The Year In Reissues: The 2014 Gold Bonus Disc Awards

Welcome to The Second Disc’s Fifth Annual Gold Bonus Disc Awards!

As with every year’s awards, our goals are simple: to recognize as many of the year’s most essential reissues and catalogue titles as possible, and to celebrate as many of those labels, producers and artists who make these releases happen in an increasingly-challenging retail landscape.  The labels you’ll read about below have, by and large, bucked the trends to prove that there’s still a demand for physical catalogue music that you can purchase in brick-and-mortar stores.  And from our vantage point, there’s still great strength and health in our corner of the music industry.  By my estimate, The Second Disc covered roughly 500 compact disc releases in 2014 – and we have no reason to believe that number will decrease in the year ahead.  We dedicate The Gold Bonus Disc Awards to the creators of the music and releases we cover, to the dedicated retailers who continue to support catalogue titles, and most importantly, to you, our readers.  After all, your interest is ultimately what keeps great music of the past – this site’s raison d’etre – alive and well.

Which releases take home the gold this year? Hit the jump below to find out!

Release Round-Up: Weeks of December 23 and December 30

Well, these are incredibly light weeks for new releases!  Thankfully, the Kritzerland and Audio Fidelity labels have stepped up with a quartet of titles to close out 2014 on a high note!

Cy Coleman, John Kander, Harvey Schmidt and Charles Strouse, Classical Broadway (Kritzerland) (available for pre-order now)

Kritzerland remasters this 1992 album (originally released on the Bay Cities label) featuring classical compositions from four of Broadway’s most legendary composers including Cy Coleman (Sweet Charity, Barnum), John Kander (Cabaret, Chicago), Harvey Schmidt (The Fantasticks, 110 in the Shade) and Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie).  Though these pieces are for the concert hall and not for the musical stage, they still brim with the melody and flair of the composers’ theatre work.  This title will ship by the second week of February, but pre-orders placed directly through the label typically arrive an average of four weeks early.

Patrick Williams, Breaking Away: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Kritzerland) (available for pre-order now)

Here’s the world premiere soundtrack release of Patrick Williams’ score (as conducted by the great Lionel Newman) for the beloved 1979 coming-of-age drama.  This deluxe release features Williams’ original cues, classical adaptations, as well as material cut from the finished film.  This title will ship by the second week of February, but pre-orders placed directly through the label typically arrive an average of four weeks early.

The Guess Who, The Best of The Guess Who (Audio Fidelity) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) (12/30)

Audio Fidelity premieres the 4.0 quadraphonic surround mix of The Guess Who’s 1971 compilation album on hybrid SACD (meaning a stereo layer is playable on standard CD players) – featuring such songs as “These Eyes,” “Laughing,” “No Time,” “Undun” and “American Woman.”  And that’s not the only quad classic coming to CD…

Blood, Sweat & Tears, Blood, Sweat & Tears (Audio Fidelity) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) (12/30)

Following its 5.1 presentation of BS&T’s Al Kooper-helmed debut album, Audio Fidelity revisits the kickoff of the horn band’s David Clayton-Thomas era!  This original 4.0 quad mix of the 1969 smash features “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die” and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” all in vivid multichannel on hybrid SACD.

And lastly, we’d like to spread a little holiday cheer courtesy of one of our readers…

The Man Who Saved Christmas: The Original Studio Cast Recording (Take the Cakeable Records) (Amazon U.S.) (available now)

This isn’t a reissue, but what it is, is a charming and unabashedly old-fashioned musical comedy as recorded by a cast of 34 singers and a 14-piece orchestra.  Ron Lytle’s bright musical is inspired by the life story of A.C. Gilbert.  The inventor of the erector set, Gilbert was dubbed “the man who saved Christmas” for his crusade against a proposed ban on toy sales during one pivotal holiday season!  The Studio Cast Recording of this charming show is available now at Amazon, and more information on the show can be found at its website.  Merry Christmas, everyone!

Review: Blood, Sweat and Tears, “The Complete Columbia Singles”

Blood, Sweat and Tears has much in common with Rodney Dangerfield – they get no respect.

