Gary Moore is “Back on the Streets” with Bonus Tracks

In addition to more reissues from Thin Lizzy, Universal U.K. will reissue the first solo album by one of the band’s guitarists, Gary Moore.

Back on the Streets, released by MCA in 1978, was, on a technicality, Moore’s second solo effort, after 1973’s Grinding Stone, released by CBS and credited to The Gary Moore Band. Prior to that album, Moore at the age of 16, played guitar in the Irish psych-blues outfit Skid Row, led by a young Irishman named Phil Lynott. Though Lynott was dropped from the band within a year of forming in 1967, both men were quality collaborators, with Moore being recruited by Lynott to play on “Still in Love with You,” a favorite track on Thin Lizzy’s Nightlife album in 1974. (Moore was the band’s full-time guitarist for 1979, after the departure of Brian Robinson, and contributed heavily to the group’s acclaimed Black Rose: A Rock Legend. He would rejoin Thin Lizzy for their last celebratory gigs in 1983, as chronicled on the Life album, and played with the band in a one-off reunion at Self Aid in 1986. Bob Geldof sang in place of the recently-departed Lynott.)

Lynott’s presence is all over Moore’s Back on the Streets: he sings and plays bass on three of the album’s tracks: a cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Don’t Believe a Word” (recast as a slow-burning song, which Lynott later revealed was closer to the song’s originally intended arrangement), and “Fanatical Fascists” and the U.K. Top 10 single “Parisienne Walkways,” which he wrote and co-wrote with Moore, respectively. Lynott also contributed to a non-LP single, “Spanish Guitar”; in one of the more collectible accidents of Lynott’s career, a batch of the single was mispressed with Lynott on lead vocals instead of Moore.

This remastered and expanded edition features both versions of “Spanish Guitar” as bonus tracks, as well as the song’s instrumental version released as the B-side of the single and another non-LP B-side, “Track Nine.” It’s a fitting tribute to Moore, beloved by U.K. rock fans far beyond his sudden passing in 2011.

The expanded Back on the Streets is due next week in the U.K.; hit the jump for pre-order links and the full track list!

Back on the Streets: Expanded Edition (originally released as MCA Records MCF-2583, 1978 – reissued Universal (U.K.), 2013)

Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

1. Back on the Streets
2. Don’t Believe a Word
3. Fanatical Fascists
4. Flight of the Snow Moose
5. Hurricane
6. Song for Donna
7. What Would You Rather Bee or a Wasp
8. Parisienne Walkways
9. Track Nine (single B-side – MCA Records 386, 1978)
10. Spanish Guitar (Phil Lynott vocal) (single A-side – MCA Records 534 (alternate pressing), 1979)
11. Spanish Guitar (single A-side – MCA Records 534, 1979)
12. Spanish Guitar (Instrumental) (single B-side – MCA Records 534, 1979)

La La Land Has “True Grit” With First Release Of Complete Elmer Bernstein Score with Four Glen Campbell Vocals

When directors Joel and Ethan Coen adapted Charles Portis’ novel True Grit in 2010 for its second big-screen adaptation, one element was noticeably missing: the Academy Award-nominated title song by Elmer Bernstein and Don Black, so winningly introduced by Glen Campbell in the 1969 film version.  Campbell’s recording yielded a Top 10 Country and AC/Top 40 Pop single, and remains one of his most beloved songs today.  “True Grit” appeared on a brief, 10-track album in which two renditions as sung by Campbell bookended eight tracks of Bernstein’s stirring score.  But that was just the tip of the iceberg for both the orchestral score and songs of True Grit.   Happily, nearly 45 years later, La La Land Records has just delivered the first complete soundtrack to Henry Hathaway’s original film including six vocals by Glen Campbell and one by country songwriting great John Hartford.

John Wayne received his only Academy Award for his portrayal of the irascible, one-eyed U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, starring opposite Campbell as the young Texas Ranger named Le Boeuf and Kim Darby as 14-year old Mattie Ross.  Mattie enlists Cogburn and Le Boeuf to track down the outlaw that murdered her father in the western adventure.   True Grit was so successful that it spawned a sequel, 1975’s Rooster Cogburn, with Wayne reprising the title role opposite another cinema legend, Katharine Hepburn.  And one of the elements of True Grit’s success was the score by Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004).  Though he was a versatile composer in any genre, the Academy Award-winning Bernstein became a western-movie legend thanks to his instantly recognizable theme to The Magnificent Seven.  He also had a long history with Wayne, scoring films such as 1961’s The Comancheros, 1965’s Hathaway-directed The Sons of Katie Elder and later, 1971’s Big Jake, 1973’s Cahill U.S. Marshal, 1974’s McQ and 1976’s The Shootist (Wayne’s final film role).

What will you find on the deluxe new True Grit?  Hit the jump for more details, the complete track listing and order link!

Edsel Packages Patrice Rushen Albums to Help You to Remember

Looking for a primer on jazz-turned R&B singer Patrice Rushen‘s most commercial recordings for Elektra Records? Edsel will send U.K. audiences and beyond a pair of “Forget Me Nots” in the form of two double-disc sets that collect all five of her albums for the label, plus a clutch of choice bonus material.

