Whistle 2002

Ex-husband Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Records can be accused of scraping the bottom of the barrel in its second compilation of old Sarah Brightman tracks released to take advantage of the singer's international popularity due to her albums Time to Say Goodbye, Eden, and La Luna, all recorded for a different company. Happily, even the bottom of the barrel contains some excellent material, even after the cream was skimmed off with The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection. During and after her marriage to Lloyd Webber, Brightman performed on the Original London Cast recording of The Phantom of the Opera and recorded the albums The Songs That Got Away (1989) and Surrender (1995), and that's the material sampled here, that is, the remaining tracks that weren't used on The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection.

Sonny Sharrock - Monkey-Pockie-Boo (1970) {Sunspots SPOT 504 rel 2002}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 183 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 81 Mb
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© 1970, 2002 Sunspots / BYG Records | SPOT 504
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Guitar

Wow! This is one of Sonny Sharrock's rare early recordings, recorded in France shortly after he had been playing with Herbie Mann. The groove's kind of crazy, and it's amazing that Sonny jumped out so soon after leaving the sort of pop-jazz environs he was in with Herbie – but hey, lots of players got to France in the 60s, and completely let their bag open up – so why not Sonny? Wife Linda's on vocals on the session, and they're backed up by Beb Guerin on bass and Jacques Thollot on drums. Titles include "27th Day", "Soon", and "Monkey Pockie Boo".

Beside Marty Paich, none of Mel Tormé's collaborators exerted such a large influence on the singer's career as George Shearing, the pianist whose understated, expressive accompaniment contributed to Tormé's resurgence during the early '80s. Their six excellent albums together – two of which, An Evening With… and Top Drawer, earned Grammy awards – proved that classic vocal music had outlasted the long night that was the '70s, and emerged to become a timeless American genre. The pair's work for Concord was usually recorded live in a trio or quartet setting; leaving much space for Shearing solos, Tormé occasionally reprised his big standards ("A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," "Lullaby of Birdland," "The Folks Who Live on the Hill"), but often searched for more obscure material he could make his own, and often succeeded. Tormé and Shearing were restless innovators, taking on a full album of World War II standards, medleys devoted to songs about New York and by Duke Ellington, and a stunningly broad range of material: "Oleo," "Lili Marlene," "How Do You Say Auf Wiedersehen?," and "Dat Dere."

EMI's two-disc collection Souvenir: 1989-1998 rather nicely chronicles the decade when the Rankin Family rose to prominence in the Canadian pop/folk scene and opened a floodgate of likeminded musicians who brought Celtic influences into the contemporary scene. The collection is evenly focused on their entire career, with a bit of emphasis on the albums North Country and Uprooted, but also properly serves as an end cap to an impressive career (the Rankins disbanded in 1999) and as a memorial to the late John Morris Rankin (1959-2000). It is the perfect place to start for the curious and a fine set for those looking for a comprehensive retrospective.

This solid collection may strike June Christy fans as a little ironic because rather than stock her albums with standards the way that most of her peers did, the West Coast jazz vocalist was known for unearthing new and obscure songs. It's not that Christy neglected standards (in fact she recorded dozens of them over her 12-year run with Capitol Records), it's just that one gets the feeling that when she sang something like "I'm Glad There Is You" it was because she had something fresh or unique to bring to it. And she does put her own personal and idiosyncratic stamp on 20 of the songs here while two tunes haven't been recorded enough to become standards (the undeservedly obscure "Cry Like the Wind" and the swing-era novelty "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon"). So, when you add the song selection to the fact that this disc features the vocalist in orchestral, small-group jazz and big-band settings, the disc not only offers a much more complete portrait of the artist than the title suggests, but this is also one of the strongest entries in EMI's Sings the Standards series.

Jazz vocalist Mavis Rivers recorded for Reprise, Capitol, and Vee-Jay in the early '60s before making a surprising comeback in the early '80s.
By the end of the '50s, she'd scored a recording contract with Capitol Records and debuted with the Take a Number (1959), which was arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle. More records followed: Hooray for Love (1960, Capitol), arranged and conducted by Jack Marshall; The Simple Life (1960, Capitol), arranged and conducted by Dick Reynolds; Mavis (1961, Reprise), arranged and conducted by Marty Paich; Swing Along With Mavis (1961, Reprise), arranged and conducted by Van Alexander; Mavis Meets Shorty Rogers (1961, Reprise), arranged by Chuck Sagle; and, finally, We Remember Mildred Bailey (1964, Vee-Jay)…