Though the band founded by Al Kooper, Steve Katz, Bobby Colomby, Jim Fielder, Dick Halligan, Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss produced some of the most enduring pop singles of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the group has long lingered in the shadows of rock’s back pages.  Eclipsed in fame by Columbia Records labelmates Chicago, plagued by a series of acrimonious departures from the ranks, and pilloried for perceived pro-Nixon views, BS&T has survived primarily as oldies station fodder.  Yet with its release of The Complete Columbia Singles (RGM-0211), Real Gone Music has put the emphasis on the vivid, varied body of work from the band’s Columbia period of 1968-1976.  The 2-CD, 32-track set reveals a wealth of brassy, powerful jazz-rock that has stood the test of time.

Blood, Sweat and Tears wasn’t the first band to fuse rock and roll with a big-band horn section, but the group did it with a level of virtuosity that eclipsed those that had come before.  For his one and only album with the band, Child is Father to the Man, Al Kooper blended the improvisational, experimental quality that had marked his work with The Blues Project with the commercial sensibility he honed as the young songwriter of pop hits like Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ “This Diamond Ring.”  Only two tracks from Kooper’s short tenure are heard here, but the driving blue-eyed soul of “I Can’t Quit Her” and the outré, effects-laden – yet still melodic – “House in the Country” both underscore how creative BS&T was at its inception.  But Kooper, Brecker and Weiss were gone before long.  Producer James William Guercio, whose rock-with-horns work with the Buckinghams had inspired the early BS&T, came on board in time for the group’s second album.  It was the same year he would produce the eponymous debut album by a band with a similar idea – The Chicago Transit Authority.

With Guercio at the helm, Blood, Sweat and Tears reinvented itself.  Key in this reinvention was the addition of vocalist David Clayton-Thomas to the line-up; Lew Soloff, Jerry Hyman and Chuck Winfield all also joined the group.  Clayton-Thomas’ powerful, deep voice was deployed to stunning effect on the group’s re-arrangement of Brenda Holloway’s Motown hit “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.”  With commanding horns married to an irresistibly soulful melody and an urgent vocal, “Happy” fused jazz, rock, pop and R&B into one storming, radio-friendly whole.  Clayton-Thomas’ own “Spinning Wheel” built on the style and sound of “Happy,” with its psychedelic lyrics tapping into the zeitgeist of the era.  Soon, everybody had caught on to “Spinning Wheel” – from Mel Torme and Sammy Davis Jr. to Shirley Bassey and Nancy Wilson.  Even The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, took a stab at it. The band used its transformative skills once again to great effect on Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die,” adding an anthemic quality and an inventively cinematic, old-west feel  to the New York songstress’ folky, wise-beyond-her-years and ironically upbeat rumination.   “Happy,” “Spinning Wheel” and “And When I Die” are all presented in their original, edited 45 RPM mono versions; all three songs reached a peak of No. 2 on the Billboard charts.  (The first eight tracks are in mono, and the remainder in stereo.)   “Spinning Wheel” in particular suffered from its cuts, but the shortened version is indeed the one that received airplay in 1969.

Though Guercio was forced out of the producer’s chair after one album and replaced by Bobby Colomby – in hindsight, not the smartest move to make, per Steve Katz in Ed Osborne’s in-depth liner notes – BS&T continued notching moderate hits, at least for a while.  (Guercio moved over to concentrate on Chicago, so it’s likely he wasn’t too broken up about being ushered out of BS&T’s circle.)  These hits are, of course, here, too, in crisply remastered sound courtesy of Vic Anesini.  Best of these might be Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s offbeat gospel riff “Hi De Ho (That Old Sweet Roll),” given a huge production complete with an oddly incongruous choir.  That No. 14 hit was followed on the charts by David Clayton-Thomas’ over-the-top composition “Lucretia MacEvil.”  Yet, what goes up must come down.  It would be BS&T’s final Top 30 hit.  (“If they can live with ‘Lucretia MacEvil’ and their Las Vegas desecration of ‘God Bless the Child,’ then God bless them,” Al Kooper quipped in his book Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock and Roll Survivor.)

After the jump: much more on BS&T!

Release Round-Up: Week of January 7

Peter Gabriel, Scratch My Back and I’ll Scratch Yours (Real World)

In 2010, Peter Gabriel released Scratch My Back, a new set of cover songs. The plan was to pair them up with covers of his own work by the artists he covered; some of them were released as B-sides but others never materialized. (Radiohead, David Bowie and Neil Young declined to contribute.) This version combines the original album with those covers (also separately released today), including cuts by Arcade Fire, Paul Simon, David Byrne, Brian Eno, Bon Iver and the late Lou Reed.

