Tag Archives: Legacy

Billy Joel: Piano Man (Legacy Edition)

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Classic Billy Joel album and a stunning 1972 live concert

Billy Joel had a long career in music before his first commercial break with this 1973 album and its title hit single. He’d played piano as a studio sideman and recorded with several rock groups, including the Hassles and Attila, before settling into the singer-songwriter style that began with 1971’s Cold Spring Harbor. With his solo debut having stiffed commercially, and label problems keeping him from recording a follow-up, he relocated to Los Angeles where he spent six months playing as a lounge pianist, writing new material a eventually returning to touring. Signing with Columbia, he released this sophomore album in November and cracked the Top 40 by the following Spring – more than five months after the records were released. The single rose to #25, but it would be three more years until Joel achieved massive acclaim with 1977’s The Stranger.

The introspection of Cold Spring Harbor was mostly replaced on his second album with lightly- and wholly-fictional character sketches. The album’s love song, “You’re My Home” (written as a Valentine’s Day gift for Joel’s first wife) is also its most personal, though the title song is clearly drawn from Joel’s tenure as a lounge singer. Narratives of travel and distance, as well as the line “too many people got a hold of me” (from “Worse Comes to Worst”), speak to the touring and travail of his early solo years. The album’s sound was heavily influenced by California’s early-70s canyon-country scene, mixing West Coast twang with Joel’s East Coast bravura. The epic “Captain Jack” turned out to be the cure for that early turmoil, as a live recording from a 1972 radio broadcast became the turntable hit that sparked Columbia Records’ interest.

The Legacy edition of Piano Man augments a remastered edition of the original album on disc one with a newly commissioned mix (from the 16-track master) of the 1972 radio concert that yielded the pivotal live recording. Recorded live in April, 1972 at Sigma Sound Studios, the concert was broadcast on Philadelphia’s WMMR-FM. The audience was made up primarily of contest winners and the set list included six songs from Cold Spring Harbor, three that would be recorded later in the year for Piano Man, and three rarities from Joel’s early songwriting catalog (“Long, Long Time,” “Josephine” and “Rosalinda”). Joel is commanding at both his piano and microphone throughout the show, and his road band is soulful and razor sharp; together they deliver performances with more musical life than the studio versions of Joel’s first two albums.

As Jonathan Takiff point out, Joel captivated a Philadelphia audience who knew relatively little about him, getting them to respond to songs they were hearing for the first time, rather than hits they’d come to hear. Joel showed himself to be a formidable singer-songwriter and a magnetic showman whose patter (including an impromptu station ID) keeps both the studio and radio audiences hooked. Those with bootleg version of the concert will find a few changes have been made, most notably drummer Rhys Clark’s flub on “Captain Jack” has been excised. Those weaned on the original tape may take exception, but most listeners won’t notice. The two-disc set is housed in a tri-fold digipack with a 24-page booklet filled with detailed liner notes and photos. The original single edit of “Piano Man” would have made a nice bonus, but that’s a nit; fans who didn’t have the opportunity to see Joel perform in the early ‘70s owe it to themselves to hear this seminal 1972 concert. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Billy Joel’s Home Page

Tony Bennett: The Classic Christmas Album

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Forty years of Tony Bennett’s Christmas recordings

Seventeen of these eighteen tracks have been selected by the vocalist from his catalog of albums and compilation appearances on Snowfall: The Tony Bennett Christmas Album (1968), The Playground (1998), Our Favorite Things (2001), Christmas with Tony Bennett (2002) and A Swingin’ Christmas (2008). The album’s one previously unreleased title is a Marion Evans arrangement of the traditional “What Child is This.” Bennett appears in orchestral, big band and small combo settings, and though the original albums can still be found, this provides a nice sampling across forty years of his stylish takes on holiday standards. Bennett sings with a jazzy cool unparalleled by his peers or followers, and together with some hot charts (particularly those for the Basie band), he gives new life to these holiday chestnuts. The Bennett fanatic in your family may be expecting the monumental 73-CD Complete Collection under the tree, but the rest of the family will be satisfied by this warm collection of classics. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Tony Bennett’s Home Page

