Not a set of country-styled soul music – as you might guess from the title – and instead a package that shows the undeniable influence that soul music songs had on the sound of country music in the 60s and 70s! The flipside of the scene has been well-documented on collections of western-tinged soul music we've stocked in the past – but this great set is the first we've ever heard to show the way that country singers were able to easily pick up hit soul songs of the time, then recraft them completely with a whole new sort of style!
This is the incredible story of Uther Pendragon, a lost psychedelic band from San Francisco whose music has remained buried until now. Formed in the Bay Area in 1966 as a teen garage group called Blue Fever, Uther Pendragon lasted from 1966 until 1978. During that time, the band went through different names and phases, as their music evolved from garage to psychedelia to hard rock, but the core of the band always remained the same: Mark Lightcap (rhythm guitar, vocals), Bruce Marelich (lead guitar, vocals), and Martin Espinosa (bass, vocals). After finding their ultimate drummer in Mike Beers, the group finally settled on the Uther Pendragon name in the early '70s. But despite being active for all that time and recording at numerous studios (including their own in Palo Alto), Uther Pendragon never released any recordings…
It’s been 45 years since Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers entered a Chicago recording studio to cut the album that would change the face of American music forever. That self-titled release came out in August 1971 and launched an American institution, Alligator Records. Label boss Bruce Iglauer ran the operation from an efficiency apartment in the Windy City. In the subsequent decades, his imprint would issue roughly 300 titles, including releases from Koko Taylor, Albert Collins, Luther Allison, and Lil’ Ed and The Blues Imperials, among many, many others. When quality blues records were hard to come by and majors turned their attention to the latest fashions, Iglauer stuck it out, giving a loyal fan base music they didn’t know they were missing. To see the Alligator logo on an album’s spine meant you were getting something handpicked from a friend who loved that music as much as you did. Maybe even more.
The psychedelic southern rock band DeWolff presents on February 5 next year their latest album Roux-Ga-Roux. The album appears on the own Electrosaurus Records in collaboration with Suburban Records. It is the sixth studio album by the band. DeWolff are a psychedelic rock band from the Netherlands’ deep south, formed in 2007 by brothers Pablo & Luka van de Poel and Robin Piso. When their psychedelic yet hard rocking, self-titled EP was released in 2008 it immediately conquered the hearts of rock music lovers all across the country and in December 2008 the band played their first show at Paradiso, a legendary venue in Amsterdam. The release of their 2009 debut album “Strange Fruits and Undiscovered Plants” was followed by a successful tour through the Netherlands and Germany.
Ace has long been associated with the Stax catalogue and we are continually looking for new ways to keep the connection going via packages of exciting vault discoveries. Many of our recent Stax compilations have concentrated on the company’s later era – the yellow period, as it’s known in collector circles – but we’re starting our 2016 schedule with a project that draws on releases from their earlier blue period.