Music Reviews: Doc Pomus Demos, plus Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks, the Third Mind, and the Brothers Comatose Back in the so-called Brill Building era, before acts like Bob Dylan and the Beatles rewrote the rules and started penning their own material, a large percentage of the hits on Billboard’s charts were composed not by […]
An Anthology Collects Hits from 1960, plus San Francisco Salsa and CDs from Lance Cowan and Antonio Andrade The 20th Anniversary Billboard Chart 20th July 1960 is the latest in a series of anthologies based on the music industry magazine’s sales rankings for a particular week. Earlier compendiums have included such titles as The JFK […]
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That’ll Flat…Git It! Series Unearths More Vintage Rockabilly While the rockabilly genre owed debts to multiple earlier musical styles, it didn’t come to fruition until Sun Records released the first singles from Elvis Presley, whose pioneering work was followed by that of such labelmates as Carl Perkins. As Andrew Hickey notes in an episode of […]
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Music Reviews: ‘The JFK Inauguration: Hot 100 5th August 1957,’ plus Mike Zito, Vanessa Peters, and Lance Cowan According to conventional wisdom, rock experienced a fallow period from around the time we lost Buddy Holly in January 1959—“the day the music died,” according to Don McLean’s “American Pie”—until Bob Dylan and the Beatles caught on […]
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Ironically, it took a European record company to compile The Memphis Blues Box, one of the most impressive and essential collections of American music you’ll ever find. Still, I can’t think of a label more suited to the task than Germany’s Bear Family, which is world-famous for its gargantuan and definitive anthologies, such as the […]
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Elvis Presley’s “Aloha from Hawaii,” plus a Ray Davies Tribute, Two Rockabilly Anthologies, Melanie, and More New Releases Elvis Presley’s return to prominence after a multi-year slump began with a December 1968 TV special and arguably culminated in January 1973 with another television event: Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, a concert that aired live in […]
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Elvis Presley’s precipitous decline, which led to his death in August 1977, appears to have begun about four years earlier. He did perform a hugely popular TV special in January of 1973 (Aloha from Hawaii), but that’s the year when his divorce was finalized, the hit singles stopped coming, his drug use was rising, and […]
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An Unusual Anthology Collects Hits from 1957, plus Marvin Gaye and Diane Hubka Most multi-artist anthologies embrace some sort of cohesive musical theme, such as a focus on a particular genre or the work of a certain performer or composer. That’s not the case with American Bandstand US Top 100, 5th August 1957. This four-CD […]
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