LATEST ADDITIONS

The monophonic master tape of this 1958 Prestige session recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack home studio has probably had more tape head contact over the past few years than it had for the first 30 plus years of its life. Along with this 2 LP set and SACD, there’s a 180g Acoustic Sounds LP still in print, there was a 1998 JVC XRCD reissue, a 1993 DCC Compact Classics gold CD, a standard CD, a 20 bit mastered edition, a Japanese 20 bit “LP sleeve” edition and probably a few others as well. Do a search on Amazon.com and you’ll find a confusing jumble of Soultrane editions priced from $6.49 to $49.00 (the out of print DCC Compact Classics gold CD), none of which are identified in adequate detail. As you’d expect, www.acousticsounds does a better job of identifying this recording’s many iterations.

A cold-steel stoic intensity inhabits the faces of Canadian folksingers Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker on the cover of their 1965 Vanguard album Northern Journey. The photo’s low light and blue cast amplify the title’s message. Combine the front cover with the scholarly ethno-musicalogical liner notes you’ll find on the back—perhaps a reflexive reaction to the commercialization of folk music back then and an attempt to separate Ian and Sylvia from many trite, packaged folk acts of the time—and you have an almost forbiddingly chilly surface.

Matthew' Greenwald Sparks Van Dyke Parks

MG: Well, let's first hit that great rewind button in the sky... After you attended Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh, I believe that one of the first professional jobs that you got as a musician was playing clarinet on Art Linkletter's television show, "House Party"...

Van Dyke Parks: (Laughter) No, I came out to California expecting that job to be waiting for me... It didn't happen. (Laughter)

MG: So, you came out here and lived with your older brother, Carson?

VDP: Yeah, we lived in Seal Beach.

MG: So I guess at that time you kind of set the clarinet aside and learned 'Raquinto' style guitar... Did the two of you play coffee houses?

VDP: Well, we played all of the hip places to play. We played all the way from San Diego to Santa Barbara. We went up and down the coast and played all these places.

In a career spanning almost 30 years and 18 albums, Joan Armatrading has established herself as one of the most durable and respected artists in popular music. Her honesty and integrity as both a musician and world citizen are rare in a field that regularly breeds shooting stars.

Born in the West Indies on the island of St. Kitts in 1950, and moving to England when she was 7, Armatrading absorbed both the lilting, sunny rhythms of the Caribbean and the grittiness of post-industrial Birmingham. Her tough, yet vulnerable musical stance has influenced two generations of performers, attracted to her unique, difficult to categorize brand of music.