Huey Lewis Back in Time

Time Life was founded in 1961 as the book division of Time Inc.. It took its name from Time Inc.'s cornerstone magazines, Time and Life, but remained independent of both. During 1966, Time Life combined its book offerings with music collections (two to five records) and packaged them as a sturdy box set. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the selection of books, music and videos grew and was diversified into more genres. When record labels stopped producing vinyl albums in 1990, Time Life switched to CD only. In the mid-1990s, Time Life acquired Heartland Music, with the Heartland Music label now appearing as a brand. This company was subsequently sold off and is no longer attached to Time Life.

Detroit's The Rockets are not one of the groups people might think of when considering that city's storied history of great bands - for a reason, since they weren't all that special. Still, they have a vital link to the Detroit sound as drummer Johnny "Bee" Badanjek was in Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels and Detroit and guitarist Jim McCarty was also in the Detroit Wheels and went on to join the failed supergroup Cactus. Their 1979 record, Rockets (Turn Up the Radio), had two pretty solid AOR staples (in the Detroit area anyway) in their blistering cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well" and the rollicking "Turn Up the Radio." By the time of 1981's Back Talk, the band was still in the netherworld of being a perennial opening act and really struggling to survive…

JSP's New Orleans Guitar compiles four CDs of performances by Smiley Lewis, Guitar Slim, and T-Bone Walker. It's hard to go wrong with these 102 recordings cut between 1947 and 1955. The tracks have been remastered, making the majority of this material sound great. Unlike other packages of this type, the liner notes are informative, listing personnel, dates, and a concise history without going on ad nauseam. As an extra bonus this is a budget-priced set, making it highly recommended, especially for the blues novice.