Paul Simon: Songwriter

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Idiosyncratic collection highlighting Paul Simon’s songwriting

This two-disc, thirty-two track collection (with a generous running time of 139 minutes) highlights the legendary songwriting of Paul Simon. The composer himself selected the tracks, touching on both hits and the lesser-known compositions of which he’s most proud. The result is an idiosyncratic tour of Simon’s catalog that will remind you of his broad commercial power, but key you into the depth of his craft as a writer. The selections focus almost entirely on Simon’s post Simon & Garfunkel career, with only a solo live take of “The Sound of Silence” (the set’s only previously unreleased track), Simon’s 1991 Concert in the Park recording of “The Boxer,” and Aretha Franklin’s 1970 cover of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” reaching back to his duo work.

The bulk of the collection cherry-picks from Simon’s solo albums, stretching from 1972’s Paul Simon through this year’s So Beautiful or So What. Selections from Simon’s well-loved albums of the 1970s and his commercial renaissance sparked by Graceland will be familiar, but deep album cuts, picks from Hearts and Bones and Songs from the Capeman (including the excellent 50s-pastiche “Quality”), and his contribution to the soundtrack of The Wild Thornberrys Movie will be fresh to many listener’s ears. The breadth of Simon’s writing mirrors both his own maturation as a person and the evolution of the society in which he wrote. The reactionary outbursts of his early songs were stoked by youth and the turbulent times in which he was living; his early post-S&G years found him developing a solo personality and indulging his musical interests in reggae, doo-wop, and South American folk.

Simon’s music has been as revelatory and memorable as his words, speedily evolving from the acoustic arrangements of the folk scene to sophisticated tapestries of instruments and genres. Decades before Graceland introduced African music to the American audience, Simon augmented his palette with American gospel, Peruvian folk and Jamaican reggae. He explored sounds from South Africa, Brazil and the American South, all the while embroidering his autobiographical, observational and imaginative lyrics with ideas drawn from his musical interests. His relationships seeded numerous songs, including ones of developing love (“Hearts and Bones”), family (“Father and Daughter” and “So Beautiful Or So What”), marital turbulence (“Darling Lorraine”) and dissolution (“Tenderness”). His evolving view of society provided bookends to the American unrest with the angry “The Sound of Silence” and the haggard “American Tune.”

Over the years, Simon’s craft sharpened, his characters multiplied, his philosophical and emotional insights deepened, and his favorite lyrics became more impressionistic and poetic. But winningly, his music remained accessible as he teased apart new layers in existing forms and interwove the fresh threads of his ever-broadening musical grasp. Simon sees himself first as a songwriter, secondarily as a performer and recording artist, but as these recordings attest, his words, melodies, arrangements and estimable guitar playing are all deeply intertwined. Simon always surrounded himself with carefully picked players who add original colors to his songs with their instruments and voices. Listening to a set of his recordings, it’s easy to appreciate the songwriter, but difficult to untangle that appreciation from the carefully crafted performances.

The set’s booklet includes full lyrics, but no song notes by the author. Simon, most likely, sees the lyrics as the best possible explanation of the songs. Still, the stories behind the songs would have been an interesting extra. The absence of Simon & Garfunkel recordings leaves the listener to remember how Simon’s first blaze of glory sounded; the words are here in three early songs, but as noted, Simon’s lyrics are deeply wedded to his expression, which originally included Art Garfunkel. The set’s forward is written by painter (and apparent Paul Simon superfan) Chuck Close, and the liner notes are by Tom Moon. Full musician, production and release credits are also included. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Paul Simon’s Home Page

Various Artists: The Essential Phil Spector

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Spector’s genius before, during and after Philles

After decades of uneven reissues – dribs and drabs in the U.S. and abroad – Phil Spector’s catalog is finally being cross-licensed for reissue. The first break came with the catalog’s owner, ABKCO, issuing the Back to Mono set in 1991; but the larger breakthrough has been the licensing to Universal and Sony/Legacy that’s resulted in the Phil Spector Collection and a set of artist compilations on the Crystals, Ronettes and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans issued earlier this year. That licensing is now paying additional dividends with the release of Phil Spector Presents the Philles Album Collection and this new 34-track Phil Spector collection. Note that this 2-CD set is a Phil Spector volume rather than one dedicated solely to his years with Philles.

