Big Blue Live

In the summer of 2016, guitar virtuoso Jeff Beck celebrated 50 years of his musical career with an extraordinary concert at the famous Hollywood Bowl. Beck set the stage ablaze with incredible live versions of “For Your Love”, “Beck’s Bolero”, “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers”, “Big Block”, “Over Under Sideways Down”, “A Day In The Life”, “Blue Wind”, and more. The night also included a legendary list of special guests including Steven Tyler, Billy F. Gibbons, Jan Hammer, Beth Hart, Jimmy Hall and Buddy Guy and concluded with an group encore of “Purple Rain” in honor of Prince.

Southside Johnny Lyon has been fronting one of America's most consistently hard-rocking R&B show bands, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, for well over 30 years, so this album should come as something of a surprise to longtime fans - here Southside sings a dozen tunes from the songbook of Tom Waits alongside a jazzy, full-bodied big band led by Richie "LaBamba" Rosenberg, a longtime fixture in the Asbury Jukes horn section (and a member of Max Weinberg's band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien). While this is very much a change of pace, it's one that both Lyon and Rosenberg handle with confidence and aplomb; Lyon's voice shows a touch more grain than it did in his salad days with the Jukes, but his sense of phrasing and showman's touch is superb, and he brings swagger, heart, and sincerity to every performance here, and when Waits shows up for a duet on "Walk Away," the two trade lines as if they've been singing together for years…

The live and video album Crossroads Guitar Festival 2019 is the fifth release in the series of Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festivals to support his rehabilitation centre in Antigua, the Crossroads Centre, documenting the 2019 performances from two concerts held on September 20 and September 21, 2019 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. The album was released on November 20, 2020 through Warner and Rhino Records.

Live aus dem Cascade Beat Club in Köln is one of the rarest albums by a hit British Invasion band released near the peak of its popularity. Its existence is unknown even to most Swinging Blue Jeans fans, and the material doesn't even appear on the otherwise thorough four-CD set of their 1960s recordings, Good Golly, Miss Molly! The EMI Years 1963-1969…

The two albums enclosed in At Town Hall/The Amazing Nina Simone bookend the remarkable summer of 1959 in the career of Nina Simone, when she recorded a studio session, The Amazing Nina Simone, in May, and in September appeared At Town Hall in a superlative performance that was recorded and soon issued. Just 26, Simone displayed great assurance, especially on the live date, casting off the cloak of the vocal jazz/standards singer and performing with her own trio featuring her lively piano. The studio date features an orchestra, but it too finds her early on in her recording career stamping her voice on standards "Willow Weep for Me" and "Blue Prelude".