The record industry's blatantly greedy ploy of remastering and "upgrading" CDs is shameful. The sonics are usually improved, but the CDs could have been mastered properly the first time. But then fans wouldn't buy the same titles twice. The Allman Brothers Band's indispensable compilation A Decade of Hits 1969-1979 was reissued in 2000, just nine ...
A tribute to the dearly departed Duane, Eat a Peach rambles through two albums, running through a side of new songs, recorded post-Duane, spending a full album on live cuts from the Fillmore East sessions, then offering a round of studio tracks Duane completed before his death. On the first side, they do suggest the mellowness of the Dickey Betts ...
A double-disc box set containing everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, The Complete Recordings is essential listening, but it is also slightly problematic. The problems aren't in the music itself, of course, which is stunning and the fidelity of the recordings is the best it ever has been or ever will be. Instead, it's in the track sequencing. ...
The best studio album in the group's history, electric blues with an acoustic texture, virtuoso lead, slide, and organ playing, and a killer selection of songs, including "Midnight Rider," "Revival," "Don't Keep Me Wonderin'," and "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" in its embryonic studio version, which is pretty impressive even at a mere six minutes ...
With the confusing plethora of Elmore James discs out on the market, this is truly the place to start, featuring the best of his work culled from several labels. Highlights include James' original recording of "Dust My Broom," "It Hurts Me Too," "T.V. Mama" (with Elmore backing Big Joe Turner), and the title track, one of the best slow blues ever ...
A Meeting by the River can best be described as a spontaneous outpouring of music, unhindered by convention or form, brought into being by musicians so supremely capable that the music is never labored, the technique of their craft always subservient to the final product. Cooder and Bhatt are genuine masters of the guitar and mohan vina, ...
Muddy's "unplugged" album was cut in September of 1963 and still sounds fresh and vital today. It was Muddy simply returning to his original style on a plain acoustic guitar in a well-tuned room with Willie Dixon on string bass, Clifton James on drums, and Buddy Guy on second acoustic guitar. The nine tracks are divvied up between full rhythm ...
Prior to Nick of Time, Bonnie Raitt had been a reliable cult artist, delivering a string of solid records that were moderate successes and usually musically satisfying. From her 1971 debut through 1982's Green Light, she had a solid streak, but 1986's Nine Lives snapped it, falling far short of her usual potential. Therefore, it shouldn't have ...
This is, perhaps, the one. Derek Trucks has been on an aesthetic quest for something since he began his own recording career in 1997 -- apart from his membership in the Allman Brothers Band. Each record has gone further into establishing Trucks not only as a slide guitar wizard (that happened when he was still in his teens), but also as a serious ...
Whereas most great live rock albums are about energy, At Fillmore East is like a great live jazz session, where the pleasure comes from the musicians' interaction and playing. The great thing about that is, the original album that brought the Allmans so much acclaim is as notable for its clever studio editing as it is for its performances. ...
Released to celebrate the 30th anniversary of George Thorogood & the Destroyers -- their first album may not have come out until 1977, but they cut their first sessions in 1974 -- Capitol's Greatest Hits: 30 Years of Rock was designed to replace 1992's The Baddest of George Thorogood and the Destroyers as the band's definitive single-disc overview ...
Duane Allman's greatness was apparent on his recordings with the Allman Brothers, yet there was another side to the superb guitarist. For many years, he was a highly respected session musician, playing on cuts by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, King Curtis, Boz Scaggs, Delaney & Bonnie, and Clarence Carter, among others. By including those ...
Still Alive and Well proved to the record buying public that Johnny Winter was both. This is a truly enjoyable album, chock full of great tunes played well. Johnny's version of the Rolling Stones' "Silver Train" shows us the potential this song has and what the Stones failed to capture. Everything here is good, so get it and dig in. ~ James ...
The Allman Brothers Band's fifth live release in 25 years, cut during 1994 in Raleigh, NC, and at the Garden State Arts Center in New Jersey, is a high-water mark in their Epic Records catalog. If anything, they're even better here than they were on the earlier Evening With the Allman Brothers Band, the old material getting fresh new approaches -- ...
On the classic 1972 live album Roadwork, Edgar Winter immortalized the words, when introducing brother Johnny: "Everybody asks me...where's your brother?" It's a question that fans have besieged both Winters with for over two decades, and now Johnny gets a chance to return the tribute with his latest. Edgar does in fact guest on the sessions, ...
There have been countless collections of Muddy Waters' classic Chess material released over the years, but Chess began to whittle down the domestic catalog toward the late '90s. The triple-disc Chess box remained in print, but they added two single-disc collections that each covered a specific period in Waters' career at Chess. Then, in 2001, MCA ...
For many back in the early '60s, this was their first exposure to live recorded blues, and it's still pretty damn impressive some 40-plus years down the line. Muddy, with a band featuring Otis Spann, James Cotton, and guitarist Pat Hare, lays it down tough and cool with a set that literally had 'em dancing in the aisles by the set closer, a ...
There are scores of Muddy Waters compilations out there, and while it might be overreaching a bit to call this 24-track single-disc set definitive, it is still a mighty good selection, including as it does all of Waters' major singles from Chess Records and its Aristocrat Records imprint between the years 1948 and 1964 along with a single track ...
The classic version of the Allman Brothers Band graced the planet for a period that was all too brief -- from 1969 through October 1971 -- but in the decades since there have been seemingly endless packagings and repackagings of the group's relatively slim recorded output. The group did their best work in a live setting, and the live pinnacle of ...
Second Winter, Johnny Winter's second album for Columbia, originally had the distinction of being the only album in rock history that was a three-sided double LP. Musically, 35 years after its original release, Second Winter is still an oddity. Issued by Sony's Legacy division, the set has been painstakingly remastered, and expanded by bonus cuts ...
The session work with other players here isn't quite as good as the material on the first anthology, but An Anthology, Vol. 2 does feature a live cut by Delaney & Bonnie, plus a pair of what were then previously unissued Allman Brothers Band live tracks (among them "Midnight Rider" from the Fillmore East in June 1971). There's another good Duane ...
Sony Legacy's remastered and expanded reissue of Johnny Winter's self-produced debut album for Columbia Records -- recorded in 1969 -- is nothing short of a revelation. Unlike most of his peers, who purposefully wed blues to rock and made it palatable to pop audiences, Winter's approach to the blues was pure and savage. He approached rock & roll ...
This is the real deal -- Phelps performs with the full authority and authenticity of the Delta bluest tradition without ever once sounding like a Folkways museum piece. There's nothing more to it than the 34-year-old's raspy, swamp-infused vocals, lapstyle acoustic guitar played using fingerpicking and slide, and self-accompanied stomp-box ...
A double-disc box set containing everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, The Complete Recordings is essential listening, but it is also slightly problematic. The problems aren't in the music itself, of course, which is stunning and the fidelity of the recordings is the best it ever has been or ever will be. Instead, it's in the track sequencing. ...
New England blues guitarist Ronnie Earl has spent his recording career, which began in 1979 when he replaced Duke Robillard in Roomful of Blues, flirting with his own hybrid brand of blues/jazz/R&B, and his elegant solos on guitar always seem on the edge of breaking out into a whole new category, although they never quite do, and he remains an ...
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