After a trio of acclaimed (but modest-selling) fusion-influenced albums for Prestige Records in the mid-1970s, Rushen, an accomplished pianist/vocalist, joined the Elektra roster in 1978. Working with her Prestige producer Reggie Andrews, Rushen also bought in producer Charles Mims, Jr., who would be credited on all her albums for the label. All of her albums charted on Billboard‘s Top 100, and her singles began to cross over into the R&B charts, as well.

While “Hang It Up,” “Haven’t You Heart” and “Look It Up” were all respectable hits in the late ’70s and early ’80s, it was Straight from the Heart, released in 1982, that served up her biggest hit, the funky “Forget Me Nots.” That single peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 4 on the R&B chart and No. 2 on the dance charts, and remains a staple of late-period disco. (“Forget Me Nots” enjoyed a second life in 1997, when it was sampled in the worldwide hit theme song to the sci-fi comedy Men in Black, as performed by the film’s star, actor-rapper Will Smith.)

All five of Rushen’s Elektra albums have been reissued on CD; Straight from the Heart got an expanded remaster from Rhino in 1996 while the others were released by Wounded Bird in 2003. But these double-disc sets – combining her first three albums (Patrice (1978), Pizzazz (1979) and Posh (1980) one one set and Straight from the Heart and Now (1984) on another – feature between them 13 bonus tracks, including just about all the rare 12″ mixes released by the label. (Rhino’s version of Straight from the Heart had one track this reissue does not – the single edit of “Breakdown” – but lacked the dance version of “I Was Tired of Being Alone,” mixed by F. Byron Clark.)

Both sets feature full lyrics, albums credits and new annotations by Tony Rounce, producer/compiler for Ace Records. (With any luck, they’ll avoid the intense audio scrutiny that’s befallen Edsel’s Robert Palmer Island-era two-fers.) They’re out this Monday, September 30 in the U.K. and will ship to the U.S. within a week or so. Hit the jump for full track lists and Amazon U.K. links.

Eloise Laws Reissues Arrive “In Good Time” From Expansion Records, Thom Bell Arrangements Featured

Though a member of the prominent Laws musical family – alongside her brothers Ronnie and Hubert and sister Debra – Eloise Laws has more than distinguished herself with a series of soulful albums released over the years.  Now, the U.K.’s Expansion Records label has just reissued two of those albums on one CD, including one arranged and conducted by the legendary Thom Bell.  Eloise Laws/All in Time brings together Laws’ 1980 and 1982 albums, her third and fourth solo releases.

The fourth of eight Laws children, Eloise made her recording debut with a Columbia Records single back in 1969, but didn’t record a full solo LP until Ain’t It Feeling Good for Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Invictus label in 1978.  Laws soon shifted gears, though, signing to ABC Records and teaming with producer Linda Creed for the same year’s Eloise.  Creed was already well-established in soul circles as the lyricist for some of Thom Bell’s most memorable songs, among them “You Are Everything,” “You Make Me Feel Brand New,” “Betcha By Golly Wow,” The Rubberband Man” and “Ghetto Child.”  She had also written “The Greatest Love of All” with Michael Masser in 1977, which would of course become a signature song for Whitney Houston years later.  For Eloise, Creed teamed with a number of writers including, of course, Bell.  (“His House and Me” – originally cut by Dionne Warwick on her masterful Track of the Cat – was among its highlights.)  So it was only natural that Creed turned to Bell for Laws ‘next solo album, the 1980 Liberty release titled Eloise Laws.  (As for Eloise, it has also been finally reissued on CD, though that 2010 edition is now fiendishly difficult to obtain except at high prices secondhand!)

Eloise Laws, the first of two albums on Expansion’s two-fer, was produced by Creed with Thom Bell arranging and conducting.  For collectors of Bell’s oeuvre on CD, it’s a long-overdue arrival.  Creed and Bell employed some of Philadelphia’s most renowned names, among them Larry Washington on congas, Bobby Eli on guitar, Charles Collins on drums, The Sweethearts of Sigma plus Ron Tyson (of The Ethics and Love Committee) and Phil Hurtt on backing vocals, and Don Renaldo’s Horns and Strings.  Bill Neale handled guitars, Detroit-to-Philly transplant Bob Babbitt played bass, and Bell himself was featured on keyboards.  The resulting album is a lost classic, with many of Bell’s crowning symphonic touches infused into a more contemporary R&B setting circa 1980.  Bell and Creed revisited two Stylistics hits, “If You Don’t Watch Out” (as “If I Don’t Watch Out”) and “You Are Everything” in all-new arrangements, and drew on the work of other songwriters including Barbara Wyrick, Juanita Curiel and Phyllis Brown, as well.  Creed co-wrote “Let’s Find Those Two People Again” with Philly stalwart Bruce Hawes (“Mighty Love,” “Games People Play”), and “Moment to Moment” with Diane Bernstein.  The Bee Gees’ “Search, Find” was an unusual, and welcome, cover.  To Bell’s eight tracks, one song produced by Ronnie Laws (Harry Shannon and John Lewis Parker’s “Almost All the Way to Love”) was added to finalize the album sequence.

After the jump: a look at All in Time, plus order link and track listings for both albums!