Just as the subtitle says, this six-CD, 158-track collection has "The Complete Hollies April 1963-October 1968". That's everything recorded when singer Allan Clarke, guitarist/singer Tony Hicks, and guitarist/singer Graham Nash, who were the three constants in the band (though drummer Bobby Elliott was there for all but the earliest of these recordings, too). As such, it's a major British Invasion document. Even if it's missing some work postdating Nash's departure in late 1968 which is highly regarded by some fans (including their hits "He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother," "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress," and "The Air That I Breathe"), most fans would agree that the Nash era is by far the band's most significant…
In a perfect world, Curtis Peagler's Modern Jazz Disciples would have had a longer run and built a much larger catalog. But regrettably, the Cincinnati quintet is only a small footnote in the history of hard bop and gave listeners only two albums. The first was this self-titled LP, which was recorded for Prestige's New Jazz subsidiary in 1959. The Modern Jazz Disciples shows the late Peagler, who turned 29 that year, to be a hard-swinging alto saxman in the Charlie Parker/Sonny Stitt/Cannonball Adderley/Phil Woods vein - his hot-blooded solos on tracks like "A Little Taste," "Slippin' and Slidin'," and the standard "After You've Gone" make this record well worth the price of admission. Quite often, "After You've Gone" has been heard in swing and classic jazz settings, but the Disciples' version is pure bop…
Of the numerous British blues-rock bands to spring up in the late '60s, the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation was one of the better known, though solid reception on tours did not translate into heavy record sales. Musically, the group recalled John Mayall's Bluesbreakers during the 1966-1967 era that had produced that group's A Hard Road album, though with a somewhat more downbeat tone. The similarities were hardly coincidental, as the band's founder and leader, drummer Aynsley Dunbar, had been in the Bluesbreakers lineup that recorded the A Hard Road LP. Too, bassist Alex Dmochowski would go on to play with Mayall in the 1970s, and guitarist Jon Morshead was friendly with fellow axeman Peter Green (also in the Bluesbreakers' A Hard Road lineup), whom he had replaced in Shotgun Express.
Named after a radical right-wing American organization – and possibly for that reason simply retitled The Arm of the Lord in the States – Covenant, self-produced by the group at its longtime studio Western Works, is something of a curious release.