Billy Preston’s Debut to Get Digital Reissue

Interest in Billy Preston has piqued in recent years thanks to reissues of his work with The Beatles (“Get Back,” of course one of the last great hits on The Fab Four’s recent, Grammy-winning remasters) and beyond (two albums for The Beatles’ Apple Records, reissued last year). Now, ABKCO goes a bit deeper into the vaults to release, for the first time in years, Preston’s first album.

16 Year Old Soul, released in 1963 on Sam Cooke’s SAR/Derby label, captured Preston at the very beginning. He had impressed Cooke with his session work on Nightbeat earlier that year, and so was rushed into the studio to cut his own LP months later. It was the first stepping stone to a career that included rubbing elbows with Leon Russell and Delaney Bramlett on the television show Shindig!, becoming the only artist to be credited next to The Beatles on a single and many more great R&B moments that live on even as Preston is no longer with us (having passed away in 2006 at the too-young age of 59).

The release, which will be available to all digital retailers on February 22, includes all of the original tracks from 16 Year Old Soul plus two bonus rarities. Read the press release and track listing after the jump!

Metallica’s “Garage” Days Re-Visited on Vinyl Reissue

Metallica are reissuing their Garage Inc. compilation in several vinyl formats.

Garage Inc. was a double-disc set released in 1998 that showcased the multiple rock influences of the L.A.-based metal gods. One disc was comprised of newly recorded covers of favorites from Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy to Bob Seger and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The other disc was another collection of covers that the band had previously released on singles and EPs (notably the then-out-of-print 1987 EP The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited).

The new vinyl set, to be released March 1, will be available in either three or six-LP forms, all on 45 RPM 180-gram vinyl. Amazon has a very tentative-looking order page here; more info will be posted as it’s available.

In the meantime, revisit the Garage Inc. track list after the jump.

A Material Reissue Coming from Hip-o Select

Every now and then one wonders what Hip-o Select has to offer outside of the Motown and Verve canon. Not that the volumes of catalogue gold coming from the fine producers and compilers devoted to those genres are overkill – quite the opposite – but it would be nice to see other acts in the Universal roster receive the Select treatment.

That’s what makes the news of a reissue from short-lived power-pop band Material Issue such a delight. The Chicago band only released a small handful of LPs, EPs and singles before lead singer Jim Ellison took his own life in 1996. And despite several singles in the upper reaches of the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts and a power-pop festival posthumously named for their debut album, the band are still arguably not given the acclaim they deserve.

Hip-o Select will attempt to rectify this in April with a 20th anniversary reissue of the album. In addition to remastering the 14-track LP, eight bonus tracks will be included. Six of them appeared on a promotional-only album (the other tracks from that disc, which do not appear on this reissue, are an acoustic take on “Diane” and a live version of “Valerie Loves Me”), one (“Sixteen Tambourines”) ended up on a college-radio sampler and another (“The Girl with the Saddest Eyes”) looks to have been previously unreleased.

All in all, it looks like a pretty worthwhile set, and it will be available on April 5. (No pre-order link is live from Select just yet, but we can credit our friends at Slicing Up Eyeballs with the track list, viewable after the jump.)

Back Tracks: Buffalo Springfield Reunion Special

“Used to play in a rock ‘n roll band, but they broke up. We were young and we were wild, it ate us up,” lamented Neil Young in the song “Buffalo Springfield Again” from his 2000 album Silver and Gold. “I’d like to see those guys again, and give it a shot. Maybe now we can show the world what we’ve got. But I’d just like to play for the fun we had.” Some 11 years later, Young’s wish may be coming true. On February 10, Rolling Stone carried a headline for which fans had waited years: “Exclusive: Buffalo Springfield Plans to Reunite for Fall Tour.” Encouraged by the success of a one-off reunion at last year’s Bridge School Benefit, it appears likely that Neil Young (who picked up his first Grammy as a musician last night), Stephen Stills and Richie Furay will once again appear as Buffalo Springfield. The group (consisting of that trio, plus Bruce Palmer on bass and Dewey Martin on drums, now both deceased) formed in 1966 and was history before the end of 1968, after only three LPs had been recorded. Yet the band managed to blaze a trail that broadened the sound of rock. And thanks to a “trade” that would have made George Steinbrenner proud, the band served as a launching pad for three superstar careers. Welcome to today’s Back Tracks, spotlighting the incendiary and influential folk-rock of Buffalo Springfield!

Most stories, alas, end with a hearse. But the legend of Buffalo Springfield begins with one. As the story goes, Stills and Furay were caught in Los Angeles traffic (some things never change!) when they noticed the 1953 black Pontiac hearse belonging to Stills’ old friend Neil Young, former member with Bruce Palmer of Motown’s Mynah Byrds. The fact is, Young had been unsuccessfully attempting to find Stills since relocating to California. After an illegal U-turn and much excitement, the seeds of Buffalo Springfield were planted, with Dewey Martin soon joining the newly-united Stills, Young, Furay and Palmer. Whether the traffic sighting is truth or mere apocrypha, Buffalo Springfield was born. The band made its debut at the famed Troubadour on April 11, 1966, and its debut LP arrived that December, a 12-track set produced on Atco by Charles Greene and Brian Stone. Hit the jump for a full exploration of each release in Buffalo Springfield’s small but potent catalogue!

Beatles, Big Star Grab Grammys

A quick congratulation to start the morning for two notable box sets which took home Grammys last night.

Robert Gordon won a Grammy for writing the liner notes to Rhino’s Big Star box Keep an Eye on the Sky, while Best Historical Album went to The Beatles’ The Original Studio Recordings; receiving that trophy were producer Jeff Jones and mastering engineers Paul Hicks, Sean Magee, Guy Massey, Sam Okell and Steve Rooke at Abbey Road.