Recorded in 1971, Tears of Joy is a Don Ellis classic. The sheer musical strength of this ensemble is pretty much unparalleled in his career. The trumpeter/leader had backed off - a bit - from some of his outlandish and beautifully excessive use of strange and unconventional time signatures, though there is no lack of pioneering experimentalism in tone, color, arrangement, or style. This double LP/CD features a string quartet, a brass octet (four trumpets, tuba, bass trombone, trombone, and French horn), four winds, and a rhythm section boasting two drummers, a percussionist, a bassist, and the Bulgarian jazz piano wizard Milcho Leviev…
Guitarist Tuck Andress and vocalist Patti Cathcart created a bit of a stir with this set, their debut recording. Patti's powerful folk singing and Tuck's self-sufficient guitar make for a very appealing duet on such numbers as Bob Dorough's "I've Got Just About Everything," Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," "Better Than Anything," "My Romance" and "Takes My Breath Away." Although they would record other worthwhile albums, this is still their definitive release, jazz-oriented but also crossing over toward folk and new acoustic music.
Buck Owens turned Bakersfield, California into the epicenter of hip country music in the mid-'60s. All it took was a remarkable streak of number one singles that steam rolled right through Nashville with their electrified twang, forever changing the notion of what constituted country music and codifying the Bakersfield sound as hard-driving rhythms, trebly Telecasters, and lean arrangements suited for honky tonks, beer joints, and jukeboxes all across America. Half-a-century later, these remain sonic signifiers of Bakersfield, so the term no longer conveys a specific sound, place, and era, a situation the weighty Bear Family box The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital of the West 1940-1974 intends to rectify.
Massive waves of Funk and infectious grooves and slathered with scrumptious slide guitar