LATEST ADDITIONS

This set, recorded May 1959 in Paris during a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour finds Sonny Stitt on the Oscar Peterson guest list mostly playing alto with some tenor thrown in for good measure.

For some reason, this album became a Top 10 hit in America, but the Brits knew better and stayed away. Recorded live at a Toronto rock festival during which Lennon had fallen ill, the album features the Plastic Ono Band of Lennon, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman (bass and cover artist for Revolver) and Yes drummer Alan White doing a blah set of covers the Beatles had done better (“Money,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” and Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” plus “Yer Blues”) along with two new Lennon tunes, “Cold Turkey” and “Give Peace a Chance,” the hit single that drove album sales.

Look, if your idea of “jazz-rock” fun is David Clayton Thomas’ edition of “Blood Sweat and Tears, I’m not going to try to change your mind, but if you want the real jazz-rock and psych star of that era, you need to hear this ridiculously neglected Spirit album originally issued on Epic in the fall of 1970 that Sundazed has smartly resurrected.

On his eight or ninth album in little more than a decade, young Chicago native Andrew Bird continues on his smart way, singing, whistling and fiddling bemusedly but sincerely about life’s conditional conditions.