Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Celebrating Daryl Hall on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

While by no means an unknown work, it also seems fair to say that Daryl Hall’s first solo LP Sacred Songs gets nowhere near enough retrospective attention. This is mainly due to the inclusion of what many might consider to be an odd associate (at best) or an irreconcilable collaborator (at worst) in art-rock maestro Robert Fripp. Blue-eyed soul meets Frippertronics? Yes, indeed.

If the team-up of Daryl Hall and Robert Fripp remains an unlikely pairing from seemingly disparate areas of the ‘70s rock landscape, after some consideration their creative union shouldn’t really be designated as a case of strange bedfellows. The key to understanding how these two ended up in the same studio lies in getting beyond the surface perception of Fripp as a prog-rock outlier and Hall & Oates as simply a hit machine.

But folks who know Fripp’s contributions to Blondie’s Parallel Lines and especially Bowie’s “Heroes” have surely already comprehended that there’s more to the guy’s output than just King Crimson and (No Pussyfooting). And any fan of Hall & Oates that’s travelled back in their discography to their Atlantic Records period has been greeted with the unusual doozy that is Abandoned Luncheonette.

That 1973 album, their second after the pleasant but far from earth shattering debut Whole Oats, can be aptly described as a particularly ripe example of the commercial ambition of its decade. Not only does it include what’s maybe their best single, the sleeper 1976 hit “She’s Gone,” but the record’s second side heads into all kinds of unexpected areas, including the well-integrated use of electric violin on “Lady Rain” and even some fiddle and banjo on the seven minute album closer “Everytime I Look At You.”

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Dog Jaw Woman by The Guy Hamper Trio is amongst the latest worthwhile offerings from the indefatigable Damaged Goods Records of the United Kingdom. Featuring organist James Taylor as a returning guest, the trio’s deep ties to a particularly steadfast branch of the British R&R tradition are sturdy but not overemphasized, as the sounds tap into classic modes while avoiding the merely retro in a manner befitting said tradition (more on the specifics below). The 10-track set is out October 18 on vinyl and digital.

The Guy Hamper Trio consists of Julie Hamper on bass, Wolf Howard on drums, and Guy Hamper, aka Billy Childish, on guitar. The involvement of Childish might lead those who know him primarily through the copious combined output of Thee Headcoats and Thee Mighty Caesars (plus numerous other bands) to certain assumptions as to the sound that Dog Jaw Woman holds in store.

In short, the expectation would be raw and tough ’60s UK Beat Rock-Maximum R&B with nods to Link Wray and a ’77 punk edge. Doing it sans vocals, the Trio does lay down a punky Freakbeat-ish foundation, although distinct from the general Headcoats-Caesars thrust, and expands upon this curve with the contributions of Hammond organ ace James Taylor, formerly of ’80s outfit The Prisoners and the long-running James Taylor Quartet (where Wolf Howard was a contributor).

The first Guy Hamper Trio record, All the Poisons in the Mud (2022, Damaged Goods), was a mostly instrumental affair, the set offering one track with vocals by Childish. When he wasn’t singing, the band’s groove, raw but lithe, often suggested a bunch of mods turning their amps way up while under the influence of organ trio soul jazz and the brilliance of Booker T. Jones.

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Ludicrously prolific as a session mainstay for a slew of indispensable figures in the grand scheme of 20th century Jamaican music, saxophonist “Deadly” Headley Bennett only cut one solo record, 35 Years From Alpha, which was released in 1982 on the fledgling enterprise of Adrian Sherwood, On-U Sound enterprise. Flash forward to right now, and the same label is giving the album its first vinyl reissue, with compact discs and digital downloads also available. According to Bandcamp, the LPs and CDs ship out on or around October 11. Loaded with guests, the ten selections flow with roots warmth and dub edge. Two previously unreleased bonus tracks intensify the already considerable value.

Deadly Headley began recording as a teenager in the 1950s, with his skills on saxophone landing him in studios with numerous outfits, including Lynn Tiatt & The Jets, Sly & The Revolutionaries, The Aggrovators, The Arabs, The Mighty Vikings, Sound Dimension, The Abyssinians, The Professionals, The Roots Radics, and the Studio One house band, and backing such major artists as Alton Ellis, Bob Marley (on his first recording “Judge Not”), Derrick Morgan, Prince Far I, Horace Andy, Mikey Dread, King Tubby, Augustus Pablo, Gregory Isaacs, and Dennis Brown.