The set opens with pre-Philles sides from the Teddy Bears (Spector’s first #1), Ray Peterson, Ben E. King, Curtis Lee, Gene Pitney and the Paris Sisters. The tour through his hits at Philles includes The Crystals, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene Love, the Ronettes, Righteous Brothers, and Ike and Tina Turner. Outside of Philles is a cover of the Beatles’ “Hold Me Tight” that mixes ‘50s doo-wop singing with Spector’s evolving production style, and Spector’s brilliant original “Black Pearl,” by Sonny Charles and the Checkmates. The latter suggested a continuing run as a dominant auteur in the ‘70s, but it didn’t go that way. Legacy’s done a fine job of cross-licensing material from K-Tel, Universal, Warner, EMI and others to pull together a compelling picture of Spector’s hit singles.

Given the wide availability of nearly everything here, this isn’t going to satisfy Spector collectors, but it’s a concise tour through the highlights of his most productive years. Its look at the Philles catalog isn’t as thorough as the earlier multi-disc sets, but the inclusion of pre- and post-Philles sides, hits by the Righteous Brothers, Ike & Tina’s “River Deep, Mountain High” and Sonny Charles’ “Black Pearl,” paint a picture that tells the tale from Spector’s first hit to his last as a producer who’s name rose above those of his artists. This set fits nicely between the single disc Wall of Sound: The Very Best of Phil Spector and the two-disc import Phil Spector Collection, and will inform a new generation of listeners for whom the revolutionary producer’s infamy has eclipsed his fame. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Various Artists: Phil Spector Presents The Philles Album Collection

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Six original Philles albums plus B-side instrumental bonuses

Much like the Cameo-Parkway catalog, Phil Spector’s seminal records of the 1960s are only recently starting to see the reissues they deserve. For years they were reissued in dribs and drabs – greatest hits packages repeating the same chart entries, hard-to-find vinyl albums from the UK leaking out stereo mixes, reissues of the Christmas album, and so on. The 1991 box set Back to Mono and the more recent Phil Spector Collection each dug more deeply into the catalog, but there was still much to be done. With Sony’s Legacy division having obtained reissue rights, 2011 kicked off with anthologies of the Ronettes, Crystals, Darlene Love and Spector’s other hit productions. The reissues now continue with this box set of six original Philles albums, packaged in reproduction mini-LP sleeves.

Among the albums are three by the Crystals (although, as will be seen, they hold little more than one album’s worth of original material), one each by the Ronettes and Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, and a 1963 collection of label hits. Philles, like the pop music industry of its time, was focused on singles, with albums being little more than promotional afterthoughts. These albums were built around existing singles, and filled out with previously released material and album sides. Though some of the album material failed to match the brilliance of the hits, and the productions weren’t always as lavish, neither were the tracks often throwaway filler. The Philles singles pipeline was well-stocked through these years, and otherwise hit-worthy tracks simply couldn’t find room in the release schedule. The set’s designated filler is disc seven’s collection of instrumental B-sides; but even here you get the Wrecking Crew in their prime.

