The Hungry Gene

The executives at Prestige must have been felt ecstatic when they heard Gene Ammons first play after his release from a very severe seven-year jail sentence. The great tenor proved to still be in his prime, his huge sound was unchanged and he was hungry to make new music. This CD, which completely reissues the first two LPs Ammons cut after his return (The Boss Is Back! and Brother Jug!) rewards repeated listenings. The first date (in an acoustic quintet with pianist Junior Mance) hints at his earlier bop-based music while the numbers from the following day (with organist Sonny Phillips) find Ammons playing over a couple of boogaloo vamps very much of the period. Actually it is his ballad statements (particularly "Here's That Rainy Day," "Feeling Good" and even "Didn't We") that really make this CD memorable, although on "He's a Real Gone Guy" Ammons shows that he had not forgotten how to jam the blues either.

From all appearances, Razor & Tie's 2007 compilation The Definitive Collection surely seems to live up to its title. It weighs in at 22 tracks and the back cover claims that it is a "celebration of Neil Sedaka's 50 years making music, from his first recordings in 1957 to his most recent work. The first career-spanning collection of its kind." Well, that's true to a certain extent – it is the first to attempt to survey everything Sedaka's done from 1957 to 2007, so in that sense it is a first, and it's also a celebration since it has his biggest songs, from "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" through "Bad Blood." However, it doesn't have the original versions of these songs from the '50s and '60s: it has re-recordings from 1991.

This box set is the ultimate pop collection, 43 albums featuring many of the biggest hits performed on the legendary pop music chart BBC TV programme Top of the Pops, which ran for a record shattering 42 years from January 1964 to July 2006! The show totalled an amazing 2205 episodes and at its peak attracted 15 million viewers per week! This complete set features a total of 875 tracks, including over 600 top ten hits and over 150 number one's!