Way Down

Charlie Walker - Pick Me Up On Your Way Down (1999) {5CD Set, Bear Family BCD15852EI rec 1952-1971}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.00 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 897 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 483 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1952-71, 1999 Bear Family Records | BCD 15852 EI
Honky-Tonk / Hillbilly /Country / Country-Pop / Nashville Sound

The hillbilly shuffle and the honky tonk song are still the cornerstones of real country music. Some pioneers, like Ray Price, are getting their due these days, but others, like Charlie Walker, tend to be overlooked.
The facts are these: Charlie Walker's early hits, like Who Will Buy The Wine, Pick Me Up On Your Way Down, Wild As A Wildcat, and Little Ol' Winedrinker Me are simply as good as it gets when it comes to heartbreakin', cheatin', beerhall country music and state-of-the-art hillbilly shuffles. The 154 sides represented in this five-CD collection chronicle the development of Charlie Walker's style from his earliest recordings in 1952 for Imperial Records to his classic sides for Columbia and Epic Records.

A new 2CD set of Elvis’ final studio recordings to be released in August. RCA Records and Legacy Recordings are to release Way Down In The Jungle Room, a new double CD (and 2LP vinyl) collection of Elvis Presley‘s last studio recordings. This comprehensive collection brings together, for the first time, master recordings and rare outtakes laid down during two sessions (February 2-8, 1976 and October 28-30, 1976) in Presley’s home studio in Graceland – known as the “Jungle Room”. The outtakes have been newly mixed (by engineer Matt Ross-Spang) at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, Tennessee.

Branching away from standards on her second album Way Down Low, Austin-based jazz vocalist Kat Edmonson also expands her musical worldview, going beyond the sophisticated cabaret of her 2009 debut Take to the Sky and creating a breezy neo-tribute to the swinging '60s. That was the decade that produced Brian Wilson's "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times," one of the few covers on Way Down Low and a sentiment that applies to Edmonson but in a different way. Where the Beach Boy was pining for the days before rock & roll, Edmonson would certainly feel more comfortable in either the '60s or '50s, where bossa nova, swing, and pop mingled happily, as they do here.

In 1976, Elvis Presley was in an unusual position – he was still the King of Rock & Roll and could sell out arenas all across the nation, but Top 40 radio played him only as an oldies act, and his new material popped up on the Easy Listening and Adult Contemporary charts when it charted at all. Tired of working in the studio where scheduling pressures stifled his creative spirit, Presley converted his den at his mansion Graceland into a recording studio with the help of RCA's mobile unit. Working with members of his top-notch road band, Presley recorded the sort of material he wanted to try – songs that reflected his own maturity and that of his audience – and the home-recorded sessions would become the basis for two albums, 1976's From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee and 1977's Moody Blue.

Curtis Amy - Groovin' Blue & Way Down & Tippin' On Through (1961-1962) {2CD Fresh Sound Records FSRCD 768 rel 2013}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 762 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 285 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 42 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24-Bit Digitally Remastered
© 1961-62, 2013 Pacific Jazz / Fresh Sound Records | FSRCD 768
Jazz / Soul Jazz / Hard Bop / West Coast Jazz / Saxophone

Between 1960 and 1963 Texas tenor Curtis Amy (1927-2002) made six superb albums for Dick Bocks Pacific Jazz label, three of which, Groovin Blue, Way Down, and Tippin on Through, are included here. They were part of Bocks recognition of the emergence on the West Coast scene of a more groove-based, harder swinging approach than the cooler, considered style that preceded it. He chose well. Years of semi-obscurity in L.A. dance bands and organ combos had made Amy a thoroughly seasoned, assertive and inventive player in the mould of fellow tenor, Harold Land; these Pacific albums established him as a major exponent of the new music revitalizing West Coast jazz.

The second and final album by these upstate New York blues-rockers was more polished than their live-in-the-studio, occasionally drunk debut, Whiskey Woman, but that's actually to the music's detriment…