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Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown's tough-minded approach to the blues, country, Cajun, and jazz insures a minimum of nonsense and a maximum of variety, while his virtuosity on the guitar and fiddle insures the highest standards. Nonetheless, Brown's 1997 album is a landmark for the 73-year-old picker who won a Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Award. All 13 tunes on Gate Swings find Brown working with his regular road quartet plus a 13-piece horn section, enabling him to prove that Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton have been as important to his music as any bluesman or Creole fiddler. Gate Swings includes tunes by all three of those big-band leaders as well as compositions by Buddy Johnson, Percy Mayfield, Louis Jordan, and Brown himself, and they all swing with the massive force that only a big horn section can muster. Brown has leaned in this direction before, but Gate Swings is special, because it features the horn arrangements of Wardell Quezergue, an alumnus of the Dave Bartholomew band who arranged many of the best New Orleans R&B hits in the '60s and '70s.

It's a matter of opinion as to whether Dixon's Aladdin output was his peak; many would give his Specialty sides (available on the Marshall Texas Is My Home compilation) the nod. Still, his late-'40s and early-'50s work for the label included some of his most popular and best tracks, such as "Wine, Wine, Wine," "Call Operator 210," "Tired, Broke and Busted," "Let's Dance," "Telephone Blues," and "Too Much Jelly Roll" (the last of which was one of Leiber-Stoller's first recorded compositions). This two-CD, 48-track compilation is geared more toward the completist collector than the average fan, especially with the inclusion of five Sonny Parker sides (which Dixon now says he didn't play on, despite some reports to the contrary) and about ten songs that feature Mari Jones on vocals…

To discover the origins of rock & roll, one has to return to the music of the 1930s and '40s, when the blues and rhythm & blues ruled the airwaves. The musical geniuses of these genres were primarily African American, although a few Anglo artists crossed over into the earthy music played in dance halls and on the radio. Few of these artists cashed in like their spiritual descendants a generation later. Nonetheless, they have left a legacy in song of their rich tradition. This CD is part of a series that traces the colorful history of rock & roll to its source. Making an appearance are New Orleans R&B giants Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew. Other well-known artists include B.B. King, Wynonie Harris, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Louis Jordan, Champion Jack Dupree, and the Sons of the Pioneers…

San Francisco's Moon Duo are a psychedelic band with chilly electronic underpinnings and drones inspired by Spacemen 3, Silver Apples, and Suicide. Made up of the duo of guitarist Ripley Johnson (of Wooden Shjips) and keyboardist Sanae Yamada, the template on their initial recordings pairs churning distorted guitars, shared vocals, and pulsing organ over machine-driven Motorik rhythms. It sounded honed to perfection early on with albums like their debut, Escape, and especially 2011's Mazes, where they began writing songs with sharp hooks.