Hunting for something to give yourself or your music-loving loved ones for the holidays? Start with my new book, Anatomy of a Song: The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits That Changed Rock, R&B and Pop (Grove). To purchase, go here in the U.S., here in the U.K. or here in Canada.
However, if you already have my book or have ordered it, here are my favorite recently released boxed sets, DVDs, Blue-Ray discs, and music books—from jazz to rock:
Classic Savoy Be-Bop Sessions 1945-49 (Mosaic). Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie weren't the only stars of bebop in the 1940s. The flatted-fifth field included Dexter Gordon, Kai Winding, Allen Eager, J.J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Kenny Dorham, Fats Navarro, Ray Brown, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Serge Chaloff, Kenny Hagood, John Lewis, Leo Parker, Tad Dameron, Howard McGhee, Brew Moore, Milt Jackson and Gil Fuller, to name just 19. These artists were among the many masterful musicians who recorded the complex, hip and jumpy music for the Savoy label from 1945 to '49. The box provides the baseline for modern jazz, when individual soloists replaced bands as stars. A major jazz movement captured by Savoy and warmly remastered on 10 CDs with a 34-page 12-inch booklet with photos and essays by Bop Porter and Neil Tesser. Go here.
Motown: The Sound of Young America (Thames & Hudson). If you dig Motown as much as I do, you'll love this 400-page, large-size book. Beautifully organized and written by Adam White with Barney Ales, Berry Gordy's right-hand man and a highly informed insider, the book is jammed with over 1,000 little-known color and black-and-white photos of Motown artists backstage and performing. Perfect for reading and leafing through while listening to any number of Motown box sets. The book puts the label in historical perspective and explains how the music transcended hits and became the melodic mesh that helped unite the youth culture in the 1960s as the civil rights movement made critical inroads. Go here.
Elvis Presley: The Album Collection (Sony Legacy). This 60-CD set covers Elvis Presley's entire album career, featuring 57 of his LPs in original-cover slip sleeves from 1956 to 1977, plus three new discs of rarities from the three decades. The box comes with a 300-page illustrated hardcover book by Presley scholar John Jackson, discographies and recording session dates, locations and personnel. Go here.
Morris Levy: Godfather of the Music Business (University Press of Mississippi). This much-needed biography by Richard Carlin covers the life of this promoter and producer who popped up repeatedly in post-war music history and often in the strangest places. Levy co-founded New York's Birdland jazz club in 1949 and then wound up in the thick of R&B and rock 'n' roll in the 1950s, owning the publishing rights to hundreds of songs while adding his name and pseudonyms to writing credits to reap royalties. He also was involved with the payola scandals of the decade. By the late 1950s, Levy founded Roulette, which recorded some of Count Basie's and Maynard Ferguson's best recordings. Levy, however, also used the label as a front for organized crime's infiltration into the record business, a relationship that continued into the 1970s and '80s. Prior to being sentenced to prison after a federal sting operation, Levy died in 1990 at 62. If you want to know what killed jazz in the late 1950s and early '60s, don't blame the Beatles. Start with Levy and the mob Go here.
The Band: The Last Waltz 40th Anniversary (Rhino). On Thanksgiving Day in 1976, The Band held its farewell concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco before breaking up. Performers included Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, the Staple Singers and Eric Clapton. The concert was captured by director Martin Scorsese and released in 1978 as The Last Waltz. The new deluxe set includes four CDs of music with outtakes, and a Blue-Ray version of the documentary. (Go here).
David Bowie: Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) (Rhino/Parlophone). Last year, Rhino/Parlophone released David Bowie: Five Years (1960-1973), a superbly remastered 12-CD box of Bowie's albums featuring six studio albums (Space Oddity to Pinups), with two live albums, a remix of Ziggy Stardust and two CDs of assorted tracks. Now comes a 12-CD followup—David Bowie: Who Can I Be Now. It includes Diamond Dogs, David Live, a remix of David Live, The Gouster, Young Americans, Station to Station, a remix of Station to Station, a live Station to Station concert at New York's Nassau Coliseum in 1976, and a CD with a collection of tracks. The liners include essays from producer Tony Visconti and Harry Maslin as well as original interviews from the era. (Go here).
The TAMI Show and the Big T.N.T. Show (Shout Factory). In the early 1960s, before multi-city sports-arena tours and rock festivals, executive producer Henry Saperstein cashed in on the teen craze by staging and taping a revue-style concert and then distributing it on film at movie theaters nationwide. It was a brilliant concept that paved the way for TV specials, pay per view, video on demand, and streaming. Two Saperstein movie-theater events were The TAMI Show, taped in October 1964 and featured in December, and The Big T.N.T. Show, a sequel that also was taped in Los Angeles in 1965 and shown in '66. Both are now united on a Blu-Ray disc featuring interviews with select artists who performed (Go here—Blu-Ray only).
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: The Case of the Three-Sided Dream (Arthaus). Director Adam Kahan's documentary of the blind jazz woodwind dynamo shows off the many sides of the artist. Now on DVD and Blue-Ray, the documentary features live concert footage, archival footage from the 1960s and 1970s and interviews with Kirk’s collaborators. Also featured are clips from Super 8 home movie footage given to Kahn by Kirk's wife, Dorthaan. (Go here).
Lou Reed: The RCA & Arista Album Collection (Sony Legacy). Reed, who died in 2013, recorded with the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s. But he also had a game-changing solo career starting in the early '70s. Much of the music on these studio and live works was arguably more fascinating than his earlier proto-punk recordings. This new 17-CD set features 16 LPs, from Lou Reed (Apri 1972) to Mistrial (June 1986). The box was supervised by Reed and was his last project before he died. (Go here—CD, download and vinyl)
from JazzWax http://ift.tt/2guxyHD
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