Remastered

Roy Orbison left Monument for MGM Records in 1965, not long after "Oh, Pretty Woman" gave him his second number one single in 1964. He did not see those heights again during his stint at MGM, but it wasn't for lack of trying. During those eight years, he released 12 full-length albums – another, One of the Lonely Ones, was rejected in 1969 and wasn't unearthed until 2015 – and a clutch of non-LP singles, all rounded up and released in this 13-disc box set, The MGM Years 1965-1973 (One of the Lonely Ones is not part of the box). Demon put this material out as a series of two-fers in the mid-2000s, but The MGM Years trumps those CDs by offering each album as a mini-LP in a cardboard sleeve, while adding a disc of B-Sides & Singles, plus a nice thick booklet filled with memorabilia and justifications for a rocky patch in Orbison's career. After a few modest hits – "Ride Away" and "Breakin' Up Is Breakin' My Heart" made the Top 40 in 1965, "Twinkle Toes" just barely cracked that bar in 1966 – Orbison dropped off the charts completely but continued to cut records designed with a crossover in mind.

Few female singers matched the hard-swinging Anita O'Day for sheer exuberance and skill in all areas of jazz vocals: her splendid improvising, wide range, dynamic tone, and innate sense of rhythm made her one of the most enjoyable singer of the age. O'Day's first appearances in a big band shattered the traditional image of a demure female vocalist by swinging just as hard as the other musicians on the bandstand, best heard on her vocal trading with Roy Eldridge on the Gene Krupa recording "Let Me Off Uptown." After making her solo debut in the mid-'40s, she incorporated bop modernism into her vocals and recorded over a dozen of the best vocal LPs of the era for Verve during the 1950s and '60s. Though hampered during her peak period by heavy drinking and, later, drug addiction, she made a comeback and continued singing into the new millennium. Born Anita Belle Colton in Chicago, she was raised largely by her mother and entered her first marathon-dance contest while barely a teenager. She spent time on the road and occasionally back at home, later moving from dancing to singing at the contests. After bad experiences amid brief tenures with Benny Goodman and even Raymond Scott, O'Day earned a place in Gene Krupa's band in 1941.

Julie London A sultry, smoky-voiced master of understatement, Julie London enjoyed considerable popularity during the cool era of the 1950s. London never had the range of Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, but often used restraint, softness, and subtlety to maximum advantage. An actor as well as a singer, London played with heavyweights like Gregory Peck and Rock Hudson in various films, and was married to Jack Webb of Dragnet fame for seven years before marrying songwriter Bobby Troup ("Route 66"). London performed her biggest hit, "Cry Me a River," in the Jayne Mansfield film The Girl Can't Help It. After recording her last album, Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, in 1969, she continued to act – playing a nurse on the NBC medical drama Emergency from 1974 until 1978. London left show biz altogether in the late '70s. In the mid-'90s she suffered a stroke, which led to a half-decade of poor health and ultimately contributed to her death on October 18, 2000.

Fausto Papetti is a brilliant Italian saxophonist who found his style in creating his own versions of famous hits, arranging them in a unique neo-classical manner. Discs of the artist are always popular among the romantically-minded public, as well as among all lovers of modern pop music. His arrangements are simple and not overloaded. His accents are precise and always underline the melody.

Friedrich Guida was born in Vienna on May 16, 1930. He began his musical education at the Grossmann Conservatory and subsequently took private lessons from Felix Pazofsky. From 1942 to 1947 he studied piano at the Vienna Academy of Music under Bruno Seidlhofer and Music Theory and Com position under Joseph Marx . He gave his first public performance in 1944 and, two years later when just 16 years old, won the Geneva International Music Competition. Starting after the Second World War, as a 20-year-old, Guida established himself as a piano soloist with an excel I ent international reputation and even performed at Carnegie HalI in New York City in 1950.

A short history of The Drifters would actually be an impossibility as well over 60 performers have been “Drifting” at one point or another! For brevity’s sake let’s just say the original Drifters were formed as a back up band for Clyde McPhatter and released one album in 1956 aptly titled “Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters”. Fast forward to 1959 and we find the second band emerging from a group called The Five Crowns, led by one, Benjamin Earl Nelson, better known professionally as Ben E King. Along with three other Crowns, Charlie Thomas, Dock Green and Elsbeary Hobbs they became a four piece dropping an alcohol troubled fifth member James “Poppa” Clark along the way. This line up became arguably the classic Drifters group produced mainly by The Coasters producers, Leiber & Stoller. The dynamic “wunderkinds “of the fifties music scene would of course write many classic songs of the era, many included here on our set alongside another dynamic writing duo Pomus & Shuman. This era became known as “the true golden age of the group” but sadly was to last only a couple of years. Due to financial problems (all the group were certainly never paid what they were worth) rather than the other classic rock n roll break up reason “musical differences”, Ben E King left the group for a solo career in 1960 and here we include three classic albums by the great man. Ben scored his first hit the following year, 1961, with the stone classic “Spanish Harlem” followed by yet another “Stand By Me” not a bad start at all, we say! Many hit singles and albums would follow but arguably he never had a hit as big at these two all time classics! And as we know they would both re-appear on the charts down the years. In 1982 Ben E King returned to The Drifters for a British tour and stayed until 1986.

Bob Dylan is waarschijnlijk de meest invloedrijke singer-songwriter van de popmuziek tot op heden. In de jaren zestig maakt hij naam in de folkscene in New York en brengt hij inmiddels klassieke popsongs als " The times they are a-changin'" uit. Hij verandert de folkpop voor altijd wanneer hij elektrische instrumenten aan zijn palet toevoegt. Tijdens zijn decennia lange loopbaan brengt hij talloze albums uit, die zelden teleurstellen. Opvallend genoeg beleeft hij in het nieuwe millenium een muzikale renaissance met sterke albums als Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020).

In a winter tradition that’s as reliable as any, UMe has released the latest in the annual copyright extension series, entitled Motown Unreleased: 1969. Compilation will arrive to digital download and streaming services today. There’s a whopping 60 tantalizing, previously unreleased gems from the Motown vault!

Il 2016 è l'anno della grande reunion dei Pooh ma, per i fan, è anche l'ultima occasione di vedere la band dal vivo, in una serie di concerti che sanciscono il loro definitivo addio alle scene. Un momento dolceamaro che ha dato vita ad una cofanetto imperdibile per il pubblico che, da sempre, ha sostenuto la band italiana più longeva di sempre.

German conductor Otto Klemperer attended the Hoch Conservatorium in Frankfurt-am-Main, studied violin and piano at the Klindworth-Scharwenka and Stern Conservatories in Berlin, and composition with the German composer Pfitzner. He made his début in Berlin in 1905, where he conducted fifty performances of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, not a work that would now be identified with Klemperer's serious and profoundly personal approach to music. Shortly afterwards, he visited Gustav Mahler in Vienna and impressed the composer by playing a scherzo from a Mahler symphony by memory at the piano. With Mahler's personal recommendation, Klemperer was appointed choirmaster and conductor at the German Opera in Prague.