The Second Time Around

With its third album, Big Fun, Shalamar unveiled its best-known and most successful lineup. Jody Watley and Jeffrey Daniels were still on board, but Gerald Brown had been replaced by the charismatic Howard Hewett. Both creatively and commercially, this album would take Shalamar to new heights and establish the trio as one of the best soul-pop units of 1979-1983. The single that made Hewett famous and really sent Shalamar into orbit was "Second Time Around," but the classic Hewett/Watley/Daniels lineup also excels on everything from the insistent "Right in the Socket" to the playfully funky "Take Me to the River" (not the 1974 Al Green classic) and the smooth, Philadelphia soul-type ballad "Let's Find the Time for Love." Definitely one of Shalamar's essential releases.

Shalamar broke onto the disco scene in 1977, but 2019 marks the 40th Anniversary of the classic line-up formation of Howard Hewett, Jody Watley and Jeffrey Daniel, who set the UK charts alight throughout the early 80’s with hits like ‘Dead Giveaway’ and ‘There It Is.’ From their debut discofied Motown medley, ‘Uptown Festival,’ Shalamar became constant hit-makers on both the US R&B charts and the UK pop charts, scoring with the dance-floor classics ‘Take That To The Bank,’ ‘The Second Time Around’ and ‘Make That Move.’ While promoting A Night To Remember’ on ‘Top of the Pops’ in 1982, Jeffrey Daniel introduced UK audiences to the moon walk and started a body popping craze across the country. Their top ten album ‘Friends’ subsequently spent over a year on the chart and achieved platinum sales. Shalamar’s current line-up of Howard, Jeffrey and Carolyn Griffey still tour regularly in the UK and have closed every year since 2010 with a sell-out show at London’s 02 Arena. This ‘Gold’ 3CD collection, features all 24 of Shalamar’s US and UK top 40 chart singles, all of which are included here in for the first time in their full-length versions and 12” disco mixes on this 41-track set.

Issued by underground imprint RCA Neon in mid-1971, the Shape Of The Rain album “Riley Riley Wood & Waggett” sold poorly at the time despite glowing reviews from the British music weeklies. A surging collision of Beatlesesque writing and harmonies and Byrds-like jingle-jangle guitars, sadly it would take another couple of decades before the LP was finally disinterred by a new generation of record collectors.

There never was a supergroup more super than the Traveling Wilburys. They had Jeff Lynne, the leader of ELO; they had Roy Orbison, the best pop singer of the '60s; they had Tom Petty, the best roots rocker this side of Bruce Springsteen; they had a Beatle and Bob Dylan, for crying out loud! It's impossible to picture a supergroup with a stronger pedigree than that (all that's missing is a Rolling Stone), but in another sense it's hard to call the Wilburys a true supergroup, since they arrived nearly two decades after the all-star craze of the '70s peaked, and they never had the self-important air of nearly all the other supergroups.

There never was a supergroup more super than the Traveling Wilburys. They had Jeff Lynne, the leader of ELO; they had Roy Orbison, the best pop singer of the '60s; they had Tom Petty, the best roots rocker this side of Bruce Springsteen; they had a Beatle and Bob Dylan, for crying out loud! It's impossible to picture a supergroup with a stronger pedigree than that (all that's missing is a Rolling Stone), but in another sense it's hard to call the Wilburys a true supergroup, since they arrived nearly two decades after the all-star craze of the '70s peaked, and they never had the self-important air of nearly all the other supergroups. That, of course, was the key to their charm: they were a group of friends that fell together easily, almost effortlessly, to record a B-side for a single for George Harrison, then had such a good time they stuck around to record a full album, which became a hit upon its 1988 release.

CBS Special Products first assembled this ten-track budget compilation of Tony Bennett's Columbia Records recordings spanning 1951-1971 in 1982, and it has been reissued periodically since. The reason for this continuing availability is simple: The album is an excellent brief sampler of Bennett's work. It includes his first hit, "Because of You," his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," four other Top Ten easy listening hits from the 1960s ("I Wanna Be Around," "For Once in My Life," "Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)," and "The Shadow of Your Smile"), and four representative tracks from notable Bennett albums ("It Had to Be You" from 1957's Tony, "Just One of Those Things" from 1957's The Beat of My Heart"…