And then, most relevant to this review, there was Bennett’s work in connection with Sherwood, playing on records by Creation Rebel, Singers and Players, Dub Syndicate, African Head Charge, and Bim Sherman. That a man as passionate about Jamaican music as Sherwood would give Bennett the opportunity to record his first solo release is no surprise, and neither is the number of contributors he lined up to secure the album’s success.

Too many big names has spoiled many a well-intentioned recording, but fortunately not here, in part because of a low-key feel that avoids a parade of personalities and taking any big masterpiece swings. Instead, the set registers as an extended appreciation of the utility player, and with plenty of room for Bennett to get his licks in, particularly in the opening title track. Jumpy and fast paced, the cut spreads out, with Nick Plytas on keyboards, Style Scott on drums, Lizard Logan on bass, and Rico Rodriguez on trombone.

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Alto saxophonist Art Pepper is well represented in Craft Recordings’ Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series. Originally released in 1960, Gettin’ Together is available in a fresh 180 gram vinyl edition on October 11. It’s the second of three Pepper LPs landing in the store bins across 2024, and if not his most lauded studio date, the contributions of pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, and trumpeter Conte Condoli elevate the whole, along with Pepper, who is up to his usual high standard throughout.

The most celebrated album in Art Pepper’s discography remains the first one he cut for the Contemporary label, Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, which was released in 1957 with Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums, a triumvirate highly regarded at the time of the album’s recording (with no loss of esteem today) for their association with trumpeter Miles Davis.

Pepper first came to prominence in the big band of Stan Kenton, a gig that began in the early 1940s. With the exception of WWII military service, Pepper remained with Kenton through the beginning of the following decade. During this stretch Pepper contributed to some of the progressive bandleader most ambitious albums.

Although Pepper’s profile continued to rise through a handful of LPs released as leader or co-leader in the mid-’50s, it was Meets the Rhythm Section that vaulted him to the forefront of the era’s jazz scene and cemented his name into the canon. Rest assured that any serious list of the essential jazz recordings will include Meets the Rhythm Section, and rightly so.

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Celebrating Jody Stephens in advance of his 72nd birthday tomorrow. —Ed.

The Memphis group Big Star has long been a favorite of folks who love smartly conceived guitar-based pop-rock, and while few bought their records when they were hot off the presses, their status as an enduring cult staple is undeniable. After a long relationship with discerning turntables everywhere, Big Star received the Big Screen treatment with a documentary titled Nothing Can Hurt Me, and the soundtrack collects unique mixes of material long-considered classic. That the songs included here could easily slay a busload of Big Star newbies is testament to not only the band’s everlasting importance but also to the admirable ambitions that made this 2LP set and its accompanying film possible.

Over the last few decades the music documentary has really become one of the steadiest (some might say unrelenting) currents in the whole vast field of non-fiction filmmaking. And this shouldn’t be any kind of surprise. For everybody loves music, or so it’s often been said. But this doesn’t change the fact that some musicians/bands are far more deserving of having their story represented on film than others.

Simply stating that a very few groups are more worthy than Big Star of having their existence outlined through the medium of the film doc can initially smack of extreme devotion and perhaps even flat-out hyperbole. For just like the old saw that everybody loves music, it’s just as often been said that everybody has a story, and even, nay especially, in the non-fiction field the plain facts of the narrative ultimately aren’t as important as the way the events get told.

But if we dig a little deeper, the documentary’s inherent connection with the “real world,” or specifically the manner in which things don’t always work out the way we’d like them to, is especially resonant to the tale of Andy Hummel, Chris Bell, Jody Stephens, and Alex Chilton. For unlike the life of Ray Charles or the early years of The Beatles, Big Star is far from a good fit for the Hollywood treatment, or at least for the situation as it currently stands in the movie-making industry.

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Checking in with cornetist-trumpeter-composer-bandleader-visual artist Rob Mazurek is always worthwhile. That’s because, to make it plain, the guy’s records just never miss. And when it’s a release by the Exploding Star Orchestra, that’s even better, as the band, which has been Mazurek’s primary musical focus over the last half decade or so (the group has been extant for nearly 25 years), is a certifiable murderer’s row of talent, of which more is said below. The latest album from Exploding Star Orchestra is Live at the Adler Planetarium, a sleek doozy of a performance captured in Mazurek’s old stomping grounds of Chicago. It’s out on vinyl and CD October 4 through International Anthem.