The box kicks off with PHLP-4000, The Crystals Twist Uptown from 1962, which opens with the group’s second hit, Mann & Weil’s thrilling urban love song, “Uptown.” Their first hit, the divine “There’s No Other (Like My Baby),” is here too, but it’s the album tracks that are likely to be new to many listeners. Spector’s co-write with Doc Pomus, “Another Country – Another World,” puts a fresh spin on an outcast love by replacing class separation with a cultural divide. Several of the songs, including “Oh Yeah, Maybe Baby” (featuring Patsy Wright on lead vocal) and “What a Nice Way to Turn Seventeen,” feel the pull of ‘50s doo-wop and earlier girl groups like the Chantels, but the swirling strings, clacking castanets and underlying baion beats mark these as Spector’s. The album take of “On Broadway” predates the Drifters hit, and the group’s cover of “Gee Whiz” (retitled “Gee Whiz Look at His Eyes (Twist)”) followed Carla Thomas’ original by a year.

The Crystal’s second album, PHLP-4001 He’s a Rebel, was released in 1963 to capitalize on the hit single “He’s a Rebel.” The track list repeats nine selections from the debut, dropping “Please Hurt Me” and “Gee Whiz,” and adding the title single alongside the hit “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” and the notorious “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss).” The title hit holds two major distinctions: it was Spector’s first chart topper with Philles (he’d scored a #1 with the Teddy Bears in 1958), and it wasn’t actually the Crystals singing – it was Darlene Love (obscurely referenced by her then-married name Darlene Peete in Mick Patrick’s liner notes) and the Blossoms. Accounts vary as to how the Crystals name was bestowed upon Darlene Love, and it’s unclear if the failure of “He Hit Me” (a song whose violent theme is all the more chilling given Spector’s personal history) was a factor, but Spector began recording Love and her backing group in Los Angeles and hit the jackpot with “He’s a Rebel,” as well as “He’s Sure the Boy I Love.”

The group’s third album, PHLP-4003 The Crystals Sing The Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 isn’t entirely a Crystals album. It includes only one new Crystals recording, 1963’s “Da Doo Ron Ron” (featuring Lala Brooks on lead vocal) and fills out the track list with repeats from the group’s first two albums, the leftover “Look in My Eyes”, and four dance-themed titles (three covered from the Cameo-Parkway catalog: “The Wah Watusi,” “Mashed Potato Time” and “The Twist”) sung by the Ronettes. The latter had yet to release anything on Philles, and these covers weren’t repeated on Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica. Still, with the Crystal’s second album having mostly repeated their first, and their third cherry-picking from the first two, Spector showed his allegiance to the single as his ultimate format, as well as his savvy in picking the pockets of unsuspecting record buyers.

Philles’ third album, PHLP-4002 Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, was dedicated to Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, a group that had three hit singles. Two of the hits are here, and the third (“Not Too Young to Get Married”) is on disc five of this set, Philles Records Presents Today’s Hits. Bob B. Soxx was vocalist Bobby Sheen, who was supposed to be backed by Darlene Love and her fellow Blossom, Fanita James. But once they began to record, Spector had Love step to the front and provide the lead vocals for everything but “Dear (Here Comes My Baby)” and the bluesy “Everything’s Gonna Be All Right.” The album tracks generally haven’t the energy of the singles, with album filler like “White Cliffs of Dover” trying, but mostly failing to capture the magic of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.” The one real discovery, aside from Sheen’s two tracks, is the funky Jackie DeShannon tune “I Shook the World.” The album closes with the instrumental B-side “Dr. Kaplan’s Office,” suggesting that Spector lost interest before producing a full album of twelve tracks.

The Ronettes only full-length album, PHLP-4006 Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica, was issued in 1964 and collected their five biggest hits, “Be My Baby,” “Baby, I Love You,” “(The Best Part Of) Breakin’ Up,” “Do I Love You?” and “Walking in the Rain.” Also included was their earlier recording of “So Young,” credited at that time to Veronica, a pair of non-charting singles (“How Does it Feel?” and “When I Saw You”) and four album tracks (“I Wonder,” “What’d I Say,” “You Baby,” and “Chapel of Love,” the latter written for the group and recorded the year before the Dixie Cups had a hit, but not issued as a single). The album peaked at #96, and though the group would release excellent singles in 1965 and 1966 (and record many that Spector withheld, including “Girls Can Tell” and “Paradise”), their star had peaked. The album, never before officially reissued on CD in its original form, continues to be a collector’s item, and is presented here, like all tracks in this box, in mono.

