Hink

Which Chuck E. Weiss do we talk about here? The one who so impressed blues legends Lightnin Hopkins and Willie Dixon as a Denver teenager that they took him out in their road bands? The one who lived in LA's Tropicana Hotel in the 70s alongside Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones, ending up namechecked on the classic Waits albums Small Change and Nighthawks at the Diner, and in Rickie Lee Jones hit "Chuck E.'s in Love"? The one who has recorded with Tom Waits, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Roger Miller, Dr. John, Willie Dixon? Whichever Chuck E. Weiss you choose, he's a legend, and his 2014 album, Red Beans and Weiss, delivers on the big personality. Executive produced by Johnny Depp and Tom Waits, Red Beans and Weiss blends blues, barrelhouse, and bluster into a highly entertaining whole.

Gygafo's early-'70s album only made it to the acetate stage at the time, though it was eventually resuscitated for CD release in the early '90s. Though it's competent British progressive rock, and adequately recorded, there's nothing about the band that demanded a wide audience or a place of its own in the art rock pantheon. It's fair prog rock with some folk and hard rock influences, including some sinuous ebb-and-flow guitar lines, well worked-out vocal harmonies, haunting melodic figures, and classically flavored keyboard passages. The songwriting is neither terrible nor noteworthy, and in the fashion of the time, the tracks can meander on a bit too long, though it's not grossly self-indulgent. The CD finishes with a couple of tracks recorded in 1974, at a later date than the rest of the material.

Throughout every period of musical history the artistry of outstanding singers or instrumentalists has inspired many composers to write works with their individual characteristics—technical prowess, tonal quality, imaginative range—in mind. Within a period of about twenty-five years—between about 1790 and 1815—the clarinet repertoire in particular was enriched by two major composers—Mozart and Weber—who each wrote a succession of works which remain pre-eminent in their respective genres.