Before Mr. Coltrane became a jazz giant, he had to pay his dues, just like everyone else. Jazz “sidemen” were basically musicians for hire by studios. If an established artist or band was recording and needed a horn, they hired a sideman. Coltrane made music this way in New York City in the mid-‘50s, learning his trade and honing his craft. This selection focuses on those recordings, revealing a very versatile jazz artist. This five-disc box set features 24-bit remastering from the original analog master tapes, a 72-page book with rare photographs, discography, and sessionography, essays by music historian Ashley Kahn, interview transcript with Prestige founder Bob Weinstock, and fully reproduced original album cover artwork and notes.
Before Dave Chapelle, before Jerry Seinfeld and before Richard Pryor—about 50 years ago, in fact—there was Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. This three CD/one DVD Box set, remastered 50 years after the birth of The 2000 Year Old Man, offers hours of hilarity with all five 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums released by Brooks and Reiner. The DVD is flush with interviews, clips from The Ed Sullivan Show and The New Steve Allen Show, the 1975 animated TV special and loads of rare photographs. This will see some happy recipient well through the long winter.
In the early 1950s, Hank Williams could be heard performing every weekday morning on radio stations all across the southern United States. These 15-minute “morning shows” were pre-recorded in Nashville and many of the songs Williams recorded for these broadcasts thankfully survive. Packaged like its predecessor, Hank Williams: The Unreleased Recordings, as a three-disc box set, Hank Williams Revealed features three full programs in their entirety exactly as they were heard by listeners more than half a century ago, as well as stand-alone songs, in-studio conversations with Williams, and banter between him and the members of his band, the Drifting Cowboys. These candid conversations are something rare as far as Williams is concerned, and they provide unique and intimate insight into a man who, for as much as he is an icon of country music, has always been something of a mystery. The recordings reveal a personality that is much more lively and filled with humor than one might expect from listening to his most popular songs. Williams tells stories and talks easily about his music and his life as he performs his songs, many of which are alternate arrangements to familiar favorites, and some of which were never performed by Williams outside these studio sessions.
With gross earnings topping an astronomical $105 million, to say that it’s been a good year for AC/DC is a bit of an understatement. With a third generation discovering the band’s music, they’re now more popular than they’ve ever been, there’s no venue too small for them to play, exorbitantly-priced shows are selling out left and right, and to top it off, their spirited 15th album Black Ice did not disappoint when it came out a year ago. And typical of a huge act, they know how to sell their brand.
Which leads us to Backtracks, a monstrous new collection cunningly timed for the holiday season. With an eye-popping price tag of $225 (US), the Deluxe Collectors Edition is designed to whet the appetites of the die-hard fans. It’s an ingeniously designed multimedia package that relies heavily on the “wow” factor. And wow, indeed: three CDs packed to the gills with rarities, two loaded DVDs, a lavish 180 gram LP, a 164 page coffee table book, a host of reproduced memorabilia, and the capper, the whole shebang fitting into a fully functional one watt amplifier. Just how good the amp sounds or how durable it is (there’s no volume control, if that’s any indication), is beside the point. This package is just too damn cool. But amplifier, book, replica buttons, picks, and posters aside, what about the real meat ‘n’ potatoes of this set? How does the actual music measure up?
Overall, Backtracks is not quite the treasure trove that fans might have been craving all these years, and it might have been a better idea to offer complete remastered CDs of AC/DC’s first four Australian albums instead of the single-CD mishmash, or even dig a little deeper into the live/studio vaults. That said, in spite of some bumps along the way, it’s still a very fun seven or eight hour trip, one that comes closer to giving the fans bang for their buck than some might think.
A man’s life lived out of a suitcase, Woody Guthrie’s My Dusty Road, inaugurates the new Woody Guthrie Legacy Series on Rounder Records. This four-CD boxed set is literally packaged in a suitcase and vital remnants of Guthrie’s vagabond life: unpublished photos, lyric sheets, a business card, a post card to his wife and a booking card from the 1940s. These are also the cleanest recordings of Guthrie’s work yet to date. His unrivaled folk, full of emotional nuance impresses you upon first listen to My Dusty Road and these songs timelessly revel in the wayward traveler’s experience of America. No wonder Guthrie was Bob Dylan’s signature musical influence. This collection is for those who love Bob Dylan and want to trace the origins of his genius to Guthrie’s masterly crafted and treasured music, as well as anyone interested in American roots music and popular song.
The buzz on Barack Obama is that he’s a great speaker. Well, you haven’t listened to Winston Churchill lately, have you? You can compare these two notables while pondering the significance of their historical era, as well as other politicians, activists, newscasters, sportscasters, celebrities and more from this 5-CD set (so that’s 500 greatest, total) from the reputable Shout! Factory, whose catalogs includes Grammy®-nominated box sets. I’m listening to a radio announcement that the Russians are in Berlin, right now (100 Greatest News Stories), and it feels right now. These audible excerpts, the highlights of stories from modern history, are chilling, inspiring, funny and tragic. They’re historical earworms that wriggle right into your head and settle in your heart. This is stuff you never forget. Your history buff, your pop culture collector, the teacher in your family, the audio sampler (who will appreciate the alphabetical, rather than chronological organization) will want this, too.