The fifth disc in this collection, PHLP-4004 Philles Records Presents Today’s Hits, repeats six tracks from the Crystals’, Ronettes’ and Bob. Soxx and the Blue Jeans’ albums, but fills in six more Philles hits. Chief among them is the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me” and a pair of favorites by Darlene Love (“Wait ‘Til My Bobby Gets Home” and “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry”), but also essential is Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans’ third hit (“Why Do Lovers Break Each Other’s Hearts”), Darlene Love’s “Playing for Keeps” and the Alley Cats’ energetic doo-wop “Puddin ‘n’ Tain,” featuring Bobby (“Soxx”) Sheen on high-tenor. The added tracks flesh out the Philles picture, and the repeated tracks provide further evidence of albums being marketing items rather than artistic statements.

The last disc in this collection, credited to The Phil Spector Wall of Sound Orchestra, and titled Phil’s Flipsides, presents the rarest material. The seventeen B-sides are instrumental flipsides of Spector hits, duly purposed to be cheap to produce,  and to keep DJs focused on the A-sides. These are a mix of backing tracks and two-minute jams by Spector’s assembled workforce, name-checking Wrecking Crew stars (and Spector’s psychiatrist and first wife) in the song titles. In addition to the pop sounds you’d expect from Spector’s band, there are some fine jazz and blues workouts, with sax, piano and guitar stretching out on lead and Julius Wechter’s vibraphone adding atmosphere. Spector’s instrumental B’s for the short-lived Phil Spector label (“Larry L.” and “Chubby Danny D”) are included, but contemporaneous flips on Annette (including “Beatle Blues”) and Shirley are omitted.

Each of the albums clock in at roughly 30 minutes, suggesting these could have been doubled-up, but it’s hard to fault Legacy’s artistic decision to reissue each in their original form in mini-LP sleeves. Given U.S. royalty laws (which charge per-track, rather than per-album), two-fers wouldn’t necessarily have cost any less anyway. There’s one album missing from Philles initial run, A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, which has been reissued several times, most recently in 2009. The tail-end of Philles album releases, including three from the Righteous Brothers, one from Lenny Bruce, and the aborted 1966 release of Ike & Tina Turner’s River Deep – Mountain High await a second box. The Turner title was issued in 1969 by A&M and reissued earlier this year by Hip-O Select.

All of the albums have been newly transferred by Kabir Hermon and Steve Rosenthal, and remastered by Vic Anesini, but some collectors will no doubt grouse about the lack of stereo mixes, particularly the well-circulated Ronettes and Christmas cuts. Others will note the repetition within the box, overlap between the box and the group compilations released earlier this year, the lack of rare and unreleased material, etc.; all fair criticisms, but really beside the point. Legacy is scratching an itch felt by many collectors to get reproductions of the original artifacts – the original albums. Is it a good value? That depends on how highly you prize what Legacy’s reproducing, rather than what they’re not. Spector may have dismissed albums as two hits and ten pieces of filler, but his vanity as a producer rarely let him attach his name to junk. The concentration of A-list singing, playing, producing, arranging and writing represented on these discs is nearly unprecedented, making even the instrumental B-sides shine brightly. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Johnny Cash: Bootleg III – Live Around the World

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A wealth of previously unreleased live material from the Man in Black

Volume 1 of the bootleg series, Personal File, documented solo home recordings from the ‘70s and ‘80s in which Johnny Cash explored a wide variety of American song. Volume 2, From Memphis to Hollywood, essayed the background of Cash’s transition to country stardom via a collection of 1950s radio appearances, Sun-era demos and a deep cache of 1960s studio recordings. Volume 3 looks at Cash’s role as a live performer from 1956 through 1979, including stops at the Big “D” Jamboree, the Newport Folk Festival, a USO tour of Vietnam, the White House and the Wheeling Jamboree. Among these fifty tracks, thirty-nine are previously unreleased, giving ardent Cash collectors a wealth of new material to enjoy.

