The Second Disc Buyers Guide: The 100 Greatest Reissues of All Time (Part 2: #95-91)

Welcome to our brand-new, exhaustive feature to take us to the end of another great year for reissues and box sets: our first-ever official Second Disc Buyers Guide! From now until Christmas, we’re taking you on a delightful trip through the 100 greatest albums of all time, as selected by Rolling Stone in 2003, through the filter of when and how these classic albums have been reissued, remastered and repackaged. If you’ve ever wondered to yourself which versions of these albums to buy for certain bonus tracks and the like, wonder no more.

In our second installment, you’ll travel from the bayou to the Yellow Brick Road, and everywhere in between.  We’ll journey from the 1950s through the 1980s with a group of true legends: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Miles Davis, Prince, Buddy Holly and Elton John!

95. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Green River (Fantasy, 1969)

If you tuned into the Thanksgiving Day parade coverage on CBS last week, you might have found a sight that had nothing to do with Macy’s, giant floats or cartoon characters.  That sight was one John Fogerty, late of the band Creedence Clearwater Revival , playing many of his classic hits for an appreciative audience that Thanksgiving morning.  Fogerty hasn’t always had such a warm relationship with his back catalogue, the result of acrimony between the singer/songwriter and both his bandmates and his original label.  Though tensions have since cooled, with Fogerty even indicating to Rolling Stone that he would be open to considering a reunion (“It’s possible, yeah. I think the call would maybe have to come from outside the realm … [But] I haven’t really wasted mental energy being angry for quite some time.”), only one thing has remained a constant in all of these years: the vitality of Fogerty’s so-called “swamp rock” created with Doug Clifford, Stu Cook and his brother Tom Fogerty in Creedence.

The band’s third album, 1969’s Green River, crystallized the sound of its predecessor Bayou Country.  Both albums have a number of similarities: an all-Fogerty line-up of original songs supplemented by one cover version (“Good Golly, Miss Molly” on the earlier album, “Night Time is the Right Time” on the later one), a powerful title song, a blend of evocative, haunting imagery with good-time rock.  But the songs on Green River were tighter, more focused and more idiosyncratic.  (The entire album is barely thirty minutes long.)  “Lodi” exposed Fogerty’s fear of becoming a musician stuck playing dead-end dives in a town such as Lodi, California (some 70 miles away from Fogerty’s Bay Area home), while “Bad Moon Rising” was the most perfect expression yet of the songwriter’s darkness-meets-light ethos.  The elegiac “Green River” painted an evocative picture of a South that might have never been, but now always will be, in song.

Green River has been issued numerous times on CD, and all editions save the most recent edition have featured only the original nine-song track listing.  The original Fantasy CD (Fantasy 4514) was upgraded by the label with “20-Bit K2 Super Coding” remastering (FCD24-8393) in 2000, but some listeners might prefer the limited edition 24K Gold CD released in 1994 by DCC Compact Classics (GZS-1064) as remastered by Steve Hoffman.  Hoffman himself revisited Green River for Analogue Productions in 2003 as a hybrid stereo SACD (Analogue Productions CAPP 8393 SA) with amazingly crisp sound or a 180-gram vinyl LP.  Green River was also included in full on the 2001 box set Creedence Clearwater Revival (Fantasy 6CCRCD-4434-2) with the 20-bit “K2” sound.  Fantasy, under the new ownership of Concord Records, mended fences with John Fogerty after his clashes with former label boss Saul Zaentz, and issued definitive 40^th Anniversary Editions of the Creedence catalogue.  Green River (FAN-30878, 2008) was expanded by five bonus tracks: two instrumental test tracks recorded prior to the sessions which yielded the album (“Broken Spoke Shuffle” and “Glory Be”) and three live renditions (“Bad Moon Rising” from Berlin on September 16, 1971, “Green River/Suzie Q” from Stockholm on September 21, 1971 and “Lodi” from Hamburg on September 17, 1971).

94. Miles Davis, Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970)

If Miles Davis’ groundbreaking work with his Second Great Quintet was far-removed from his early bebop days, or his Gil Evans-arranged orchestral albums, nothing could have prepared listeners fully for 1970’s Bitches Brew.  On this sprawling double album, Davis embraced electric instrumentation and an improvised rock spirit that wouldn’t have fazed fans of Jimi Hendrix.  The gambit paid off when Bitches picked up Grammy Awards and gold records.  Entirely self-composed by Davis with the exception of Joe Zawinul’s “Pharoah’s Dance” and Wayne Shorter’s “Sanctuary,” Bitches Brew featured use of the studio itself as a musical instrument, with its lengthy tracks spliced and edited to their final form.  Davis’ trumpet playing had become more aggressive and he shares the solo spotlight with the soprano saxophone of Shorter.   Tracks featured up to 12 musicians playing at any time, including Zawinul,  Shorter, Ron Carter, Airto Moreira, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Don Alias, Bennie Maupin, Larry Young, and Lenny White.  Bitches Brew is a landmark recording not simply in jazz-rock or fusion, but in jazz itself, inspiring countless imitators and proving that Davis circa 1970 remained a restlessly inventive artist who refused to be relegated to music’s back pages.  Critical reaction was divided as to Davis’ polarizing, innovative new style, and the album is still much-discussed today.

