Album Reviews

Henry Saint Clair Fredericks A/K/A Taj Mahal grew up in Harlem, spent time as a teenager on a Massachusetts dairy farm, attended U of M, gigged around and finally headed west and built a musical career first in Los Angeles and later in the Bay area. The life influences come through in his music: a mix of urban and country blues mixed with world music.

This is a vinyl reissue of lo-fi home recording genius and underground hero Ariel Pink. These sometimes tuneful lo-fi experiments from a decade ago are interesting and probably very influential but there's no real reason to have them on double 180 gram vinyl given the lo-tech origins of the material.

Alto sax bop legend Art Pepper (1925-1982) had accrued a lot of mileage but few OnePass points when he blew into London with his trio in June of 1980 to play a fortnight gig at the famous Ronnie Scott’s Club.

No one before sang quite like Stevie Wonder  does on this groundbreaking album, but everyone did afterwards. Wonder's tonality and phrasing on Talking Book were breakthroughs in soul/pop vocalizing.

As the liner notes for ISB's self titled debut (Elektra EKS-7322) tell it, in the mid '60s Robin Williamson was singing traditional Scottish ballads, MIke Heron was in an r&b group and Clive Palmer was playing ragtime banjo.

Not one Hollies hit is among the twenty songs on this ten 45rpm 7" box set and that's the best part!

Street playing string bands played some of the best music I heard at this year's SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. The Carolina Chocolate Drops out of Durham, North Carolina are one of the few African-American string bands plying the trade today. The trio plays fiddle, banjo, guitar, harmonica, bones (yes, bones) and other traditional instruments on this 10"  four tune EP. The group had a Grammy Award® winning album for "best traditional folk album" with their 2010 CD release "Genuine Negro Jig" also on Nonesuch.