The 5 AM Miracle

With the arrival of Delta Lady: The Rita Coolidge Anthology, one can only remark: what took so long? No other singer – not Maria Muldaur, Bette Midler, Bonnie Bramlett, Carly Simon, or Linda Ronstadt – more perfectly embodied the wide range of changes that popular music underwent from the late '60s through the mid-'80s, and continues to seek new means of expression today. This two-disc anthology on Hip-O offers the first complete portrait of this complex and multivalent talent on CD (though a box set would have been nice). Rita Coolidge scored her first chart hit with friend Donna Weiss' "Turn Around and Love You" in 1969. That song earned her a studio spot where she fell in with Delaney & Bonnie, Leon Russell, and a huge cast of musicians. Being a background vocalist on Delaney & Bonnie's classic Accept No Substitute earned her a place on Russell and Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen revue and the rest is history, including a handful of chart hits and guest appearances that stagger the mind.

A quick internet search brings up some extraordinary footage of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry producing a session at the Black Ark. Taken from the film ‘Roots, Rock, Reggae’, directed by Jeremy Marre, the sequence shows Junior Murvin collaborating with members of the Congos and the Heptones on a song improvised on the spot for the film crew. Before the vocals are recorded, the Upsetters lay down the backing track. The musical director of the session is the afro-haired bass player, Boris Gardiner; unusually, it is he who counts in the band to start each take. After a long conversation with Boris a few years back, I asked Lee about his contribution to the Black Ark sound.

The Karajan Official Remastered Edition comprises 13 box sets containing official remasterings of the finest recordings the Austrian conductor made for EMI between 1946 and 1984, which are now a jewel of the Warner Classics catalog. This 5-CD box includes Haydn's Die Jahreszeiten, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Brahms's German Requiem performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, with renowned vocal soloists such as Walter Berry and José van Dam.

"Lily On The Beach", recorded and released in 1989, had two aspects showing TD's musical direction for the nineties: It was the first TD album featuring Edgar Froese's then 19 year old son Jerome Froese as guest musician playing lead guitar on the track Radio City; Jerome would become a regular member of TD in the next year and get more and more influence on TD's work in the future. On the other hand Long Island Sunset was the first TD composition featuring saxophone, an uncommon type of instrument for TD's music of the eighties, but becoming a strong part of their work in the early nineties.

"Lily On The Beach", recorded and released in 1989, had two aspects showing TD's musical direction for the nineties: It was the first TD album featuring Edgar Froese's then 19 year old son Jerome Froese as guest musician playing lead guitar on the track Radio City; Jerome would become a regular member of TD in the next year and get more and more influence on TD's work in the future. On the other hand Long Island Sunset was the first TD composition featuring saxophone, an uncommon type of instrument for TD's music of the eighties, but becoming a strong part of their work in the early nineties.