Rob Mazurek began leading ensembles of various sizes in the mid-’90s, but of particular note is the Chicago Underground Collective (17 releases ranging from duo to orchestra beginning with 12 Degrees of Freedom in 1998), São Paulo Underground (six releases beginning with Sauna: Um, Dois, Tres in 2006), and Exploding Star Orchestra (nine releases beginning with We Are All From Somewhere Else in 2007).

Live at the Adler Planetarium features Mazurek on trumpets, bells and voice (along with providing compositions and directing the band), Nicole Mitchell on flute, voice and electronics, Damon Locks on voice, samplers and electronics, Tomeka Reid on cello and electronics, Craig Taborn on Wurlitzer electric piano, Moog and electronics, Angelica Sanchez on Wurlitzer electric piano and Moog, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, and Chad Taylor and Gerald Cleaver on drums.

The music heard on Live at the Adler Planetarium was one part of an event that saw a stream of abstractions derived from Mazurek’s paintings and animations digitally projected above the heads of the audience and band in the planetarium’s Grainger Sky Theater. The record’s cover captures a glimpse of what the assembled experienced that night, March 24, 2023.

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Formed in Los Angeles in 1980, Afterimage’s dark and moody approach was clearly influenced by UK post-punk while not being blatantly imitative of any specific predecessor. Joy Division is a bandied point of comparison, but Afterimage benefited from raw muscularity that reflected their Cali punk surroundings. Impeccably designed by Independent Project Records, Faces to Hide collects the early recordings of the band onto double vinyl (white or black) and compact disc. As the original lineup was extant for only a short time, the contents of this anthology adds live cuts and demos. The whole is surprisingly consistent as a deep dive immersion into a bygone era.

The Afterimage documented on Faces to Hide is guitarist Barry Craig (aka A Produce), bassist Rich Robinson (aka Rich Evac), drummer Holland DeNuzzio, and vocalist-saxophonist Daniel Voznick (aka Alec Tension). After splintering in the mid-’80s, Voznick continued to record as Afterimage with the aid of numerous contributors, but this set is focused entirely on the lineup that released the “Strange Confession” b/w “The Long Walk” 45 and the “Fade In” 12-inch on Contagion Records in 1981.

That’s a total of eight tracks, but Faces to Hide offers a significant expansion, although much of it was already collected on Anthology, a cassette issued in 1984 on Craig’s imprint Trane Port Tapes. In 2007, Craig and Voznick gave Anthology a CD expansion with Strange Confession, a co-release by Trance Port and Voznick’s Strategic Records.

Faces to Hide adds even more tracks (while subtracting the later Afterimage material that concludes Strange Confession) for a sequence of 26 that appears to comprehensively document the original incarnation of a band that largely flew under the radar, though the inclusion of “Satellite of Love” (not a Lou Reed cover) on the 2014 Sacred Bones compilation Killed by Deathrock: Vol. 1 raised Afterimage’s profile a bit, no doubt.

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On October 4, Craft Recordings adds tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards and trumpeter Howard McGhee’s Together Again!!!! to the label’s already impressive Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series. Originally released in 1961, the set’s sturdy and energetic bop maneuvers are invigorated through the support of pianist Phineas Newborn, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Ed Thigpen. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, this deserving reissue serves up a fine one-stop introduction to the co-leaders, both of whom are in sharp form throughout.

In the category of tenor saxophonists from the original bebop era, Teddy Edwards is right up there with Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, but not as well-known as either, partly because once Edwards made his way to Los Angeles (after touring around the south in the band of Ernie Fields, he pretty much stayed there. Upon joining McGhee’s band (hence Contemporary’s titling here) Edwards switched to tenor sax, and after cutting a handful of sides as a leader, recorded a killer tenor battle with Gordon for Dial (“The Duel”) that’s been somewhat overshadowed by Gordon’s team-ups with Gray from the same era.