2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Complete Columbia Singles / Bettye Swann, The Complete Atlantic Recordings / Samuel Jonathan Johnson, My Music /Grateful Dead, Dick’s Picks Vol. 10 – Winterland Arena December 29, 1977 (Real Gone Music)

Real Gone’s first batch of 2014 features a double-disc singles anthology from Blood, Sweat & Tears with original single mixes (and the first eight tracks in mono), obscure ’70s soul from Bettye Swann and Samuel Jonathan Johnson and a vintage Dead set from 1977.

BS&T: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Bettye: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Samuel Jonathan Johnson: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Grateful Dead: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Happy New Year: Real Gone Ushers In 2014 With Blood, Sweat & Tears, Grateful Dead, More

Real Gone Music is hoping to make you so very happy with its first release slate of 2014!  On January 7, the Real Goners compile for the very first time The Complete Columbia Singles of jazz-rock pioneers Blood Sweat & Tears, offer up The Complete Atlantic Recordings of the soul great Bettye Swann (“Make Me Yours”), unearth another vintage Grateful Dead show, and recover the lone long-player of R&B singer-songwriter Samuel Jonathan Johnson.

Despite 1968’s strong debut Child is Father of the Man, with Al Kooper as chief songwriter, Blood, Sweat & Tears quickly parted ways with founding members Kooper, Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss. Just months later, the group re-emerged with a new, self-titled album, adding Lew Soloff, Jerry Hyman, Chuck Winfield and Canadian lead vocalist David Clayton-Thomas to the mix. (Bobby Colomby, Steve Katz, Jim Fielder, Dick Halligan and Fred Lipsius all remained in the band.) Blood, Sweat & Tears, produced by James William Guercio (The Buckinghams, Chicago), rocketed the band to superstardom with the hit singles “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” “Spinning Wheel,” and “And When I Die.” And Clayton-Thomas quickly established himself as a contender for the title of best blue-eyed soul vocalist out there.  Real Gone’s 2-CD set The Complete Columbia Singles offers all three of those smashes in their original mono mixes, plus 29 more single sides (five of which are making their CD debuts) all in original 45 RPM versions.  The first eight tracks are in mono; the remaining cuts are in stereo.

Blood, Sweat & Tears was a platinum-selling, Grammy-winning Album of the Year. But inner turmoil still plagued the band. 1970’s follow-up Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 also reached No. 1, but following 1971’s fourth album, Clayton-Thomas, Halligan and Lipsius all departed for greener pastures. Clayton-Thomas was back in the fold by 1975, but the time for Blood, Sweat & Tears had passed. The band continued to record, with diminishing returns, despite the presence of well-known producers including Steve Tyrell, Bob James, Henry Cosby and Jimmy Ienner. BS&T’s final studio album for Columbia was released in 1976.  Producer Ed Osborne’s new liner notes include recollections from founding member Steve Katz, and the entire set has been remastered by Vic Anesini at Battery Studios in NYC.  The Complete Columbia Singles looks to be a definitive anthology from one of the most underrated bands of the era.

After the jump: a look at the rest of the Real Gone line-up, plus pre-order links for all titles!

Release Round-Up: Week of July 2

CHIC and Various Artists, Nile Rodgers Presents The CHIC Organization: Up All Night – The Greatest Hits (Rhino U.K.)

This new double-disc compilation, featuring hits from CHIC, Sister Sledge, Debbie Harry and more, might be the best Nile Rodgers-centric compilation in its price range. (Amazon U.K. / Amazon U.S.)

Blood Sweat & Tears, Rare, Rarer & Rarest / Joe Farrell Quartet, Joe Farrell Quartet / Herbie Hancock, Treasure Chest / Sha Na Na, The Night is Still Young (Wounded Bird)

A new batch from Wounded Bird includes a compilation of rarities from Blood, Sweat & Tears (featuring, among other things, their soundtrack to The Owl and The Pussycat) and a disc featuring all three of Herbie Hancock’s albums for Warner Bros., before joining Columbia in the ’70s.

Blood, Sweat & Tears: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Joe Farrell Quartet: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Herbie Hancock: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Sha Na Na: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

The Association, The Association: Deluxe Expanded Edition (Now Sounds)

The Association’s 1969 album is newly expanded with 10 bonus cuts, including mono mixes and non-LP singles! (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

The Allman Brothers Band, Eat a Peach / Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde / Foreigner, 4 /Billy Joel, An Innocent Man (SACDs) (Mobile Fidelity)

The latest hybrid SACDs from MoFi.

