Carla Thomas was more than deserving of her title "The Queen of Memphis Soul," but she was hardly oblivious to the sleeker, more pop-influenced sweet soul and uptown soul coming out of Detroit, Philadelphia and Chicago. One of her strongest albums, The Queen Alone isn't the work of someone who took a Memphis-only approach, but of someone who was well aware of what Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick, Martha Reeves and others were up to. What's surprising is the fact that this album contains only two hits: the playful "Something Good (Is Going to Happen to You)," which made it to number 29 on Billboard's soul singles chart, and the idealistic, gospel-influenced ballad and number 11 R&B single "I'll Always Have Faith in You"…

Albert King recorded a lot in the early '60s, including some classic sides, but they never quite hit the mark. They never gained a large audience, nor did they really capture the ferocity of his single-string leads. Then he signed with Stax in 1966 and recorded a number of sessions with the house band, Booker T. & the MG's, and everything just clicked. The MG's gave King supple Southern support, providing an excellent contrast to his tightly wound lead guitar, allowing to him to unleash a torrent of blistering guitar runs that were profoundly influential, not just in blues, but in rock & roll (witness Eric Clapton's unabashed copping of King throughout Cream's Disraeli Gears).

It's about time these early Canned Heat albums were made available once again! Thanks in part to their appearance in the Monterey Pop and later Woodstock festival films, these two albums, especially Boogie With Canned Heat, built Canned Heat's reputation as a top-notch white blues band of the late '60s. The self-titled disc from 1967 features a rough mix of originals and blues standards, including "Catfish Blues," "Rich Woman," and "Big Road Blues." Boogie was released the following year and actually contained a hit single, "On the Road Again." The other tracks on the album, especially "Fried Hockey Boogie" and "Amphetamine Annie," became staples of early FM underground radio. Canned Heat would rarely sound this together as a working unit in the studio again.

Nearly forgotten by all but serious soul fans, Back Up Train is Al Green's debut. Released in 1967, when he was still billed as "Al Greene" and before he worked with producer Willie Mitchell, the record is a perfectly serviceable slice of slightly sweet period soul - perhaps a little generic, but never less than pleasant. Much of the record was either written or co-written by the album's producers, Palmer E. James and Curtis Rodgers, who were not just part of Hot Line Records, but in the Creations, Green's previous backing band. Though they're fine as producers, they didn't have strong material as songwriters, never producing something as limber and memorable as Green's lone songwriting credit, "Stop and Check Myself." Musically, this number, along with a few other cuts, suggest the tight, sexy sound of his seminal Hi albums, but they're nowhere near as seductive as those slow grooves, nor are they as effortless…

Lumpy Gravy, Frank Zappa's first solo album, was released months before the Mothers of Invention's third LP (even though its back cover asked the question: "Is this phase two of We're Only in It for the Money?") and both were conceptualized and recorded at the same time. We're Only in It for the Money became a song-oriented anti-flower power album with one contemporary/musique concrète/sound collage hybrid piece by way of conclusion. Lumpy Gravy collaged bits of orchestral music, sonic manipulations, spoken words, and occasional pop ditties into two lumps of 16 minutes each. This album presents Zappa's first recordings with a decent orchestra, the 50-piece Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra. His symphonic writing was very much influenced by Stravinsky and Varèse…

5CD box set mini LP replica sleeves, containing a quintet of original albums from the legendary Soul diva: "Aretha Now", "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You", "Lady Soul", "Live At The Fillmore" and "Spirit In The Dark".
Aretha Franklin (March 25, 1942) is a Memphis, Tennessee-born but Detroit, Michigan-reared American iconic gospel, soul, and R&B singer. Many have called her "The Queen Of Soul" and "Lady Soul".
She is renowned for her soul and R&B recordings (on many, of which, she accompanies herself on keyboards and piano - a skill she learned at an early age, learning to play by ear, according to lifetime friend Smokey Robinson) but is also adept at jazz, rock, blues, pop, and gospel…