The earliest tracks, from a 1956 show in Dallas, find Cash opening with a powerful version of the 1955 B-side “So Doggone Lonesome” and introducing his then-current single on Sun, “I Walk the Line.” At the end of the three-song Dallas set you hear an audience member call out for “Get Rhythm” and the band launches into it. Cash was always a generous stage performer, early on sharing the limelight with Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant, introducing and praising them, and giving Perkins a solo spot for the instrumental “Perkins Boogie.” By 1962 the Tennessee Two had expanded to a tight trio with the addition of W.S. Holland on drums, but even with Cash’s move to Columbia, the group’s appearance at a Maryland hoe-down is still rootsy and raw. They rush “I Walk the Line” as if they’d had one too many pep pills, but Cash is charming as he addresses the audience and hams it up with impressions and jokes.

Two years later at the Newport Folk Festival Cash was introduced by proto-folkie Pete Seeger. Cash is thoroughly commanding as he sings his hits and expands his palette with Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright,” Pete LaFarge’s “Ballad of Ira Hayes” and the Carter Family’s “Keep on the Sunny Side.” His 1969 trip to Vietnam was bookended by more famous live recordings at Folsom and San Quentin prisons, but the soldiers at the Annex 14 NCO Club in Long Binh were treated to a prime performance that included June Carter on “Jackson,” “Long-Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man” and “Daddy Sang Bass.” Cash continued to mix his hits (including a request for “Little Flat Top Box”) with folk and country classics, mixing “Remember the Alamo” and “Cocaine Blues” into his set.

Cash’s performance at the Nixon Whitehouse in 1970 is this set’s most legendary, and also its longest at twelve songs. Richard Nixon provides the introduction, including a few remarks on the safe return of Apollo 13. Cash’s set includes a then-familiar mix of hits and gospel songs, but is mostly remembered for his choice not to play Nixon’s requests for “Okie From Muskogee” and “Welfare Cadillac,” and instead sing “What is Truth,” “Man in Black” and “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” the first of which is included here. Nixon is self deprecating in explaining Cash’s rebuff, and Cash is deferential in addressing Nixon as “Mr. President,” leaving the political implications to seem more legend than truth. Still, Nixon couldn’t have been comfortable having his antipathy towards the younger generation questioned by “What is Truth.”

The remaining tracks collect an eclectic array of songs recorded at a number of different locations throughout the 1970s. The titles include Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” the 1920s standard “The Prisoner’s Song,” Gene Autry’s “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine,” Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans,” the Western classic “Riders in the Sky,” Billy Joe Shaver’s “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal,” and several of Cash’s Sun-era tunes. It’s interesting to hear Cash’s breadth, though not as fulfilling as the set lists elsewhere in the collection. The recording quality is good to excellent throughout, with the Newport tracks in especially crisp stereo. If you’re new to Cash’s catalog, start your appreciation of his performing talents with At San Quentin, but this is a terrific expansion (at nearly 2-1/2 hours) of the well-known, previously issued live materials. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Elvis Presley: Young Man With the Big Beat

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Elvis tears up the music world in ‘56

Eighteen months after bursting into the music world with “That’s All Right,” Elvis moved from the indie Sun label to the major leagues of RCA. A month-and-a-half later, in January 1956, he entered the a Nashville studio and began a year that included two chart-topping albums (Elvis Presley and Elvis), three chart-topping singles (five, if you include the Country chart), several more top-fives and fifteen total chart entries among two dozen singles. That’s in addition to live and television performances that made him the most famous person in the world. Five decades later, according to RCA, he remains the best-selling artist of all time, with over a billion records sold. He’s certainly among the most reissued, but with a catalog as lengthy and rich as Elvis Presley’s, it’s rewarding to view it from multiple angles.

