Great Ballads

His movie star good looks, his brilliant natural gift for the trumpet and his seductive vocals turned Chet Baker very quickly into a jazz cult icon in the '50s. The 10 tracks here featuring his vocals as well as trumpet date from that period. His soloing is clear toned and spacey, with long lyrical lines that twist the melodies. His almost conversational tenor vocals are disarmingly simple and stick closely to the bare bones of the melody with just the subtlest variation. All the tracks here are classics and include his trademark "My Funny Valentine," the lovely "I Fall in Love Too Easily," a quietly swinging "My Buddy" and a haunted "You Don't Know What Love Is."

Excelling at the art of blues balladry demands that a musician possess great feeling but also great control. No surprise then, that one of its greatest practitioners, Nancy Wilson, has both traits in abundance. Save Your Love for Me: Nancy Wilson Sings the Great Blues Ballads is one in a loose series of three Capitol compilations to compile her late-'50s and early-'60s prime, the others focusing on the Great American Songbook and the torch song.

Woody Guthrie - Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) {Buddha Records 74465 99724 2 rel 2000}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 119 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 93 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 89 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1940, 2000 A Victor Records / Buddha Records / BMG | 74465 99724 2
Folk / Political Folk / Traditional Folk / Folksongs / Spoken Word / Field Recordings

Sixty years after the recordings were first released, Woody Guthrie's odes to the Dust Bowl are presented in their third different configuration. RCA Victor Records, the only major label for which Guthrie ever recorded, issued two three-disc 78 rpm albums, Dust Bowl Ballads, Vol. 1 and Dust Bowl Ballads, Vol. 2, in July 1940, containing a total of 11 songs. ("Tom Joad" was spread across two sides of a 78 due to its length.) Twenty-four years later, with the folk revival at its height, RCA reissued the material on a single 12" LP in a new sequence and with two previously unreleased tracks, "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "Dust Bowl Blues," added. Thirty-six years on, the Buddha reissue division of BMG, which owns RCA, shuffles the running order again and adds another track, this one an alternate take of "Talking Dust Bowl Blues."