Fabulous guitar in name and fabulous guitar in sound; along with a carefully selected repertoire, which shows off a refined panorama of the Flamenco toque offering an intelligent variety of genres for this his first full length album as a solo artist. The titles of the tracks selected show his great connection to the land, offering us a selection of the fundamental styles of the Flamenco geography: ‘Triana’, ‘Cádiz’, ‘Punta Umbría’, ‘Jerez’, ‘La Unión’, ‘La Caleta’ and ‘El Tajo’. Recorded when Paco was just 19, in addition to the use of the Flamenco techniques of the time (reverb, echo, etc.), here there is a superb sense of the compass of Flamenco, a fabulous right hand technique (thumb, alzapua, strumming), dizzying picados and perfect legato of the left hand.

Howard Roberts was a talented guitarist on the level of a Barney Kessel or Herb Ellis, who spent most of his career playing commercial music in the studios. Shortly after he moved to Los Angeles in 1950, Roberts was firmly established in the studios, although on occasion he recorded jazz (most notably twice for Verve during 1956-1959, a Concord session from 1977, and one for Discovery in 1979); however, most of his other output (particularly for Capitol in the 1960s) is of lesser interest. The co-founder of the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood, Roberts was an enthusiastic and talented educator, and wrote a regular instructional column for Guitar Player.

Here Comes the Whistleman showcases Rahsaan Roland Kirk in 1967 with a fine band, live in front of a host of invited guests at Atlantic Studios in New York. His band for the occasion is stellar: Jacki Byard or Lonnie Smith on piano, Major Holley on bass, Lonnie Smith on piano, and Charles Crosby on drums. This is the hard, jump blues and deep R&B Roland Kirk band, and from the git, on "Roots," they show why. Kirk comes screaming out of the gate following a double time I-IV-V progression, with Holley punching the accents along the bottom and Byard shoving the hard tight chords up against Kirk's three-horn lead. The extended harmony Kirk plays - though the melody line is a bar walking honk - is extreme, full of piss and vinegar…

For his first studio recording with his colorful big band, Don Ellis utilized five trumpets, three trombones, five reeds, Mike Lang on keyboards, three bassists, drummer Steve Bohannon, and three percussionists to perform some remarkable new music. The most memorable selection is "Indian Lady" (accurately described as a "hoedown in 5/4"), which with its false endings is often quite humorous. The other four originals (the trumpeter-leader's feature on "Alone," "Turkish Bath," "Open Beauty," and the 17/4 "New Horizons"), while lesser-known, are also quite spirited. For the first time Ellis opened his band to the influence of rock (making liberal use of electronics) and the results lend themselves to some hilarity.

The Grateful Dead's eponymously titled debut long-player was issued in mid-March of 1967. This gave rise to one immediate impediment – the difficulty in attempting to encapsulate/recreate the Dead's often improvised musical magic onto a single LP. Unfortunately, the sterile environs of the recording studio disregards the subtle and often not-so-subtle ebbs and zeniths that are so evident within a live experience. So, while this studio recording ultimately fails in accurately exhibiting the Grateful Dead's tremendous range, it's a valiant attempt to corral the group's hydra-headed psychedelic jug-band music on vinyl.

Not bad at all. Not exactly brilliant either, but this recorded free-form "freak-out" from 1967 (originally released on New York City's Audio Fidelity label) is not only not terrible, but surprisingly pretty OK for stretches, especially considering the typical quality of these types of had-to-be-there period curios that purport to blow your mind with an aural approximation of an acid trip. This one actually manages to be something approaching far out, man, even at its most half-baked. Whether How to Blow Your Mind and Have a Freakout Party was, in fact, created as a "head" LP by practicing heads (a certain David Dalton is listed as the Unfolding's presiding mastermind - no word in the liner notes if this is the same Dalton who was a pioneering rock scribe and founding editor of Rolling Stone), or as an exploitation of same by a faceless assemblage of session musicians is really anyone's guess…