(Corrected version: Elliot Easton is still with us. Ben Orr, unfortunately, passed away in 2000. I mistakenly said "the late Elliot Easton" in the original review. My apologies!)

The Cars didn’t swing but that was the point. Rick Ocasek didn’t emote much, but that too was the point. The Cars were all about gleaming chrome, hard edges, not too glam-rock and taking Roxy Music to its logical, stripped down conclusion. The musical and cultural concept was modern yet retro. It was an American band, after all.

Villa-Lobos’s folk-oddity “The Little Train of the Caipira” from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2 is a delightful, evocative piece of music, as colorful as the cover artwork and a sonic spectacular guaranteed to delight even the most classical music-averse audiophiles.



The music, inspired by a trip the composer took in 1931 on a rural train transporting farm laborers between villages in the Brazilian province of Sao Paolo (the word “caipira,” roughly translated, means “yokel”), would have you thinking “steam train up a mountain” even had you not known the composition’s title.

Former Image Hi-Fi magazine editor Dirk Sommer and his wife Birgit Hammer-Sommer recorded and produced this solo double bass performance by Dieter Ilg using a purist analog chain direct to ¼” analog audio tape. Compression was neither contemplated nor used, nor was there any filtering or equalization of any kind.



Mikes used were a Neumann SM 69 FET (X-Y) for the bass and an AKG 422 (Blumlein) for ambience. Two Studer A810s recorded the results, which were mixed on location using an Acousta P100 mixing board.

Drop John Lee Hooker off in the parched environs of Paris, Texas and tell him to do his mournful thing and that it’ll be okay because Miles Davis will be right behind him with his mute trumpet following his every musical move the way Ali Akbar Khan followed Ravi Shankar's.

That's the vibe of this soundtrack to the 1990 film "The Hot Spot" starring Dennis Hopper.

I’ll throw my two cents into the “greatest rock vocalists” ring: Steve Marriott. He’s the one for me. His work with the original Small Faces stands above all else, but later Marriott joined Peter Frampton and the two formed Humble Pie with bassist Greg Ridley and drummer Jerry Shirley.

Modern Jazz Quartet fans will find this Milt Jackson solo outing surprising and in a sense liberating. While the vibraharpist remains his usual cool, resilient self, the addition of Kenny Dorham on trumpet and Jimmy Heath (brother of MJQ bassist Percy) on tenor sax gives the outing a bit more swagger and drive compared to the MJQ’s usual studiousness.

How rare and collectible is this record? A mint original sold for $678.00 back in 2004. I doubt it sounds as good as this double 45rpm reissue but I can’t be sure since I don’t have one.

This 1956 monophonic release recorded live on May 31st 1956 at the Café Bohemia opens with a musical gesture familiar to all who love Cannonball Adderley’s Blue Note classic Somethin’ Else (BLP 1595) issued two years later: the opening intro to “Autumn Leaves” cops the intro to “Monaco.”

The death of Noel Brazil, Mary Black’s long time collaborator and favorite songwriter, weighs heavily on the song selection here. The album is populated with songs of sadness, resignation and rebirth.

Listen to the heartfelt “Your Love” and you’ve got the picture: “How can I say what I feel?/When I turn around you’re not here/I know its my time to lead/But the emptiness inside leaves me weak.”

Elvis in the army meant no new albums or singles from the King so RCA producers raided the vaults to put together this album and A Date With Elvis (LPM-2011).

Issued in February of 1959 For LP Fans Only was Elvis’s 7th RCA album. It’s a short, twenty three and a half minute compilation of ten tracks only available previously as singles, or in the case of “Poor Boy” on the Love Me Tender EP. Collectors are most attracted to the album for its inclusion of three rare Sun singles: “Mystery Train,” “My Baby Left Me,” and of course “That’s All Right.”