Doug Collette

Dyed-in-the-wool cynics, Jimi Hendrix fans or not, may well perceive Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision as a thinly-veiled means to camouflage the reality that the late guitar hero's vault may have been archived to its fullest possible extent. But the film at the heart of the collection acts as a prism of sorts, shedding so different a light on the multi-faced music of Hendrix music, the (over) familiarity of the content allows for new perspectives on the creative process and the end results.

Hamish Anderson has increasingly fine-tuned his skills as a recording artist over his last few releases, including the 2014 EP Restless, plus his first two full-length albums, Trouble in 2016 and Out Of My Head three years later. Now, with Electric, he is ascending even further creatively, commensurate with the elevation of his public profile.

Watching what is ostensibly the only existing film of Jimmy Reed compels the question of whether any other blues figure has created a more fully-formed persona through his songs (or has had more of his songs covered by a wider range of artists). Firm, resolute, and good-natured, Reed compels attention even the misconceived light show can’t distract from, and the jaunty gait of the band, accentuated by Reed’s harmonica, gives life to rhythms and changes that so often fall flat in the hands of others. Even though the audience remains seated in the first portion–an excerpt from a German TV program broadcast of a performance at the American Folk Blues Festival, October 1968–there’s no denying the depth of engagement on the part of those watching and listening. Meanwhile, each of the latter two segments illuminates the independence and fortitude Reed brought to his songs with such deceptive understatement.

With the half-century anniversaries of Herbie Hancock 's work with The Headhunters having passed in roughly the last year— Head Hunters (Columbia, 1973) and Thrust (Columbia, 1974)—it is appropriate the current configuration of the group has continued regular activity. In fact, under the fitting tutelage of drummer Mike Clark and percussionist Bill Summers, the band has issued two albums of new material in this span of time.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1982 album Long After Dark deserves the expanded reissue treatment of its two-CD and one Blu-Ray package. A somewhat underappreciated entry into this great American rock and roll band’s lengthy discography, the ten tracks of the original edition—here remastered by Chris to resounding effect—receive further validation from the inclusion of a dozen mostly unreleased cuts, bookended by a somewhat unlikely pair of covers.

Iain Matthews is hardly a household name, but he has had his share of flirtations with the mainstream throughout his sixty-year-plus career. Having exited English folk pioneers Fairport Convention, he formed Matthews Southern Comfort, with whom he had a hit in 1970 with Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock.” A decade later, following a move to Los Angeles and the formation of the short-lived group Plainsong, a solo career commenced during which he garnered a sizable swath of popularity with the more polished likes of “Shake It”

Walter ‘Furry’ Lewis was one of the first of the old-time blues musicians of the 1920s to be brought out of retirement and given a new lease of recording life by the folk-blues revival of the 1960s. In the Mississippian’s early travels as a musician, he encountered a wide variety of like-minded performers, including Bessie Smith and Blind Lemon Jefferson, while later in his career, he twice opened for the Rolling Stones. In this immersive performance of a proper blues/gospel standard, “When I Lay My Burden Down,” Lewis illustrates the gutsy combination of agony and ecstasy at the heart of the blues. In doing so in such a versatile fashion–with both rhythm and slide guitar–he illustrates how its compelling sounds captured the imagination of Jagger, Richard, and company (plus so many of their contemporaries) at the time Furry’s profile was (not coincidentally) rightfully on the rise.

Released less than six months after his eponymous Columbia Records debut, Johnny Winter’s sophomore album for the label (and third solo overall) put to rest the naysaying that arose after the prior title’s emergence.

Fever Longing Still is Paul Kelly’s most conventional long-player since 2017’s Life Is Fine. Co-produced by the artist with engineer Steven Shram–notably along with Kelly’s longtime band mates–a slate of a dozen original songs metamorphoses into the unified work of a bonafide recording artist by the conclusion of its forty-one-plus minutes.

With fifty-five years' hindsight, the relatively minimal impact of The Allman Brothers Band's self-titled debut record (released 11/4/69) was out of