Sam Records

When Sam Cooke signed with RCA Records in 1960, he had already had several hits ("You Send Me," "What A Wonderful World," and "Only Sixteen" among them) on the small independent label Keen Records. He had paid attention to the business sides of things, too, and he signed with RCA because he was allowed to keep control of his song publishing…

To call West Side Soul one of the great blues albums, one of the key albums (if not the key album) of modern electric blues is all true, but it tends to diminish and academicize Magic Sam's debut album. This is the inevitable side effect of time, when an album that is decades old enters the history books, but this isn't an album that should be preserved in amber, seen only as an important record. Because this is a record that is exploding with life, a record with so much energy, it doesn't sound old. Of course, part of the reason it sounds so modern is because this is the template for most modern blues, whether it comes from Chicago or elsewhere. Magic Sam may not have been the first to blend uptown soul and urban blues, but he was the first to capture not just the passion of soul, but also its subtle elegance, while retaining the firepower of an after-hours blues joint…

This set is near essential to fans of Sam Cooke, despite the fact that it contains none of his gospel recordings for Specialty Records or any of the work from the final year of his career (owned by ABKCO Records). Scattered every few minutes across this four-disc collection are reminders of just how far ahead of all existing musical forms Cooke was, creating sounds that stretched the definitions of song genres as they were understood and created completely new categories…

The Complete Wooly Bully Years 1963-1968 includes six albums on three CDs plus bonus recordings, including non-LP singles. The quintessential Tex-Mex band of the 1960s, Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs hailed from Dallas, Texas where Domingo "Sam" Samudio was born in 1937 and raised. After chart success eluded them after recording Haunted House for the Dingo label in 1965 they landed a contract with MGM Records, home of such rock 'n' roll artists as Roy Orbison, The Animals, and Herman's Hermits.

Sam Gendel’s COOKUP—a new album comprising interpretations of R&B and soul hits originally released between 1992 and 2004—is out now on Nonesuch Records. As with his 2020 Nonesuch debut, Satin Doll, Gendel recorded COOKUP in his native California with his friends and collaborators Gabe Noel and Philippe Melanson; the trio again adopts an approach of simultaneous synchronized sonic construction/deconstruction of the album’s source material, which this time includes songs by Ginuwine, 112, Aaliyah, All-4-One, Soul 4 Real, Beyoncé, Joe, Erykah Badu, Mario, SWV, and Boyz II Men. Meshell Ndegeocello is featured on vocals for their take on 112's "Anywhere."