If not a groundbreaker a la Dizzy Gillespie, Howard McGhee is an essential figure in the development of Modern Jazz trumpet, right up there with Fats Navarro and Idrees Sulieman. But after struggling with drug addition, he recorded infrequently in the 1950s; a few comeback attempts resulted in some recordings for the Bethlehem label but not much in the way of sustained productivity, at least until the turn of the decade, when he caught creative fire for a sustained period.

Together Again!!!! is part of that stretch, a sensible co-billing at the time given the spark of interest in players from bop’s early days who were still around and up to the task (Doin’ Allright, Gordon’s first in a long string of Blue Note classics, was also released in 1961). Contemporary quickly followed up this LP with Maggie’s Back in Town, which Craft Recordings reissued earlier in 2024 (for a deeper dive into McGhee’s artistry, please check out our review of Maggie’s Back in Town in this column).

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Celebrating Bryan Ferry on his 79th birthday. —Ed.

Bursting onto the scene 50 years ago, Roxy Music’s blend of glam rock and art rock proved highly influential while being impossible to imitate, as the music of singer Bryan Ferry, synthesist Brian Eno, saxophonist Andy Mackay, guitarist Phil Manzanera, and drummer Paul Thompson was simply drenched in personality. Virgin/UMe’s vinyl reissue program of the band’s eight studio albums began with debut Roxy Music and its 1973 follow-up For Your Pleasure, both half speed mastered at Abbey Road Studios by the engineer Miles Showell. Bluntly, these four sides of wax are indispensable to any collection of 20th century rock music.

Looking back on it, it feels wholly appropriate to describe Roxy Music as coming out of nowhere in 1972. Their debut LP arrived sans any pre-release singles, with “Virginia Plain” b/w “The Numberer,” the band’s first 45, cut just short of a month after Roxy Music’s release, a short enough span that its hit A-side was added to nearly all later pressings of the album (on the subject, please note that Virgin/UMe’s release retains the sequence of the UK first edition).

The nature of the band’s arrival is nicely encapsulated by Roxy Music’s opening track “Re-make/Re-model.” After a passage of what might be intended as dinner party ambiance (shades of Ferry the pure sophisticate to come), Roxy explodes forth, maximally but methodically, and by song’s end it’s clear that in this particular outfit at this point in time, nobody was taking a back seat (well, except maybe bassist Graham Simpson, who exited after the LP’s release, with Rik Kenton stepping in for “Virginia Plain,” only to be quickly replaced on For Your Pleasure by John Porter).

This is not to suggest that Roxy Music lacked in restraint; “Ladytron” on side one of Roxy Music and “Chance Meeting” on the flip offer solid evidence of such, even amongst flare-ups of experimentation. However, Roxy’s reality during this era was much more inclined toward the audacious. In its own way, Roxy Music is as much a line in the sand as The Stooges’ Funhouse before it or The Ramones after.

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The name of the band was Mouse, and their sole album, quite rare and therefore terribly expensive in original form, was Lady Killer, released in 1973 by EMI’s prog-rock imprint Sovereign. The members were vocalist-keyboardist Alan “Al” Clare, bassist Jeff Watts, drummer Al Rushton, and most famously, the insanely prolific guitarist Ray Russell. The band’s sound is diverse but not schizophrenic, and there’s discipline in their execution. Guerssen Records own subsidiary Sommor gave the album its first vinyl reissue in 2013, and now the same label has brought out a fresh edition, available right now.

Not to slight the other cats in Mouse, but Ray Russell is Lady Killer’s main point of interest. The album, which sports sleeve art by Glenn Pierce that suggests a pop art appropriation of a late 1950s cigarette company billboard (or the femme fatale on the front cover of a paperback crime novel from the same era), is a well-rounded and largely likeable band effort, but it’s also not a mind melter.

The Ray Russell core collection includes two by his quartet, Turn Circle and Dragon Hill (1968-’69, CBS) and the three that follow, Rites & Rituals (’71, CBS), June 11, 1971: Live at the ICA (’71, RCA Victor), and Secret Asylum (’73, Black Lion). Other records make the cut, but Russell’s own records are only a portion of what makes him such an interesting musician.

For starters, he was an era-spanning session ace, adding value to works by names ranging from Dionne Warwick to Van Morrison to Julio Iglesias to Tina Turner to Scott Walker to Heaven 17. His early career found him in the bands of Georgie Fame, Graham Bond, and most importantly John Barry, replacing guitarist Vic Flick to establish the final incarnation of the John Barry Seven.

