Ted Hawkins

During the years 1994-1996 Time-Life produced a CD & Magazine called "Grooves". Veteran New York City DJ Vin Scelsa was given full control of the project, and a total of 14 wonderful issues were produced. They each highlighted Vin's selections of the best tracks from the best new albums/artists of the time. In addition, the last track on every CD was a bonus acoustic track by one of the featured artists recorded in the studio just for "Grooves". It was the next best thing to listening to Vin's radio show, "Idiot's Delight".

The Holmes Brothers deliver a mix of joyous blues, funk, R&B, and soul that resonates deeply with hope and personal redemption, a sort of sturdy and comforting secular roots music informed by the trio's precise, gospel-based vocals. Brotherhood continues to update that signature sound, featuring eight new Holmes Brothers originals and imaginative covers of songs by Ike Turner, Ted Hawkins, and the great Stax Records songwriting team of William Bell and Booker T. Jones.

Rounder's four-CD Box of the Blues is, by looking at its inclusion of tracks, seemingly an ambitious proposition. But looks can be deceiving. Compiled and introduced by vice president of A&R Scott Billington - a man whose credentials, when it comes to fighting for and preserving blues traditions, are unassailable - these discs become a kind of theme-oriented blur of Rounder's substantial catalog holdings. Billington's schemata are quirky, sometimes ironic, and sometimes downright scary and profound as the set's first and second discs' "61 Highway" and "One More Mile" attest. The first CD concentrates its energies on the revelation of blues as it came up from the Mississippi Delta in the music of Fred McDowell, Johnny Shines, Etta Baker, Blind Willie McTell, John Hurt, and others and mutated up north to Chicago with Otis Spann, Robert Nighthawk, and others…

Various Artists - The Ebb Story Vol. 1 (1995) {Ace Records CDCHD 524 rec 1957-1959}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 225 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 151 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 19 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1957-59, 1995 Ebb Records / Ace Records / Fantasy | CDCHD 524
Oldies / Doo Wop / Early R&B / Rockabilly

From 1957 to 1959, the Los Angeles label Ebb Records released around 60 singles. Only one became a national hit, although there were several regional successes. The label, however, recorded a fascinating cross-section of the music of the day and The Ebb Story tells the tale.Formed by Leonora "Lee" Rupe, with the money she received as a divorce settlement from her ex-husband Art Rupe (head of Specialty Records), and Jesse J Jones, an arranger and horn player, Ebb kicked off with The Ebbtones' Danny's Blues and worked their way through the New Orleans R&B of Professor Longhairs' Look What You're Doing To Me, the soulful blues of Ted Taylor, the down-home Texan blues guitar and voice of Smokey Hogg, the supper-club blues stylings of Floyd Dixon, the rockabilly of Kip Tyler, the chameleon vocals of Dolly Cooper and the classic hit R&B of the Hollywood Flames with Buzz, Buzz, Buzz (a version of which a young Bob Dylan performs on his forthcoming CD-ROM disc release).