Killer Daddy

A characteristically humongous (8-CD) box set from the wonderful obsessive-compulsives at Bear Family, documenting the Killer's '60s tenure at Smash Records. Lewis made consistently good music during this period, but the combination of his personal scandals and the British Invasion made him a pariah to radio programmers until mid-decade, when he returned to his country roots. Highlights of the set include the entirety of a Texas live show, with Lewis and his crack band rendering various early rock standards at dangerously high (i.e., proto punk) speed, some excellent duets with his (then) wife Linda Gail, and gorgeous renditions of standards like Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away" and Merle Haggard's "Lonesome Fugitive." Lewis fans with deep pockets should grab this one immediately…

Ace does it again - of course. These two discs, The Complete Modern and Kent Recordings, contain every side that the young powerhouse Etta James cut for Modern, Crown, and Kent between 1955 and 1961. There are 42 cuts on these two discs, remastered and sequenced painstakingly according to release date. There are no less than seven previously unissued cuts, and two more that have appeared only on Ace compilations. (There's a killer alternate take of "Hey Henry" here that rivals the released version). Fans will have a lot of this material in various places, but this collection puts everything together in one slamming package. The first disc is comprised exclusively of sides recorded for Modern between '55 and '57…

Talking Heads' 30th anniversary is commemorated in typically artful style here, sonically upgrading their eight, era-defining albums via bonus-packed Dual Discs and encasing them in a molded white plastic box intricately embossed with the band's song titles. Each disc contains complete album tracks and bonus cuts remastered in High Resolution Stereo on its CD side, while the DVD programming on the flip offers up the audio tracks in expansive new 5.1 Surround Sound mixes, with all of the sonic upgrading personally supervised by Jerry Harrison. Those long overdue audio improvements alone would make it an attractive set, but fans of the band will find its wealth of bonus music (various B-sides and previously unreleased outtakes) and video (including a number of rare live clips seeing their first release here) supplements equally intriguing.

Talking Heads fans have been waiting a long time to have the band's eight studio albums remastered and reissued, but they may find that the long-awaited revamping of the group's catalog is somewhat problematic. Instead of being released as individual titles, all eight titles were boxed and reissued as an expensive set, Talking Heads Brick (this box retails for $149.99; individual releases are tentatively scheduled to follow, three to four months after this set's October 2005 release) – and they're not issued as CDs, they're only available as DualDiscs, a format that contains a CD on one side and a DVD on the other.

Tracking down the ultimate woman blues guitar hero is problematic because woman blues singers seldom recorded as guitar players and woman guitar players (such as Rosetta Tharpe and Sister O.M. Terrell) were seldom recorded playing blues. Excluding contemporary artists, the most notable exception to this pattern was Memphis Minnie. The most popular and prolific blueswoman outside the vaudeville tradition, she earned the respect of critics, the support of record-buying fans, and the unqualified praise of the blues artists she worked with throughout her long career. Despite her Southern roots and popularity, she was as much a Chicago blues artist as anyone in her day. Big Bill Broonzy recalls her beating both him and Tampa Red in a guitar contest and claims she was the best woman guitarist he had ever heard…

Catherine Coulter is the author of the New York Times-bestselling FBI thrillers The Cove, The Maze, The Target, The Edge, Riptide, Hemlock Bay, Eleventh House, Blindside, Blowout, Point Blank, Double Take and TailSpin. She lives in northern California.
FBI Thriller Series: 1. The Cove; 2. The Maze; 3. The Target; 4. The Edge; 5. Riptide; 6. Hemlock Bay; 7. Eleventh Hour; 8. Blindside; 9. Blowout; 10. Point Blank; 11. Double Take; 12. TailSpin; 13. KnockOut; 14. Whiplash.