Bedtime For Sam

With few exceptions, greats who established themselves during soul's golden era were not well served by the disco era, when arrangements and material often poorly suited their abilities. Such was the case with the final two albums by Esther Phillips, Here's Esther…Are You Ready (1979) and Good Black Is Hard to Crack (1981), here combined onto one CD with historical liner notes.

It took a longtime for Leadfoot to become the artist he is today. Others like Rimbaud or Bob Dylan seem to bloom and get their full maturity all of a sudden and either shortly after stop to create or perpetuate the same form for ever.

Sweet beautiful soul from one of the all-time greats, "Let's Straighten It Out" features Gwen in a more mellow soul vein-copping a sweet bit of funky keyboard work from Latimore, whose great track she redoes as the title cut. Other cuts include "Cradle Of Love", "Your Love Is Worse Than A Cold Love", and "Early Morning Love". Even better is the great album "Melody Of Life". The album has more of a modern soul sound than her other albums for the label, thanks to some sweet mellow production work by Betty Wright. The cuts are great, with a stone-cold mellow groovin' sound that shows that Gwen was still working on her style, changing it and expanding it past the fame of her big mid-70s recordings. Titles include "All This Love I'm Givin", "I Can Only Think Of You", "I Found A Love", "The Melody Of Life", and "The Joy".

Smooth countrypolitan tones of doom, apocalyptic shag-cowpokes, anti-Vietnam war freak-folks, small-town hayseed-vignettes, ambulance-chasing bluegrass, red-baiting exploitation-jangle-folk-pop and wigged-out Nashville space-age instrumentals - you'll hear all that and much more on this extraordinary disc. Charting the tumultuous decade of 1960-1970, 'Age Of Worry' presents 28 somewhat nervous and seldom-heard oddities/obscurities from the depths of the Monument Records vaults. Sometimes outrageous, sometimes sublime - listen to Dave Rich lament the maudlin fate of 'The Runt', Rusty Draper on tortured suburban ennui and Captain Ty Herrington on emasculated masculinity. Something for everyone. *Reissued for the very first time: From Country-Pop to Freak-Folk: The Space Age Relics Of Monument Records 1960-1970!*Exclusive scholarly liner notes by Alvin Lucia!*Full Dynamic Range 2017 Remaster direct from the first generation analogue master tapes!

Break Free from the Grind: Master Resilience, Energy Management, and Work-Life Balance for Long-Term Success