Much like Davis’ 1959 modal jazz breakthrough Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew has been reissued with great frequency.  Early CD issues (such as Columbia C2K 40577 under the “CBS Jazz Masterpieces” banner) replicated the original 6-song track listing, while Legacy’s 1999 remaster (C2K 65774) added one bonus track to the second disc, Wayne Shorter’s “Feio.”  That track was recorded in early 1970 with much of the same personnel as the core album.  However, the Legacy remaster featured a remix of the album; the original can be found on older Japanese issues such as CSCS 5151-2 or 50DP 703-4 as well as on the 1996 Japan-only SRCS 9118-9.  Sony’s ace engineer Mark Wilder explained the remix as follows: “[The] two tracks [i.e. the actual stereo mix down master tape] had not aged well. So we could either work with inferior tape copies from other countries, or go back to the original eight tracks and remix them, and so save ourselves a generation. The decision was made to remix from the original multitracks.”  The remix became the norm for subsequent reissues.  Bitches Brew has also been released on SACD in its remixed form as SIGP-20/21 in 2003 and SICP 10089-90 in 2007.

1998’s The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (Columbia/Legacy 65570) is the sixth in a series of chronological “complete” box sets chronicling Miles Davis’ Columbia Records career.  That 4-CD set compiles all tracks Davis recorded between August 19, 1969 and February 6, 1970, including Bitches Brew in its entirety.  At the time of its release, some questioned the curating process for this set.  Outside of the tracks which originally appeared on Bitches Brew, none of the other tracks on the box were recorded during the same August 1969 sessions that resulted in the final album. Some material recorded for, but not used on Bitches Brew, was not included, primarily rehearsal takes and unedited performances of the six album tracks.  This box set was reissued in 2004 with new packaging as Columbia/Legacy 90924.

The Bitches Brew saga continued in 2010 with both a 3-CD/1-DVD/LP Super Deluxe Edition (Columbia/Legacy 88697 70274 2) and 2-CD/1-DVD Legacy Edition (Columbia/Legacy 88697 54519 2) in commemoration of the album’s 40^th anniversary.  The first CDs include the original album (albeit in remixed form) plus six bonus tracks: two previously unreleased alternate takes of “Spanish Key” and “John McLaughlin” as well as the single edits of “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,” “Spanish Key,” “Great Expectations,” and “Little Blue Frog.”   The third CD captures a live gig at Tanglewood from August 1970 with August 1970, with Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira and Gary Bartz.  The 71-minute DVD Copenhagen Live 1969 preserves a complete performance by a quintet that includes Shorter, Corea, Holland, and DeJohnette.  The Legacy Edition included the first two CDs and the Copenhagen DVD only.   Bitches Brew Live (Columbia/Legacy 88697 81485 2) appeared in early 2011, with nine rare performances recorded at festivals nine months before Bitches Brew‘s release (Newport Jazz Festival, July 1969, the first three tracks, previously unissued) and four months after (Isle Of Wight, August 1970, the final six tracks).

Hit the jump for the scoop on entries from Prince, Buddy Holly and Elton John!

Soundtrack Round-Up: Intrada Commits “Robbery,” La-La Land Bows Final Titles for 2011

The end of the calendar year is a boom time for all those working in reissues, especially the soundtrack labels. Today, six major titles go on sale that are certainly worth a look here at Second Disc HQ.

Intrada’s two latest sets, announced last night, are pretty major. One is a brand new reissue of the score to The Great Train Robbery, Jerry Goldsmith’s classic soundtrack to the film directed by author Michael Crichton from his best-selling novel. Though the score is no stranger to CD, having been released and expanded by Varese Sarabande years ago, this special double-disc presentation expands the original score to completeness from newly-discovered two-track stereo masters. That includes 16 unreleased, alternate and source tracks. As an added bonus, the original soundtrack LP, released by United Artists at the time of the film’s release, is included as well. (It boasts alternate edits and mixes, as is often the case on original score albums.) And best of all, the set is both unlimited and selling for $19.99, the price of a typical single-disc set from Intrada.

The label’s other project is a very significant one: the premiere of the score to Wolfen, composed by a young James Horner. This horror flick, featuring Albert Finney as an NYPD detective pitted against a clan of shapeshifting murderers, was one of Horner’s first major screen credits, predating the one-two punch of 48 Hrs. and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan by a year. The CD features all of the music (including two alternate takes) written for the film. (It does not, however, feature all the music in the movie; some tracks from Horner’s then-most recent score, The Hand, were tracked in, to the point where they actually sounded like they could have been written for the film.) Knowing as score fans do that Horner is usually very reluctant to release early works, this is a pretty big coup for Intrada.

