Infusing traditional gospel music with Memphis soul, Detroit-based singer Rance Allen helped pave the way for the secularized gospel sound of the '80s and '90s. After signing with Stax in 1969, Allen and his group proceeded to bring their hip brand of gospel to the masses by scoring several chart hits and opening concerts for the likes of Isaac Hayes. This hits package covers the group's successful run in the '70s, spotlighting Allen's incredibly flexible and powerful voice (one listens to cuts like "Ain't No Need of Crying" and "Gonna Make It Alright" and it's easy to figure out where Prince picked up his misty falsetto from). The selections include Allen's biggest Stax hit, "I Got to Be Myself," the spiritually reconfigured cover "Just My Imagination (Just My Salvation)," and modern gospel pioneer James Cleveland's "That Will Be Enough for Me." Allen contributes a handful of slick and spirited groovers, like "I Give My All To You" and "I Belong to You," and even goes in for a little disco on another original, "Smile" (considering Allen's devout nature, it's hard to tell if the more commercial elements in the music came from him or hit-minded producers).
Director Roman Polanski's film The Pianist is based on the memoirs of Polish classical pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman about his harrowing experiences under the Nazi occupation of Warsaw during World War II. The soundtrack album consists almost entirely of Chopin piano pieces, most of them played by Janusz Olejniczak. Most of those, in turn, are solo performances, although Olejniczak is joined by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Tadeusz Strugala, for Grand Polonaise for Piano and Orchestra. The sole non-Chopin track is the excerpt from Wojciech Kilar's score, "Moving to the Ghetto October 31, 1940," a klezmer-like piece running only 1:45 in which Hanna Wolczedska plays clarinet, accompanied by the Warsaw Philharmonic. Appropriately, the album ends with an actual recording by Szpilman of the Mazurka in A Minor, Op. 17, No. 4.
There is no shortage of discs around featuring transcriptions of Renaissance music for brass. Whilst played on modern instruments the main difference here however is that London Brass, several of whom play period instruments in other ensembles, have enlisted the specialist knowledge of Philip Pickett to direct them.
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!
This impressive, impeccably packaged four-CD box set focuses solely on B.B. King's 1950s and 1960s recordings for the Modern family of labels. That was a period that basically encompassed the vast majority of his work prior to 1962, though he did a few non-Modern sides before signing with ABC Paramount in early 1962 and did a few other sides for Modern in the mid-'60s. So this is basically a box-set overview of King's early career, one that saw him score many R&B hits and build a career as a blues legend, even as the blues were falling out of fashion in favor of rock and soul. As many tracks as there are here - 106 in all, four of them previously unreleased - this isn't a catchall roundup of everything the prolific King did for the label…
The late '60s and, most especially, the 70s have inspirited the music and the rock from all over the place, so that it evolved all the way up to contributing to the appearance of the most prestigious and prodigious ensembles. LOCOMOTIV GT is a band that's legendary in the Hungarian Rock scene, but also in the Occident, lighting up an irresistible and torrential rock, in a way that made them classic…
A plethora of "lost" recording dates have popped up since the dawn of the compact disc, especially in the jazz world. Unfortunately, most of them haven't been worth the wait and, indeed, as underwhelming as some of them have been, it might - at least aesthetically speaking - have been better had they not been unearthed. Happily, this isn't one of these occasions. The two sessions here were recorded in 1961 and 1962 in Chicago and New York, and feature Cannonball Adderley's quintet that included pianist Joe Zawinul, bassist Sam Jones, drummer Louis Hayes, and brother Nat on cornet. Cleanhead sings his ass off and plays some alto with Cannonball. These dates reveal an anomaly in jazz at the time: The recordings are the place on the map where jazz and R&B meet head on, bringing the full force of their respective traditions and neither giving an inch…
This eponymous album is the first (and probably only) to document the music of the late-'60s psychedelic rock group My Indole Ring. A local legend in Vancouver, Canada, back in 1967-1969, the quartet did not even release a single but, 25 years after the fact, this CD presents demos and live recordings that were all previously unavailable. Judging from this hour's worth of material, My Indole Ring definitely had something going. The set kicks off with "Orange Float Petals," an impressive acid rock song that became the group's signature tune. Full of instrumental quirks and imaginative vocal harmonies, this one is anthology material. "Love People Everywhere," "Blue Wax," and the instrumental "Silk Road" are satisfying but more generic numbers. The influences of West Coast (Jefferson Airplane) and Vancouver groups (Papa Bear's Medicine Show) are detectable…