiment. In addition to guiding projects such as the soundtrack for Miles Ahead (another Grammy winner) and R+R=Now's Collagically Speaking, Glasper has contributed to dozens of other albums, most notably Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. The mixtape Fuck Yo Feelings (2019) best exemplifies Glasper's obstinate resistance to expectations and devotion to spontaneous interplay.
Robert Glasper is a man of many talents. Certainly, he's both an inarguably accomplished jazz pianist and a first-rate composer. But what Glasper does best is pick drummers. With 2007's In My Element, he provided Damion Reid with a platform to record nothing less than the drum performance of the year. For this album, Glasper teams up with Chris Dave, and the results are astonishing. It's a concept album, sort of. The first half features the Trio (Glasper, Dave, and bassist Vicente Archer) on a handful of originals and a take on Thelonius Monk's "Think of One." Throughout, the piano and drums intertwine with a complex integrity that sounds deceptively effortless. Then comes the Experiment: Derrick Hodge replaces Archer with an electric bass; Casey Benjamin adds saxes and vocoder; Bilal and Mos Def drop in for vocal cameos. The Experiment's five tracks differ in texture and depth from the Trio's set, but the adventurousness of the performances and the gorgeous lyricism of Dave's drumming fuse the album's halves into a single musical statement that makes for the year's best jazz album so far.