Rovi

This record was originally released in 1991 after Taj had taken a break for a number of side projects including children's records. He was obviously refreshed - the record is full of new ideas and incorporates new production techniques, check out the lovely song "Every wind in the river" and also the scratching and rap stylings of "Squat that rabbit". A bit radical for blues but both work very well. Taj revists the song "Giant step" and also takes the traditional blues "Blues with a feeling" to New Orleans, with an added dash of steel guitar (!?!). Guests include banjo player David Johnson, guitarist David Lindley, Andy Kravitz and Bill Summers and the backing band sound great throughout. This is a really good, imaginative record that saw Taj coming back to form and his next couple of records in the 90s were even better.

Percy Faith was one of the most popular easy listening recording artists of the '50s and '60s. Not only did he have a number of hit albums and singles under his own name, but Faith was responsible for arranging hits by Tony Bennett, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, and Burl Ives, among others, as the musical director for Columbia Records in the '50s.
Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Faith was a child piano prodigy, giving his first recital at Massey Hall at the age of 15 and playing various movie theaters, providing the soundtrack to silent films. His career as a concert pianist was cut short when he injured his hands in a fire when he was 18. Faith moved into arranging, beginning with local, hotel orchestras but quickly moving to radio. It was here where he developed his lush pop-instrumental style. For most of the '30s, he worked on Canadian Broadcast Company. At the end of the decade his radio show, Music by Faith, was also being aired within the United States.

Peter Gabriel s Scratch My Back album project is the first part of a series of song exchanges in which Gabriel and other leading artists reinterpret each other s songs. To help craft his recording of the album s eclectic array of cult favorites and classic tracks, Gabriel enlisted former Durutti Column member John Metcalfe, composer, arranger and the expertise of producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd s The Wall, Lou Reed s Berlin ) and engineer, mixer and producer Tchad Blake (Suzanne Vega, Sheryl Crow, Tom Waits)…

In the mid-'60s, Chess Records released a great series of compilations of '40s and '50s singles by some of its best blues artists, all of them called The Real Folk Blues. The Howlin' Wolf entry is possibly the best of the batch, and one of the best introductions to this mercurial electric bluesman. Opening with the savage "Killing Floor," the album doesn't let up in intensity, and it happily focuses on Wolf's less-anthologized sides, which gives the album a freshness a lot of blues compilations lack. From the sly "Built for Comfort" and "Three Hundred Pounds of Fun" to the apocalyptic "Natchez Burning," every track is pure Chicago blues at its finest. The album's only flaws are its skimpy 32-minute running length and the inexplicable omission of perhaps Wolf's greatest single, the amazing "How Many More Years."