Song Charting Made Easy

The blues is a river with tributaries that flow into virtually every channel of American music. Dan Auerbach’s Nashville-based label Easy Eye Sound — Billboard’s Blues Label of the Year in 2022 — is charting a new course in “21st century juke joint blues.” The label’s new anthology Tell Everybody! is a bracing compilation, produced by Auerbach — winner of the GRAMMY Award as 2013 Producer of the Year, Non-Classical — featuring all new, exclusive recordings cut at Easy Eye Sound’s eponymous Nashville studio. From old masters to brilliant youngbloods, acoustic blues to roiling blues-rock, the collection is a fully realized survey of the blues tradition.

James Last was a German big-band leader with a large fan base in Europe, although he never had a comparable following in the United States. Last's trademark was arranging pop hits in a big-band style; his series of "party albums" became equally well-known. Over the course of his career, he sold well over 50 million albums…

Emerging as a great pop vocal stylist in 1954, Nat King Cole enjoyed a string of hit singles and albums thereon, but Unforgettable is perhaps the singer at his early peak. With romance as the watchword, Cole slides through some of his most familiar ballads, include the title selection, "Portrait of Jennie," "Mona Lisa," and "I Love You (For Sentimental Reasons)." There are quite a few lesser known, but attractive songs, plus a small handful of standards ("What'll I Do?" is a keeper) that round out this interesting collection. The very artistic, near surreal three-dimensional white, charcoal black, and royal blue-hued front cover may be the best part of this reissue, as it reflects a time period defined by its simplicity and yet its increasingly technological, superimposed modernity.