Surprieze 1973

In a career spanning more than 60 years, John Hammond played with just about everyone and seemed to influence everyone else. You’re Doin’ Fine showcases John Hammond in his prime playing solo country blues as captured by famed Grateful Dead soundman Owsley Stanley. This master class of the blues romps through Delta, Chicago, Texas, and Piedmont blues, including six Robert Johnson songs.

In a career spanning more than 60 years, John Hammond played with just about everyone and seemed to influence everyone else. You’re Doin’ Fine showcases John Hammond in his prime playing solo country blues as captured by famed Grateful Dead soundman Owsley Stanley. This master class of the blues romps through Delta, Chicago, Texas, and Piedmont blues, including six Robert Johnson songs.

Elvis Presley belongs on the short list of artists who changed the course of popular music in the 20th century. He may not have invented rock & roll, but he was indisputably its first rock star, a singer whose charisma was tightly intertwined with his natural talent for a combination that seemed combustible, sexy, and dangerous when Presley seized the imagination of America with four successive number one singles in 1956. He spent the next two decades near the top of the charts, weathering changes in fashion, self-inflicted missteps, and comebacks as his music expanded and evolved.

Elvis Presley belongs on the short list of artists who changed the course of popular music in the 20th century. He may not have invented rock & roll, but he was indisputably its first rock star, a singer whose charisma was tightly intertwined with his natural talent for a combination that seemed combustible, sexy, and dangerous when Presley seized the imagination of America with four successive number one singles in 1956. He spent the next two decades near the top of the charts, weathering changes in fashion, self-inflicted missteps, and comebacks as his music expanded and evolved.

Austrian vocalist Udo Jürgens is best known as the winner of the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest. But a career that spans over four decades has established him as one of the European mainland's most popular performers; his combined international sales exceed over 100 million units. Jürgens was born on September 30, 1934, in Klagenfurt, Austria. He was just 16 when he won an Austrian radio songwriting competition with "Je T'Aime." His success built from there over the next decade and, in 1961, he scored his first international hit when his composition "Reach for the Stars" was recorded by Shirley Bassey. Three years later, Matt Monro was similarly successful with Jürgens' "Walk Away" – a song that the Englishman first encountered at the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest, where Jürgens, representing Austria, performed it in its original language as "Warum Nur Waru." Jürgens finished fifth in the 1964 Eurovision event; the following year he finished fourth with "Sag Ihr, Ich Lass Sie Grüben." The third time proved the charm: he sang "Merci Chérie" to glory in 1966. (English singer Vince Hill promptly scored a U.K. hit with an English-language version of the song.)

Dr. John first became a star by taking the sounds and traditions of New Orleans blues, jazz, and R&B and twisting them into new forms as evidenced by his run of early Atlantic and Atco albums form 1969's Gris Gris and 1974's hit, In The Right Place. As time went by, he would become one of the strongest proponents of the Crescent City's musical heritage, celebrating the songs that made the city – as well as the men and women who made them – great. (1982's The Brightest Smile in Town, 1992's Goin' Back to New Orleans, and 2014's Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch being three representative exsamples.)