RCA/Legacy’s 5-CD set focuses solely on the transformative year of 1956, collecting its the first two discs the thirty-nine master recordings Elvis issued that year. The original track lists of Elvis Presley (which combines seven sides cut expressly for RCA and five previously cut for Sun) and Elvis (cut in three September days in Hollywood) start discs one and two, respectively. Each of these discs is filled out with non-LP singles, B-sides and EP tracks. Elvis minted a lot of gold in ‘56, including the chart-topping hits “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” and “Love Me Tender,” the iconic “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Hound Dog,” and “Love Me,” lower-charting treats “Money Honey” and “Paralyzed,” and non-charting sides that include a stellar rockabilly cover of Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman” and the gospel-styled “We’re Gonna Move.” The music just poured out of Elvis and his combo, their roots still intact and raw, and Elvis’ magic in full-bloom on the ballads.

The set’s third disc combines live material from the last night of Elvis’ two-week run at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, a May performance in Little Rock, Arkansas, and ten previously unreleased tracks from a December concert in Shreveport, Louisiana. Elvis gave it his best in Las Vegas, but by closing night his funny, witty, sarcastic and self-deprecating stage patter (“we got a few little songs we’d like to do for you, we have on record, in our style of singing, if you wanna call it singing”) reflected the lukewarm reception he’d received from the middle-aged audience. The May and December dates find Elvis greeted by screaming fans, and he returns the favor with fevered rock ‘n’ roll. The tapes are all quite listenable, though the Little Rock show is a bit rough in spots, and the Shreveport show a bit muffled. Shreveport had been instrumental in launching Elvis with his appearances on the Louisiana Hayride, and his bond with the city and its fans is evident.

Disc four opens with outtakes of “I Got a Woman,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “I’m Counting on You” and “I Was the One,” from his first Nashville session. In addition to alternate versions of four great Elvis tracks, listeners get to hear how fresh Presley and his band remained from take to take. The remainder of the disc becomes the province of collectors and completists as it unspools the February 3rd sessions for “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” In addition to multiple takes of each tune, you get bits of studio chatter, moments of vocal rehearsal and instrumental noodling. The disc concludes with a half-hour interview conducted by Robert Brown at New York City’s Warwick Hotel. Brown introduces fans to Elvis by discussing his career, hobbies, favorite singers (Sonny James, Frank Sinatra, Mario Lanza), current films (“Helen of Troy,” “The Man with the Golden Arm,” and “Picnic”), foods and clothes. Elvis comes across as thoughtful, humble and exceedingly thankful for his success.

The fifth disc closes the set with an additional hour of spoken material, including an interview session with TV Guide, an interview of Colonel Tom Parker, the spoken-word “The Truth About Me” (which was originally included in Teen Parade magazine, and appears to explain Elvis to both his growing teenage audience and their parents), an interview recorded on the film set of Love Me Tender, and a pair of ads for RCA record players. Elvis handles tough questions that recount critical press accounts of his talent and performances, politely showing confidence in himself and his fans. He doesn’t seek to explain or excuse his music or dancing, but notes that he and his audience share an understanding and appreciation of what’s passing between them.

The 12”-square box set includes an 80-page book stuffed with photos and ephemera (ticket stubs, record company memos, fan letters, record charts, magazine covers, etc.), a thorough discography and sessionography of 1956, and is highlighted by a day-by-day chronology of Elvis’ recording dates, concerts, television appearances and personal events throughout the year. The box also includes reproduction 8 x 10 photos, posters and a concert ticket stub. For those only interested in the core master recordings, the first two discs of this set (minus three tracks from the Love Me Tender EP: “Let Me,” “Poor Boy” and “We’re Gonna Move”) are being released separately as the Elvis Presley: The Legacy Edition. This two CD set includes Elvis’ first two albums, and nearly all the non-LP A’s, B’s and EP tracks included here. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Preview: The Philles Album Collection

