Doug Collette

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

The dominant blue color scheme of the cover of Davy Knowles’ The Invisible Man is similar to that of his prior album. The two records are companion pieces of a sort, but whereas 2021’s What Happens Next consolidated the Isle of Man native’s essential songwriting and performing talents, the long-player fell woefully short in exhibiting the former Back Door Slam Leader’s well-honed improvisational skills.

In a performance just shy of three and a half-minutes, Junior Wells fully demonstrates why he’s held in such high regard as a progenitor of blues music at its most stylish and deeply felt. “Hoodoo Man Blues” is also the title of his debut album–which contains his most famous tune, “Messin’ With The Kid”–and that may explain why he delivers the title song of the aforementioned LP with such poise and panache. The impromptu vocal phrasing is something else altogether, as is the harmonica he plays: the sweetness of the tones he blows belie their cutting edge. It’s little wonder The Rolling Stones took Wells on tour with them or why, long before that, Junior also worked with such stalwarts of this elemental genre as Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy.

At the very same time Beatlemania was slowly but surely beginning to engulf the globe, Miles Davis was inexorably proceeding toward what was the most adventurous music of his career. Miles In France -The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 captures a group of musicians led by "The Man with the Horn" on the threshold of forming what is referred to as his second great quintet, then actually coalescing into that stellar outfit.

With over a half-century retrospect, it’s altogether mind-boggling that Live/Dead is the first of what would subsequently become a plethora of concert recordings by The Grateful Dead. And, in the density of intelligent reasoning customary for the group, the rationale behind Live/Dead lies in the band’s aim to minimize recording costs while simultaneously capturing their stage sound with greater accuracy.

Hearing Ballad of Easy Rider from a fifty-five-year perspective no doubt evokes the same reaction as it did at its original release: ‘This doesn’t sound like the Byrds!?!’

In deserved recognition of the seminal Southern band’s final concert a decade ago, The Allman Brothers Band: Live —Beacon Theatre New York City 10-28-14 has been issued digitally and as a set of three compact discs.

No figure has had a more profound effect on blues music than Robert Johnson. A grand(iose) statement, to be sure, but given the rarity of film footage and photographs of the man, plus the comparatively few recordings he made, his influence is all more astonishing. Forty-one tracks are collected on The Complete Recordings