Let the monomania continue! I picked up an original of this at a record swap for a few bucks on a whim and was wowed! I brought a CD-R of it to CES one year and wowed crowds with the recording without identifying the chick singer.

Unfortunately, Rosemary Clooney’s biggest hits were the novelties “Come-on a My House” and “Mambo Italiano,” forced upon her by Mitch Miller. In fairness to Miller, is job was to make hits and that’s what he did for Clooney and others at Columbia Records in the early 1950’s and beyond.

With soul producer/writer Jerry Ragovoy in charge (he co-wrote "Piece of My Heart" made famous by Janis Joplin, among hundreds of hits), this late '60s edition of The Butterfield Blues Band ditches the southside Chigago for James Brown's soul kitchen.

Elvis’s first post-Army album created a sensation when it was released just one month after he entered Nashville Studio B on March 20th, 1960, two week after his release from the Army. Unfortunately, for Presley and RCA Elvis Is Back! wasn’t a big seller because it didn’t contain any hits. Presley had been away for two years.

Decemberist leader Colin Meloy has crafted a charming, hour long folk/ rock opera based on an ancient Japanese fable dealing with greed, loyalty and betrayal. A poor man finds a wounded crane, which he rescues and returns to good health. Shortly after releasing it back to the wild, a mysterious woman arrives at his home. The two fall in love and get married. To make ends meet, she agrees to weave silk garments to sell at the local market. Her only condition for doing the work is that he never watches her doing it.

A straight-ahead, often fast-paced blowing session led by Plas Johnson, a versatile alto and tenor saxophonist who’s been heard by tens of millions, but known by very few. The theme from the “Pink Panther” includes Johnson’s most famous sax lines, but he’s played sessions for Frank, Peggy, Nat, Ella, Sarah, Ray, you first-name them.

Johnson played in “The Merv Griffin Show”’s house band for 15 years starting in 1970 and if that’s a turn-off, consider that so did Ray Brown, Benny Powell and Kai Winding among others. Those were lean years for jazz musicians given the rock onslaught.

Recorded and released during one of the most tumultuous and disturbing periods in contemporary American history, Emergency Ward! is a grand, exasperated plea for peace and understanding by one of the great soul/jazz voices of the 20th century.

Ms. Simone could have sung the Yellow Pages and made it her own but here she chooses to use two George Harrison tunes as vehicles to express her despair with America and the state of the world circa 1971 or 1972 (the year the recording was first issued).