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Coming on October 18th is a box set that many Phil Spector fans have been waiting for. The seven-disc set will include six original albums from Spector’s Philles label:

  • The Crystals Twist Uptown (The Crystals, 1962)
  • He’s a Rebel (The Crystals, 1963)
  • Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah (Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, 1963)
  • The Crystals Sing the Greatest Hits, Volume 1 (The Crystals, 1963)
  • Philles Records Presents Today’s Hits (Various, 1963)
  • Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica (The Ronettes, 1964)

and a bonus disc,

  • Phil’s Flipsides (The Phil Spector Wall of Sound Orchestra)

This represents six of Philles’ first seven albums (the seventh, A Christmas Gift for You, has been reissued separately and as part of box sets several times), and includes numerous non-hit album tracks that have not been included on standard Spector anthologies. The bonus disc provides sixteen rare B-sides that Spector used to pad his hit singles (and, with no commercial appeal, to ensure jocks stuck to the A-side). On the same day, a two-CD hits collection, The Essential Phil Spector, will be released.

You can pre-order the box set at www.philspector.com and Amazon.com, or find it through standard retail on October 18th. Check back here for a review in October!

Paul Simon: Still Crazy After All These Years

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Paul Simon expands his catalog of jazz-, soul- and gospel-inflected pop

After a lengthy world tour and live album (Live Rhymin’), Paul Simon returned in 1975 with his third post-Simon & Garfunkel studio album. Simon’s comfort with his solo stardom is signaled in part by the return of Art Garfunkel for the album’s top-ten “My Little Town.” He also shares the microphone with Phoebe Snow and the Jessy Dixon Singers (the latter of whom had toured with Simon in ’73 and ‘74) on “Gone at Last.” On the other hand, the cover photo of a mustachioed and behatted Simon suggests some lingering insecurity, if only with his long-thinning pate; perhaps it was the final dissolution of his marriage (which was grist for several songs on 1972’s Paul Simon) that instigated the physical changes.

Musically, the album continued the successful commercialtrajectory his previous pair of solo albums, launching four hit singles (including the chart-topping “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”) and winning a Grammy for Album of the Year. Musically the new songs weren’t as far-reaching, sitting mostly in the jazz-, soul- and gospel-flavored grooves Simon had explored on his earlier albums. Columbia/Legacy’s 2011 reissue reuses Bill Inglot’s remastering and the two bonus tracks of Rhino’s 2004 reissue, including demos of “Slip Slidin’ Away” and “Gone at Last.” Legacy’s traded out Rhino’s digipack for a standard jewel case and an 8-page booklet of lyrics and pictures. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Paul Simon: Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin’

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Paul Simon live in 1974

With Paul Simon having licensed his early solo catalog to Sony, the Legacy branch has taken the opportunity to reissue four key titles on their original Columbia label. Of the four (which also includes Paul Simon, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon and Still Crazy After All These Years), this 1974 live album is the only one to get a fresh remastering (by Dan Hersch at D2 Mastering) and the addition of two previously unreleased bonus tracks. Given that this is the least consequential of the four albums, it’s a good marketing move to make it the sole title to be updated. Coming off two commercially and artistically successful solo albums, Simon hit the road for a series of solo shows that included the Brazillian group Urubamba and the gospel Jessy Dixon Singers.

The song list includes Simon’s recent solo hits and several classics from the Simon & Garfunkel catalog. Though he wasn’t ever going to replace Garfunkel’s award-winning vocal on “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or duplicate the bite of the duo’s harmonies on “Homeward Bound” and “The Sound of Silence,” the net effect is a showcase of the Paul Simon songbook. The Singers’ take the spotlight for the gospel “Jesus is the Answer,” and in the original concert set, Urubamba was featured on several instrumentals. Legacy’s 2011 reissue adds solo acoustic performances of “Kodachrome” and “Something So Right,” but here’s hoping a complete rundown of the reported 24-song set eventually sees the light of day. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]