Sonny Terry Folkway

This double disc reissue on Blue Note contains the three releases that alto saxophonist Sonny Criss did for Imperial: Jazz U.S.A., Go Man!, and Plays Cole Porter. These sessions were all recorded in 1956 at a time when Criss had honed his amazing bebop alto precision. These 34 performances contain only five of his originals and are surrounded by mainly standards. The bands consisted of solid lineups with Sonny Clark or Kenny Drew on piano; Barney Kessel on guitar; Leroy Vinnegar, Buddy Clark or Bill Woodson on bass; Larry Bunker on vibes; and Larance Marable or Chuck Thompson taking care of drumming duties. While Criss had a career that erratically spanned the '70s, these Imperial sessions (reissued in glorious mono) contained highly regarded performances of passionate blues, moving ballads, and energetic up-tempo pieces.

A heck of a great little record - one that shouldn't work so well, but it does! For the set, Sonny Stitt's blowing in front of a larger brass section - and while the prospect of a Sonny Stitt big band record might not sound that great at first, this one really kicks, largely because of Sonny's great solo work! Stitt's in perfect form by this point - blowing freely above a core brass group that features Blue Mitchell, Jimmy Cleveland, and Willie Ruff - arranged tightly by Tadd Dameron and Jimmy Mundy, yet still given enough room to swing with a heck of a lot of soul! Also quite nice is the organ work on the set by the obscure female player Perri Lee - a great little groover with a lean sound that cuts through the arrangements and really makes them sparkle!

Sonny left the music biz in the late '50s and early '60s, then returned with a triumphant series of LPs. Here are five of 'em: 1962's Our Man in Jazz (with the jaw-dropping epic Oleo ) and What's New? (he teams with Jim Hall on If Ever I Would Leave You and his own Bluesong ), 1963's storied meeting with Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Meets Hawk! (with thrilling excursions through standards like All the Things You Are and Yesterdays ) and 1964's Now's the Time and The Standard Sonny Rollins (both with Herbie Hancock)…

A fantastic album as a leader from Sonny Red - a saxophonist who never got much chance to record under his own name, but always gave us something special when he did! Sonny recorded famously with Donald Byrd and Curtis Fuller in the 60s - but here, he's in an even hipper 70s mode of his own - a bit modal, a bit spiritual - in ways that make the whole album feel like some of the best 70s efforts on the Black Jazz label, with a righteous quality we might never have expected in Red a decade before! Sonny blows tenor, alto, and flute - all of them with a sharp, soulful edge - and he works here in a fantastic quartet that includes Cedar Walton on piano, whose own shadings give the record a lot of depth - plus the great Billy Higgins on drums, and Herbie Lewis on bass.

In the late 1950s, the emergence of Playboy Magazine and the appearance of "nudie cutie" movies like The Immoral Mr. Teas had made burlesque seem passé in the eyes of many, and by 1962, the art of the striptease was far enough out of fashion to become a nostalgia item. In 1959, Gypsy, the musical about the life of burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, was a hit on Broadway, and two years later, Ann Corio, who had been a well-known "peeler" in the '40s and '50s, launched her stage revue This Was Burlesque, which re-created the baggy-pants comedy and sexy dance numbers that were burlesque's bread and butter. The show jump-started Corio's career and was in production in New York or on the road until the early '90s; inspired by the success of the show, Roulette Records (who had released This Was Burlesque's original cast recording) teamed with Corio to produce the 1962 album How to Strip For Your Husband…

Live effort by Little Sonny with his son on guitar (by then the largest audience they have ever played, as said on an interview in this album). The two interviews and three singles, specially The Creeper (a must for harp players later re-recorded by Mark Hummel) add a little flavor on top as nice and rare extras.

These are Landreth's earliest known recordings, half of them made in a single afternoon 1973 when he was just 22 years old, the other half recorded in 1977. They display Landreth in the wine of his youth, looking outward for inspiration, sounding more generally Southern than uniquely Louisianan. If you are seeking an album of Louisiana music, I suggest you look elsewhere. But if it is the long-lost first album of an acknowledged slide guitar king you seek, perhaps the finest of his generation, look no further. It is in your hands.