"Ride Daddy Ride: Vintage Songs About Sex 1927-1953" is a compilation album that features a selection of early 20th-century songs with suggestive and risqué themes, dating from 1927 to 1953. The tracks on this album capture the humor, innuendo, and open references to sexuality that were part of the blues, jazz, and swing scenes of the time.

This quote, which accompanies a vintage photograph of three African American women lifting their hands heavenward, is not only featured prominently in Put the Whole Armour On, a two-CD tribute to 1940s and 1950s female gospel artists, but it serves as an apt prelude to the collection. That is, notwithstanding the prominence of women in African American churches, most denominations did not allow women to become pastors. In response, some females became evangelists, saving souls through street corner oratory as well as gospel music. The 54 selections curated for this collection cover some of the most popular gospel singers of the golden era like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Clara Ward, and Mahalia Jackson. Included is Jackson’s initial and unsuccessful but plaintively rendered Apollo Records release “I’m Going to Tell God.” The package also introduces lesser-known figures such as Madam Ernestin Martin, Mary Frazier, and Mari Brown, whose lilting voice delicately delivers “Did You Stop to Pray This Morning” with R&B pioneers the Johnny Moore Trio.

Andre Previn was a celebrated German/American pianist, composer and conductor, whose long career – he died in 2019 at the age of 89 – encompassed movie music, jazz and classical music. He composed or arranged music for more than 50 films, and was music al director and conductor for many top symphony orchestra as well as composing classical art music. This collection focuses on his early career as a jazz pianist. His family, who were Jewish, left Berlin for Paris and then the USA in 1938, and when he graduated from high school in Los Angeles in 1946, started working at MGM studios. However, by then he was already playing jazz piano in Hollywood clubs and had made his first records. This 66-track 3-CD collection comprises most of his recordings from these early years as a solo pianist, with small groups and with strings, released on the Sunset, V-Disc, Monarch, RCA-Victor and Tops labels. It includes the titles from his “Andre Previn Plays George Gershwin” and “Andre Previn Plays Fats Waller” albums. He was especially noted for his recordings with his trios, and this set features trio and quartet recordings with Irving Ashby, Red Callender, Lee Young, Al Viola, Charles Parnell, Jackie Mills, Bob Bain, Ralph Collier, Lloyd Pratt, Art Shapiro, Irv Cottler, Al Hendrickson Buddy Clark and Shelly Manne. Among his remarkable musical accomplishments, he was a brilliant pianist, and even at this early stage of his career, his playing is fast, fluent and imaginative, and this collection offers a fine showcase for those talents.

Amazingly, many of the recordings guitarist Tampa Red made for RCA Victor and Bluebird in the '40s and early '50s never saw reissue until this 2015 double-disc by Ace. As John Broven points out in his rightly evangelical liner notes for Dynamite! The Unsung King of the Blues, CD-era reissues of Tampa Red usually began at the beginning, which for the guitarist meant 1934, and petered out by the late '40s, which is when Tampa Red eased away from hokum and into earthy guitar-and-piano blues that had substantial influence on the electric blues of the '50s. On Dynamite! The Unsung King of the Blues, the interaction between Tampa Red and his pianists Big Maceo Merriweather and, later, Maceo's protégé Little Johnnie Jones certainly points the way to the classic sound of Chicago blues - particularly when it's paired with a big, swinging drumbeat - and the bluesman's repertoire was also cherry-picked by B.B. King…

Throughout the 1950s, the concept of the instrumental track was wrestled away from the cloying strings of MOR orchestras and into the hands of screwdriver-wielding guitarists, sleazy saxophonists, primal garage bands and dance craze creators. The teenage generation demanded music with everything and non-vocal versions of the hits sat next to specially created rabble-rousing gems that transcended genres and styles. This was music where words were just not enough.

The rap on Sonny Stitt is that he was little more than an imitator of Charlie Parker, without a firm identity of his own. However, from the evidence of these early Stitt recordings - gathered together into a three-CD box - the first part of the rap doesn't quite ring true, though the second remains an open question. Stitt may have shared an occasional rhetorical turn or blindingly fast run with Bird - most tellingly on "S`Wonderful" - but definitely not his entire style. You can hear plenty of Lester Young influences on the tracks where he plays tenor sax, and many of the ballads preview the soulful inflections that would flourish when he joined the soul-jazz movement in the '60s. Moreover, aware of the Bird backlash, Stitt recorded the majority of these tracks on the tenor, with occasional sessions on the baritone and finally, about two-thirds of the way through the set, on alto…

