LATEST ADDITIONS

So great were Aretha’s hit making abilities during the peak of her Atlantic era that a blockbuster like “Think,” which leads off this set, did not make it to 1971’s Aretha’s Greatest Hits (SD8295). The track from this set making to the hits album was “I Say A Little Prayer,” given a less introspective, more energetic reading than the Dionne Warwick original.

Going from Soft Lights & Sweet Music is like going from the merely excellent to the spectacularly suave and sublime, both musically and especially sonically. Though not as “clean,” and not nearly as detailed and revealing as the newer recording, there’s a liquidity, transparency and timbral rightness about the older one that just puts your mind and emotional state in a different world. Nonetheless, the piano has that boxy ‘50s sound and the bass is a bit muffled. There’s something to be said for the newer recording in terms of reality but for magic, it’s the older one. Sort of like old movies versus new ones.

Produced by Bay area bluesman Roy Rogers (Hooker had moved there and opened a nightclub in 1997), this Grammy Award winning set of collaborations between the then 72 year old John Lee Hooker and Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, “Canned Heat,” Los Lobos, George Thorogood and Charlie Musselwhite, plus two stirring Hooker solos and one backed by drums and bass, brought the blues great to a new audience.

Foné records’ Giulio Cesare Ricci is easily one of the most charming, entertaining and eccentric people I have ever encountered in an industry packed with such people. I spent some quality time with him and his lovely wife Paola Maria, who works in the fashion industry in Milan, during last fall’s Top Audio show there.