Speaking of coups, La-La Land didn’t disappoint with their Black Friday announcement of four major catalogue soundtracks, available to order now. The titles are a double-disc expansion of Michael Kamen’s adrenaline-fueled score to action classic Die Hard (1988), the premiere release of Danny Elfman’s score to the Bill Murray Christmas comedy Scrooged (1988), and expansions of two latter-day film adaptations of World War II events – Jerry Goldsmith’s score to the Pearl Harbor Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and Ennio Morricone’s music to 1989’s Fat Man and Little Boy, about the carrying out of the Manhattan Project, the nuclear missiles which ended the Second Great War.

You can order all these sets right now, after the jump.

UPDATE: Doris Day Opens The Vaults For “My Heart” and There’s Plenty For Beach Boys Fans, Album Gets U.S. Release

The vault has finally been opened!  Sony Music U.K. has confirmed a release date and track listing for singing legend Doris Day’s long-awaited My Heart, on which your humble correspondent first reported in August 2010 and revisited back in November!  Thanks to the fine folks at Doris Day Tribute for spreading this news!  My Heart marks Doris’ first album of original studio material in some seventeen years, since The Love Album, and it features a number of tracks that will be of interest to the Beach Boys fan and collector communities.  Day’s 29^th studio album, My Heart is set for release on September 5 in the U.K. with an American release hopefully to follow. 

UPDATE 11/29: That American release is almost here!  Doris Day’s own production company, Arwin Productions, drops My Heart next Tuesday, December 6, in the United States.  And the Arwin release will include a special U.S.-only bonus track, “Stewball.”  A traditional tune as arranged by Terry Melcher, “Stewball” was recorded circa 1985 for the Doris Day’s Best Friends television program, and it now makes its first commercial release anywhere! 

My Heart made chart history earlier this year when it entered at No. 9, making Day, 87, the oldest artist to score a new Top 10 entry in the U.K. pop chart.  Dame Vera Lynn topped the British chart in 2009 at 92, but Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again was exclusively a retrospective, whereas My Heart premieres “new” studio material.

Some details have changed since the initial announcement of the album, but Day’s sentiment in assembling it remains true: “These songs all mean so much to me…They bring back happy memories of my friends who appeared on TV with me, my animal friends, and most of all, my [late] son Terry.”  The Terry of whom she speaks is Terry Melcher, the producer and songwriter behind hits for The Byrds and The Beach Boys as well as some of Doris’ most notable recordings including “Move Over Darling.”  Though Melcher died in 2004, some of his unheard productions recorded in the 1980s for the Doris Day’s Best Friends television series will be premiered on My Heart.  (Click here for the full list!)

Eight songs in all are appearing for the first time.  Four of those tracks were written by Melcher in tandem with Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, the team once known to pop listeners as Bruce and Terry.  These include the title song, “The Way I Dreamed It” and a duo of songs that may be familiar to listeners, though not in these recordings.  “Heaven Tonight,” which in Day’s version will be promoted as the album’s single, was recorded by Captain and Tennille, also longtime Beach Boys associates.  The Beach Boys themselves performed “Happy Endings” with Little Richard, from the 1988 Whoopi Goldberg vehicle The Telephone.

Hit the jump for the updated run-down on the rest of the contents of My Heart, including remarks from Bruce Johnston about the album’s production!  plus the complete track listing with discographical information and pre-order link!

Release Round-Up: Week of November 29

Now begins the drought. A couple of respectable catalogue titles, but it’s going to be shorter round-ups from here through 2011.

The Monkees, Instant Replay: Deluxe Edition (Rhino Handmade)

Three discs and 87 tracks worth of this underrated entry in The Monkees’ catalogue, featuring stereo and mono mixes and session takes galore.

Smashing Pumpkins, Gish / Siamese Dream: Deluxe Editions (Virgin/EMI)

The first releases in a planned three-year reissue project for Billy Corgan and his Pumpkins, the first two studio albums are augmented with rare, mostly unreleased material on a bonus CD and vintage live concerts on DVD.

The Rolling Stones, Some Girls Live in Texas (Eagle Rock)

Eagle Rock complements the recent Stones reissue with an unreleased live CD/Blu-Ray of a 1978 show.

Gorillaz, The Singles Collection (Virgin/EMI)

An animated (ho!) overview of Damon Albarn’s famous post-Blur multimedia project, featuring the band’s singles and a few rarer remixes.

Richard Thompson, Strict Tempo! (Omnivore)

Thirty years on, a remastered CD of Thompson’s self-released second solo album (released a year before the final Richard and Linda Thompson album, Shoot Out the Lights), consisting of traditional tunes and favorites almost entirely performed by Thompson (with Dave Mattacks of Fairport Convention on drums).