There s nothing to compare to the sound of an amplified Hohner Marine Band harmonica in the hands (and mouth) of a master like Little Walter, Walter Horton, Snooky Pryor or Sonny Boy Williamson. All of them were just as adept with the unamplified specimen but the addition of electricity takes this miniscule instrument into a different realm. Many musicians heard here were disciples in one way or another of John Lee Williamson (the original Sonny Boy), who played his harp through a microphone in clubs but never recorded that way. The list of these men is a long one, including Billy Boy Arnold, Walter Mitchell, Doctor Ross, Forrest City Joe and Robert Richard, while Little Walter influenced younger men like Junior Wells, Jerry McCain, James Cotton and George Smith…

The Queen of the Blues was Alabama -born Ruth Lee Jones (1924-1963), who became, as “Dinah Washington”, “the most influential female singer of the last 40 years” (Jazz, The Rough Guide). With her utterly individual style she was hugely successful in the R& B field and, usually with a relaxed jazz backing, also gave countless memorable interpretations of popular standards. Queen Of The Blues also provides the title for Retrospective’s centenary tribute programme that contains no fewer than 52 of her very best recordings, spanning the entirety of her fabulous career (only curtailed by her premature death aged 39). Dinah was a natural jazz vocalist and many of the great jazz talents of the era shone in sessions led by such as Quincy Jones: Clark Terry, Ben Webster, Lucky Thompson, Paul Quinichette, Paul Gonsalves… This centenary year is the time to get reacquainted with one of the great singers of the last century.

The compilers of this five-CD/cassette box set anthology, which contains 104 tracks and runs over six hours, have taken an inclusive, open-ended approach to both their selections and their sequencing. Unconventionally, the album is organized not chronologically, but thematically, in eight categories – "Steeped in the Blues," Straight out of Church," "Let's Have a Party," "Swinging the Songbook," "After Hours: Slow-Dancing and Torching the Songbook," "Jazz Compositions," and "Novelties and Take-Offs" (in other words, blues, gospel, dance, standards, slow standards, scatting and vocalese, and other). Annotator Robert G. O'Meally is quick to acknowledge that the categories are slippery, however, and to invite the listener to re-arrange the sequencing as he sees fit, a suggestion some may not appreciate.

"Let's Do It! 60 Years of Verve Records" is a compilation album released in 2016 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Verve Records, a label known for its rich catalog of jazz, pop, and blues music. This album features a collection of tracks by various artists who have been pivotal in shaping the label's legacy over the decades.

In 1939 Lewis Allan's song "Strange Fruit" was a focal point of Billie Holiday's performances, a grimly poetic evocation of lynching delivered with tremendous dramatic power. It was so pointed a protest, however, that Columbia refused to record it. Milt Gabler arranged to record it for Commodore, his independent jazz label, and when it was paired with the sensual "Fine and Mellow," it became Holiday's first hit record. This two-CD set includes all the takes from the 1939 and 1944 sessions, and they're some of Holiday's finest moments in the recording studio, combining first-rate material and sympathetic support that includes pianist Eddie Heywood, drummer Sid Catlett, and trombonist Vic Dickenson. Holiday's vocal and interpretive skills were seldom as beautifully balanced as they are here.

LOS ANGELES, CA – May 24, 2024 – Capitol Records and Universal Music Enterprises (UMe), in conjunction with Peggy Lee Associates, today release Peggy Lee: From the Vaults (Vol. 2), the second installment in the new digital series that features rare tracks currently unavailable on streaming platforms. Recorded for Capitol between 1948 and 1951, the 12 selections on From the Vaults (Vol. 2) include songs from stage and screen by American songbook giants Irving Berlin and Yip Harburg; a song co-written by jazz great Benny Carter; another by classical-popular composer Alec Wilder; and one co-written by Lee herself.

Music from King Gene And His Orchestra, Oscar McLollie & His Orchestra, Wini Beatty And Her Trio, Al "Stomp" Russell Trio, Ernie Lewis' All Stars, Joe Lutcher & His Orchestra, Maxine Reed, Johnny Creach Quintet, Sammy Franklin's Orchestra, Fran Harris & Her Four Friends, and more - 24 songs in all.

Dust Bowl Ballads is an album by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. It was released by Victor Records, in 1940. All the songs on the album deal with the Dust Bowl and its effects on the country and its people. It is considered to be one of the first concept albums It was Guthrie's first commercial recording and the most successful album of his career.

“Ornithology: The Best of Bird” is a new collection bringing together 11 cuts from legendary jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. It covers the legendary artists prime Savoy Records years between 1945 and 1953, with cuts including “Ko-Ko,” “Billie’s Bounce,” and “Groovin’ High”. Featuring Dizzy Gillespie (piano and trumpet), Curley Russell (bass), Max Roach (drums), Miles Davis (trumpet), Bud Powell (piano), Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Charles Mingus (bass) and more!