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Earlier in 2024, claire rousay made a considerable splash with sentiment, an LP that expanded her experimental approach to include vivid strains of melancholic pop, a development she tagged as emo ambient. Released by Thrill Jockey, the album registered as the start of something big. Supporting this notion is a remix album that’s freshly available on vinyl right now (in a limited edition of 250 copies) with a digital release coming on November 6. A striking compendium, sentiment remixed serves both as a wide ranging yet cohesive extension of its source material and a fully realized standalone work.

claire rousay has amassed a sizeable body of work since hitting the scene in 2017, and on a variety of formats. There’s vinyl and compact disc and even a flexi disc in there, but predominate are digital releases and cassettes. The last of these formats is fitting as her early work extends from an experimental tradition that embraced spindles and spools of tape as a cost effective mode of (often self) distribution.

It really only takes a listen to the 2021 LP a softer focus to apprehend that rousay is the real deal as an experimentalist. Incorporating field recordings into pieces that extend from ambient and musique concrète traditions, rousay’s work retains a contemporary feel that has only increased as she has chosen to explore the possibilities of song form.

rousay’s tendency toward pop predates sentiment by a bit, and eclectically. There’s an Elliott Smith cover in her oeuvre amongst a handful of one-off digital singles leaning into song structure over abstraction as she’s honed her skills as a guitarist. There’s also a predilection for Auto-Tune that really comes to the fore on sentiment in an appealingly non-gimmicky manner.

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The discography of pianist Mal Waldron is extensive, broad of scope and consistently rewarding in support roles (ranging from Billie Holiday to Kenny Burrell to Charles Mingus to John Coltrane) and as the caller of the shots. Recorded in 1961 and released the following year on Prestige Records’ New Jazz imprint, The Quest is amongst the best of Waldron’s albums as leader, featuring a sextet that includes Eric Dolphy on alto saxophone and clarinet, Booker Ervin on tenor sax, and Ron Carter on cello, taking seven Waldron compositions to the crossroads of advanced bop and the nascent avant-garde. A fresh 180 gram edition arrives September 27 as part of Craft Recordings’ Original Jazz Classics reissue series.

Double bassist Joe Benjamin and drummer Charlie Persip complete the band on The Quest, an album that was reissued by Prestige in 1969 with the titling reversed, obviously to capitalize on Dolphy’s higher profile. Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin with the Mal Waldron Sextet isn’t inaccurate exactly, but it does misrepresent the album’s compositional focus, as it was the first Waldron album sourced entirely from the pianist’s songbook.

To dig a little deeper, The Quest is part of a spate of albums with partially interchanging personnel that begins by chronology of session date with the Dolphy album Far Cry, cut in December 21, 1960 with trumpeter Booker Little, pianist Jaki Byard, drummer Roy Haynes, and Carter on bass. Next is Where?, Carter’s debut as leader, recorded on June 20, 1961 with Dolphy, Waldron, Persip, and bassist George Duvivier. The session for The Quest was held seven days later.

The following month, performances by Dolphy, Little, Waldron, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Ed Blackwell were taped and released as Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot across two volumes, with bonus tracks added to the CD editions. Two of those bonus cuts were issued after Dolphy’s passing on the 1965 LP Memorial Album.

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The 1986 collaboration between dream pop cornerstone Cocteau Twins and ambient music innovator Harold Budd established a comingling of approaches that endures as a stylistic signpost for countless listeners who remain enchanted by the ethereal. That record, The Moon and the Melodies, has been remastered by Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie from the original tapes for its first vinyl reissue since its initial release; then and now, the label responsible is 4AD.

Well received in the music press when first released, The Moon and the Melodies was a solid seller for what was essentially a hybrid of Budd’s avant-garde sensibility and Cocteau Twins’ post-punk lushness (dream pop as a genre didn’t exist yet). As 4AD has observed, the record has subsequently (and understandably) gathered a passionate following (it doesn’t seem to have ever been out of print on compact disc) as it essentially cleaves Cocteau Twins’ full-length output into two halves. It’s safe to claim it’s Budd’s highest profile work.

