Album Reviews

Second albums make or break pop artists. If the first one was a smash the second one had also better be or you risk the "one hit wonder" label. That's what happened to Christopher Cross, Marshall Crenshaw and more recently James Blunt, even though Cross and Crenshaw followed up their debuts with many good records—or at least good tunes. They just didn't produce chart hits.

You could produce a jazz record today using ProTools at 192/24 or lower resolution, create a CD master, have it manufactured and then release it. To get in on the “vinyl resurgence”, you could use that 16 bit/44.1k master to cut lacquers and press records at a commercial pressing plant. It’s done all too often, I’m sure.

Though Bob Dylan pays tribute here to Frank Sinatra who recorded for Columbia, Capitol and Reprise (which he founded), the record label is a Blue Note facsimile. The cover art also draws from a Blue Note: a blue tinted variant of Freddie Hubbard’s album Hub Tones (BST-ST84115). The back cover is a photo of a tuxedoed Dylan perusing with a masked woman an unidentifiable Sun 45rpm single.

What can these two tow headed little brothers pictured on the cover know about Big Bill Broonzy? Obviously plenty as you'll hear on this inspired collaboration—the Alvin brothers' first together in almost thirty years.

Born out of desperation (hence the name), with the release of its eponymous debut album containing "Sultans of Swing", Dire Straits was an instant commercial success. Cynics at the time said the tune made Dylan safe for average folks. The album was eventually certified double platinum.

The Wichita and Lawrence, Kansas-based Wrong Kata Trio has been playing together since 2010, though the three have been performing in the area for fifteen years.

Jerome Sabbagh's The Turn puts his long-running jazz quartet in New York's famed Sear Sound with veteran engineer James Farber at the board. The musicians managed to record to two-track analog tape the more than an hour's worth of music spread over the four sides of this double 180g LP set. That's getting you money's worth from a single studio session.