Detroit in the 1940s and ‘50s didn’t have a thriving record industry like Chicago. Detroit artists went there because that’s where the companies were. Even musicologist Alan Lomax made just one visit for the Library of Congress in 1938, when he recorded Calvin Frazier and Sampson Pittman. Nevertheless, enterprising individuals like Jack and Devora Brown, Bernard Besman and Joe Von Battle did their best to reflect the city’s musical talent.
The Marshall Tucker Band is an American rock band from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Noted for incorporating blues, country, and jazz into an eclectic sound, the Marshall Tucker Band helped establish the Southern rock genre in the early 1970s. While the band had reached the height of its commercial success by the end of the decade, it has recorded and performed continuously under various lineups for 45 years. Lead vocalist Doug Gray remains the only original member still active with the band…
One of the most acute and savagely satiric songwriters of his era, Warren Zevon was born in Chicago on January 24, 1947. His formative years were as colorful as the scenarios played out in his music: his father was a professional gambler, a lifestyle which forced the family to move frequently, and Zevon spent most of his formative years in California and Arizona. He learned to play piano, focusing primarily on classical material before a disintegrating home life led him into pop music, as well as a few run-ins with the law; …
Five CD sets containing 100 classic tracks by legendary artists, one of the biggest selling and best remembered musical icons of all time.
Between 1995 and 1997, Edsel released eight full-length CDs of Marc Bolan's previously unreleased demos, alternate takes, unused and abandoned songs and unfinished recordings. These CDs were deleted in 2001. Since then, copies of the rare original individual releases have changed hands for foolish amounts of money and sellers on Ebay have offered to pirate the entire set! Edsel is now proud to announce the re-issue of all 8 CDs in a limited edition bound book set, with extensive brand new annotation by Mojo writer Mark Paytress, author of the acknowledged definitive Bolan biography “Bolan: The Rise and Fall of a 20th Century Sperstar”.
This 52-disc (no, that is not a typo) comp, ABC of the Blues: The Ultimate Collection from the Delta to the Big Cities, may just indeed live up to its name. There are 98 artists represented , performing 1,040 tracks. The music begins at the beginning (though the set is not sequenced chronologically) with Charlie Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson, and moves all the way through the vintage Chicago years of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, with stops along the way in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, New York, and all points in between. Certainly, some of these artists are considered more rhythm & blues than purely blues artists: the inclusion of music by Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Bo Diddley, and others makes that clear.
An epic 100 CD chronological documentation of the history of jazz music from 1898 to 1959, housed in four boxed sets. Each box contains 25 slipcase CDs, a booklet (up to 186 pages) and an index. The booklets contain extensive notes (Eng/Fr) with recording dates and line-ups. 31 hours of music in each box, totalling 1677 tracks Each track has been restored and mastered from original sources.
The Wolf record label has served Magic Slim & the Teardrops well, producing eight CDs between 1986 and 1992, when the band was emerging from Chicago to tour the world. They are deserving on many fronts as the self-proclaimed "best blues band on the planet," and these tracks, marketed as "Magic Slim's best 14 songs," certainly go a long way to proving that assertion. Of the album's 14 tracks, 11 come from the studio and three are previously unissued live concert sessions in Austria, all with Slim, the remarkable second guitarist John Primer, brother and bassist Nick Holt, and different drummers. Only one of the tunes was written by Slim, the others taken from classic blues songwriters and heroes of the lead vocalist and guitarist, whose distinctive sound comes shining through from start to finish. Albert King for sure is a favorite of Magic Slim…