Etta James was in the heartbreak business. Other singers sold sweet dreams of love, romance, and sex, but Etta James sold pain and she had an endless supply. The pain started early. She never knew who her father was. When she was born, her mother who was fourteen, abandoned her, leaving her with a childless older couple. The woman, called “Mama Lu” by Etta, became her surrogate mother, and she was loved and spoiled by her and they lived happily. But not ever after, because all was not well and never would be. Periodically, her birth mother, Dorothy, who loved the night life, would appear and take the child away. It was always the same. They would live in squalor until a few weeks passed and then, bored and frustrated with parenthood, Dorothy would return Etta to Mama Lu. The pattern continued until Etta was twelve when Mama Lu died. Dorothy appeared, told Etta that she would be living with her now, and took her to San Francisco. There, Dorothy met her brother on a street corner, left Etta with him, and walked away.

Here's one you might have missed along the way: an authentic, late-70s, unsung heavy-hitter of rock and roll medley in the Memphis vein of Big Star and Ardent studios. What if I said that this musician was in fact a peer of Big Star and even briefly had his own group with Chris Bell and Jody Stephens? What if I could characterize the music as a hybrid of Big Star, Emmitt Rhodes and Todd Rundgren, yet also have its own unique sonic quality? Sound too good to be true? Keep reading, it gets even better.

Los Angeles—April 26, 2021 — Verve/UMe’s Acoustic Sounds series celebrates Impulse!’s 60th anniversary, releasing May 14 two of the four titles that originally launched the iconic orange and black label:

• Ray Charles – Genius + Soul = Jazz
• Gil Evans Orchestra – Out Of The Cool

Filmmaker Ben Williams is posting on YouTube a series of videos he's shot at the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society (LAOCAS) December Galas over the past few years. This short one was filmed the day before AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer received the Society's Founder's Award. BTW: below the short video is my roast of Chad Kassem when he got the award December 7th 2014. If you haven't watched it, you should!(Photo: Chad and Michael visit Thai Plastics outside of Bangkok, Thailand)

The first AnalogPlanet video in months is an hour plus worth of weird and unusual records in the editor's large collection. What makes an album "weird" or "unusual"? A wide variety of possibilities as you'll see in this amusing and entertaining video in which the website's editor literally lets his hair down.

At least I think there's humor here!

What’s “surprising” about QHW Audio’s “The Vinyl” phono preamplifier? More than a few things, starting with its Made In Spain origin. Perhaps I’m just ignorant but other than the highest tech WADAX brand of digital electronics, an older piece of which I reviewed for Stereophile, I’m not aware of a burgeoning Spanish audio manufacturing scene. Perhaps I’m mistaken. If so, I’d be happy to stand corrected.

Hagerman Audio Lab’s 3rd generation fully balanced from input to output 3 pound Trumpet MC combines a differential JFET input front-end with a more conventional 6 dual-triode vacuum tube (4X 12AX7, 2X 12AU7) gain/ phase-splitter/driver/output (if I misread the schematic, which is possible, Hagerman will correct me!). Each tube came fitted with a damping ring.

Cleveland, Ohio based Gotta Groove Records today announced an ownership change, but it shouldn't change how the company does business, which is very successfully, or how it presses records, which is very well.

Rhino releases on June 25th a box set containing re-mastered versions of Joni Mitchell's first four Reprise albums (1968-71). The date is the 3 days after the 50th anniversary of the original release of Blue, which many fans consider a pivotal album in her recording career and one of the most thoughtful musical expressions of love lost ever. It was also her final Reprise release. Blue, like albums by Nick Drake and a few others from that era continue to be rediscovered by succeeding generations of fans and musicians alike.