Chuck Mangone\

Throughout the 1970s, Chuck Mangione was a celebrity. His purposely lightweight music was melodic pop that was upbeat, optimistic, and sometimes uplifting…

Guitarist Chuck Loeb ends up with an enjoyable yet very typical collection on this outing. Typical, meaning easy to swallow and occasionally remarkable but for the most part the kind of music radio eats up and listeners have been saturated with. We've heard this kind of thing before. Loeb's tender and breezy acoustic work dominates, but the electric fire he sets on go for broke zoomers like "Mr. Z" and "Carbo Fuel" are far more distinctive and better worth the price of admission. As a composer, Loeb is more than able, but his blistering contributions to Nelson Rangell's projects far surpass the mellow fare he presents here. Rangell, fellow saxman Bill Evans and keyboardist Mitch Forman add lots of spark and improvisational energy to a disc that simply needs a little less cool breeze and more electric gale.

The re-mastering and release of Chuck Wayne's String Fever should begin to focus attention on a musician who was not only a brilliant guitarist but also a subtle and significant composer/arranger. On this recording Wayne became the first jazz guitarist to front a big band. He is the main soloist. He also conducted and arranged all of the compositions. Wayne's solo work, rising above an inspired band, is as good as jazz guitar has been caught on tape as he swings from be-bop to ballads to latin rhythms with a masterful grace and assurance. The extra treat is that the original album was beautifully recorded, and has been exquisitely re-mastered onto CD…

This second volume of producer Steve Hoffman's discoveries in the Chess Records vaults features some less-prominent Chuck Berry tunes, again in the form of demos, unreleased alternate takes, and stereo remixes. Listeners are getting into collector territory here, but there are still some enjoyable examples of the Berry repertoire.