Michael Lomax Taoist

2CD, 41 track set. The Blues Songbook presents some of the most exciting blues Alan Lomax ever recorded. Famous and obscure artists roll out a remarkable array of blues from the country, from the city and from prison in this first-of-its-kind compilation overseen by the Lomax estate. Taken from five decades of Alan's best field recordings in the genre, the Songbook includes previously unreleased tracks and features digital transfers using DSD technology. Here is blues at its source: original, impassioned and utterly real. Featured artists include Mississippi Fred McDowell, Howlin' Wolf, Hubert Sumlin, Memphis Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, Son House, Skip James, Jelly Roll Morton, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee…the list goes on and on. All this with a 40 page illustrated booklet including a scholarly essay and song notes by John Cowley and a preface by Martin Scorsese.

The Alan Lomax Collection gathers together the American, European, and Caribbean field recordings, world music compilations, and ballad operas of writer, folklorist, and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. Deep River of Song: African-American field recordings made for the Library of Congress from 1933 to 1946, a transformative period when black singers of the South and the Caribbean created a new musical language and thousands of brilliant songs that would captivate people throughout the world.

1972 saw the release of Jackie Lomax's 3rd solo LP (his 2nd for Warner Brothers) entitled Three (III), with stand-out blue-eyed soul tracks including: No Reason and Fever's Got Me Burning and beautiful, slow, sad songs like Last Time Home, which featured members of The Band (Rick Danko, Levon Helm) and Billy Mundi of the Mothers Of Invention. The album was recorded at Bearsville Studios and produced by John Simon who produced the first two albums from The Band and Leonard Cohen's debut album.

For every would-be leader, this acclaimed Taoist classic offers timeless insights for building a better world

At the end of the month, Edsel will issue Songs, a 12CD box set that brings together Michael Nesmith solo albums issued under two different labels. The set kicks off in 1970 with Magnetic South, as a prolific Nesmith went on to issue six albums on RCA in just three years, including the ironically-titled …And The Hits Just Keep on Comin’ which included his own version of ‘Different Drum’, which had been a hit for Linda Ronstadt back in 1967. 1975’s The Prison was the first album on his own label Pacific Arts. This conceptual offering included a novella that was meant to be read while listening to the album as its ‘soundtrack’. Nesmith did the same with 1994’s The Garden (also included here).