Lee Morgan’s 1959 solo debut recorded when he was just 19 is aptly named. It’s an album of standards in a quartet setting designed to show off the prodigy’s ability to wrap his big, warm tone around familiar melodies.

Morgan covers chestnuts like “Since I Fell For You,” “All the Way,” and others, along with Jimmy Heath’s “C.T.A.” infusing them with playful, though forceful note-skipping around the melodic lines.

Miles Davis’s major label debut, recorded with his quintet in the fall of 1955 and late summer of 1956 while he was still under Prestige contract and released early in 1957, was not particularly well-received at the time, though it has grown considerably in stature since then.

Vaughan takes unexpected, daring turns, both emotionally and physically, around every familiar melodic signpost. She’ll surprise throughout, as will Wilson’s arrangements. Both leave open spaces that seem to be dropping uncontrollably into musical chasms only to be rescued by yet another audacious, surprising recovery. Who takes these kinds of chances these days?

The long running outfit known as Mercury Rev (first album, Yerself Is Steam issued 1991 on the UK Mint Films label and 1992 on U.S. Columbia) didn’t take its name from the liquid element. The first album’s back jacket offers a clue: with or without permission, it reproduces the ‘Stereo 35MM’ logo found on cloth-spined Command Classics LPs and that’s fine with me. “Fine”—get it? Fine? It even reproduces the part of the logo that says the recording was on 35MM magnetic tape, but I doubt that album really was.

Is this performance of one of Dvorak’s most popular and oft-recorded piano trios likely the most authoritative or finely played? Not likely, given competition from Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax and Young Uck Kim among the many others by well- established ensembles and/or instrumentalists. This trio does play it very well, however.

Is it the or among the finest every recorded? Probably. Is it played by the most attractive-looking ensemble ever to record the piece? That can be said with complete confidence!

Jenny Lewis can be coquettish, seductive, aggressive, sweet, warm, nostalgic, empathetic and, yes, acid tongued— though it’s a literal reference on the title tune.



Lewis displays all of those qualities and more on this smart set of hard-edged, tuneful pop-folk-rock-blues originals that indicates an encyclopedic musical knowledge and a large record collection. Lewis leans on it, but never manages to get trapped in derivative quotes.

This triple gatefold, double time capsule captures the rapturous July 1st, 1998 Carnegie Hall Concert also filmed by Wim Wenders and released the next year. The music is old. The players were old—some in their 80s and ‘90s—and some have since passed away, but the old music was fresh to the ears of Americans and others who first heard it thanks to the World Circuit CD produced by Ry Cooder (later issued on vinyl by Classic Records).

I recently drove to Boston to visit three old friends I’d not seen for 30 years. I met them when I was in my mid-twenties and they were even younger. While most of my other friends and I sought shallow “hipness” through aggressively consuming what was new and avidly rejecting what was old, these guys didn’t filter their likes through time. They seemed to be as enthusiastic about Cab Calloway in 1972 as his fans must have been back in 1931 when he sold a million copies of “Minnie the Moocher.”

Can rock’n’roll still be dangerous in the 21st century? Escovedo’s latest says “yes” with conviction. Produced by veteran Tony Visconti (I don’t have to cite credits do I?), this is a tight, hard-hitting package of unadorned guitar-driven rock that opens with a tune that sounds like a Bruce Springsteen demo track recorded at a time when Bruce’s music and his performances raged with authenticity.