Norman Blake Guitar

Norman & Nancy Blake - The Morning Glory Ramblers (2004) {Plectrafone 80302-01160-2}
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© 2004 Plectrafone Records / Dualtone / Norman & Nancy Blake | 80302-01160-2
Bluegrass / Country / Folk / Old-Timey

It's hard to believe that Morning Glory Ramblers is the first full-length recording by Norman and Nancy Blake in eight years. Certainly they've been active, from playing on all 47 Down From the Mountain dates, performing on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cold Mountain soundtracks, June Carter Cash's final album, Wildwood Flower, and various other projects. This album, recorded on the soundstage of the Western Jubilee Warehouse in Colorado Springs, is a dynamite setting for the material found here. There are 17 songs in this collection, seven of them traditional melodies, still others so old they've seldom been heard over the last century, a Hank Williams' tune, and a couple by friends of Norman and Nancy's that are so saturated in the deep country, they could have been written decades before.

Sony’s Legacy Recordings continues the long running Bob Dylan ‘Bootleg Series’ as they announce Travelin’ Thru 1967-1969: The Bootleg Series vol 15 which revisits Dylan’s musical journeys to Nashville from 1967-1969, focusing on previously unavailable recordings made with Johnny Cash and unreleased tracks from the John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and Self Portrait sessions.

A dream of a record from this legendary spiritual jazz duo – drummer Norman Connors and reedman Pharoah Sanders – coming together in a freewheeling spiritual jazz style that's a lot more like Connors' earlier albums than the soulful fusion he was mostly recording in the late 70s! The album was recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and features long-spinning tracks that step out nicely in a way that takes us back to Norman's Cobblestone Records years – no vocals at all, and instead some nicely expressive work from Pharoah Sanders on tenor, Bobby Lyle on acoustic piano, and Buzzy Jones on tenor, soprano sax, and flute. Lyle and Sanders drop out for two of the album's five tracks, but there's still a very unified, jazzy vibe to the record throughout.

Sony Classical presents legendary soprano Kathleen Battle in nine of her foremost studio recordings in her ‘Complete Sony Recordings’. In the course of a remarkable career, launched in 1973 by mentor James Levine in their shared hometown of Cincinnati, Kathleen Battle has captivated international audiences. She has taken home numerous awards – among them five Grammys and London’s Olivier Award for her 1985 Covent Garden debut as Zerbinetta in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, the first American singer to win that prestigious prize – and become one of classical music’s best-selling artists.

The two albums John Hartford recorded for Warner Bros. in the early '70s stand as two of the most influential and groundbreaking albums in modern country music. For 1971's Aereo-Plain, Hartford and fiddler Vassar Clements, dobroist Tut Taylor, guitarist Norman Blake and bassist Randy Scruggs played a set of mostly original tunes that fused the irreverent hippie aesthetic with the hallowed bluegrass tradition, thereby more or less singlehandedly inventing the "newgrass" genre. And 1972's Morning Bugle built on Aereo-Plain's breakthrough with a stripped-down line-up of Hartford, Blake and jazz bassist Dave Holland. This two-CD set contains both albums with eight unreleased bonus tracks-four from each session.

The Earl Scruggs Revue - Four Original Columbia Albums (2018) {2CD Set BGO Records BGOCD1295 rec 1972-1976}
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© 1972-76, 2018 Columbia / Sony Music / BGO Records | BGOCD1295
Country / Folk / Bluegrass / Banjo

Four albums by the legendary Earl Scruggs – all recorded in the years after he'd split with famous partner Lester Flatt, and moved on to work with a younger array of partners in the Earl Scruggs Revue! Given the way that Scruggs revolutionized the sound of American banjo in the postwar years, he'd always found strong interest from a younger audience – but with these records, he almost seems to give back directly to that group – by working with sons Randy and Gary, the younger of whol sings a lot of lead vocals – and almost brings a roots rock approach to the music.