More interesting perhaps is that over time, critical viewpoints on The Moon and the Melodies have often settled into polite acceptance, with assessments that the album is fine but not amongst the highpoints in either Budd’s or Cocteau Twins’ catalogs. Some of this modest esteem possibly extends from the feelings of Guthrie himself, who said “it turned out more like four songs that sounded like us and four songs that sounded like him, which wasn’t really the plan” (it’s important to add that’s he’s not knocking the LP).

But so what if the two sides of this collaboration don’t gel seamlessly and flow forth as one entity across the set’s eight pieces. The Moon and the Melodies is still engaging from start to finish as it turned on a bunch of ’80s whippersnappers in Bauhaus t-shirts to Budd (in turn providing a gateway into ambient) and informed just as many high-end stereo snobs, who in the mid-’80s were devouring the work of Budd and Eno and Hassell, etc. for breakfast, that the Cocteau Twins should be taken seriously.

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Although the one and only album recorded by the late-’60s Boricuan-Dominican outfit named Kaleidoscope has been reissued over a dozen times, the eponymous LP’s psychedelic comportment is diverse and solid enough to handle another pressing; this one’s due from the reliable folks at Guerssen on September 20. The limited kaleidoscopic color vinyl pressing of 207 copies has sold out during preorder, but the black wax is still available. Those attracted to the many manifestations of the global psych impulse who are unfamiliar with its grooves should contemplate grabbing copy of the standard edition before it’s gone as well.

Given the era’s fleeting but fervent preoccupation with the trappings of psychedelia, it really no surprise that numerous late-’60s bands took up the handle of Kaleidoscope. The band under review here shouldn’t (and once heard, won’t) be confused with the Los Angeles-based Kaleidoscope that featured David Lindley and Chris Darrow, nor will they be mistaken for the Kaleidoscope that was formed in London and later became the Fairfield Parlour.

This incarnation of Kaleidoscope came together from the dissolution of several prior rock acts, starting out in Puerto Rico with Frank Tirado on bass and vocals and Orly Vázquez and Pedrín García (a transplant from Spain) on electric guitars. Theirs is a story of multiple twists that’s well told by Enrique Rivas in the notes for Guerssen’s reissue, but in short, Dominicans Rafael Cruz and Julio Arturo Fernández joined on drums and organ, respectively.

The album was cut in the Dominican Republic in 1967 at Fabiola Studios, but it was the Mexican label Orfeon that released the record, or more precisely, pressed a tiny promotional edition in 1969 that’s become insanely expensive on the collector market in the decades since. The delay in release saw the band splinter, but Tirado and Cruz recruited new members and traveled to Mexico to promote the release, which has led to the occasional inaccuracy that Kaleidoscope is a Mexican band.

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Remembering Hank Williams, born on this day in 1923. —Ed.

Hank Williams is an icon of early country music, but he recorded before the LP era really took hold, so his legacy is dominated by posthumously assembled compilations. These sets come in various sizes and levels of quality. The latest, Pictures from Life’s Other Side: The Man and his Music in Rare Photos and Recordings, offers 144 transcriptions from Williams’ Mother’s Best radio program on six CDs, all tucked into a magnificent hardcover book loaded with photos, many of them in color, that serve to broaden the life of the artist beyond the still too common reduction of strife and an early death. It’s out now, but if it’s vinyl you require, the 3LP distillation Only Mother’s Best is also currently available from BMG.

When it comes to concise surveys of Hank Williams’ exceptional musical abilities (by which I mean single or double sets), the gold standard remains Polydor’s 40 Greatest Hits. Released in 1978, it was distinguished at the time for its lack of production meddling, as those four vinyl sides weren’t rechanneled into stereo and they lacked additional posthumous meddling such as overdubs and duet fakery.

40 Greatest Hits was just pure Hank, and for those who favored his work, disappointment in the listening was an impossibility. That’s not the same as being fully satisfied however, which is where the box sets enter the picture. Mercury’s 1998 10CD The Complete Hank Williams is an award winner, but amongst the numerous two- and three-disc collections, there’s an even bigger assemblage, Time Life’s The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings…Plus!, which emerged in 2010 as a 15CD behemoth.

As one might’ve deduced, there is a relationship between that release and the one under review here, with the difference being that Time Life simply rounded up the acetates of the original 15-minute broadcasts, which were sponsored by Mother’s Best flour. This left in all the instrumental bits, the guest musicians and the chatting and joking around.

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