The Allman Brothers Band: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Bob Dylan: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Foreigner: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Billy Joel: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Hackamore Brick, One Kiss Leads to Another (CD/LP) / Russ Giguere, Hexagram 16 / The Browns, Complete Pop & Country Hits / Ahmed Abdul Malik, Spellbound / George Braith, Musart / Stan Hunter & Sonny Fortune, Trip on the Strip / Grateful Dead, Dick’s Picks Vol. 22 – Kings Beach Bowl, Kings Beach Lake Tahoe, CA 2/23-2/24/68 / Fire on the Mountain: Reggae Celebrates the Grateful Dead Vols. 1 & 2 (Real Gone Music)

Among the highlights of Real Gone’s release slate this week is the expanded reissue of the long-lost One Kiss Leads to Another by cult Brooklyn band Hackamore Brick.

Various Artists, Los Nuggetz: 1960s Punk, Pop, Psychedelic from Latin America (RockBeat)

America and Europe weren’t the only happening scenes in the ’60s, as this new box showcases.

What Goes Up: Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “Rare, Rarer & Rarest” Tracks Come To CD

What goes up must come down.  So sang David Clayton-Thomas in the opening line of his Grammy-winning song “Spinning Wheel,” which became a No. 2 Pop/No. 1 AC in 1969 for Blood, Sweat & Tears.  And so went the fortunes of the jazz-rock band itself.  The band’s signature rock-with-horns style was soon eclipsed by that of Chicago (Transit Authority), who shared a producer in James William Guercio.    But when BS&T was hot, few bands were hotter.  Wounded Bird Records is revisiting the group’s peak era with the July 2 release of Rare, Rarer & Rarest, which lives up to its name by bringing mono single mixes, previously unreleased outtakes, and much of the soundtrack to 1970’s The Owl and the Pussycat to CD for the first time.

Despite 1968’s strong debut Child is Father of the Man, with Al Kooper as chief songwriter, Blood, Sweat & Tears quickly parted ways with founding members Kooper, Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss.  Just months later, the group re-emerged with a new, self-titled album, adding Lew Soloff, Jerry Hyman, Chuck Winfield and Canadian lead vocalist David Clayton-Thomas to the mix.  (Bobby Colomby, Steve Katz, Jim Fielder, Dick Halligan and Fred Lipsius all remained in the band.)  Blood, Sweat & Tears, produced by James William Guercio (The Buckinghams, Chicago), rocketed the band to superstardom with the hit singles “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” “Spinning Wheel,” and “And When I Die.”  And Clayton-Thomas quickly established himself as a contender for the title of best blue-eyed soul vocalist out there.  Blood, Sweat & Tears was a platinum-selling, Grammy-winning Album of the Year.  But inner turmoil still plagued the band.  1970’s follow-up Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 also reached No. 1, but following 1971’s fourth album, Clayton-Thomas, Halligan and Lipsius all departed for greener pastures.  Clayton-Thomas was back in the fold by 1975, but the time for Blood, Sweat & Tears had passed.  The band continued to record, with diminishing returns, despite the presence of well-known producers including Steve Tyrell, Bob James, Henry Cosby and Jimmy Ienner.  BS&T’s final studio album was released in 1980.  Clayton-Thomas toured under the band’s name until 2004, and today, a Bobby Colomby-directed unit tours under the name through the present day.

What will you find on Rare, Rarer & Rarest?  Hit the jump!

Release Round-Up: Week of February 21

 

Various Artists, ZTT: The Art of the 12″: Volume Two (ZTT/Salvo)

A double-disc set of rare and unreleased dance mixes of vinyl classics, with a few rarities thrown in for good measure – and, as our post later today will explain, at least one Beatle!

Simple Minds, Simple Minds x5 (EMI)

The first five Simple Minds LPs – all pre-The Breakfast Club – expanded with vintage B-sides and remixes.

Gilbert O’Sullivan, Back to Front: Expanded Edition (Union Square Music/Salvo)

Gilbert’s 1972 sophomore album plus three bonus tracks, including hit single “Alone Again (Naturally).”

André Cymone, André Cymone / Surviving in the ’80s: Expanded Editions (Funky Town Grooves)

Blood, Sweat & Tears, In Concert / Phil Everly, Star Spangled Springer / Mel Brooks, Greatest Hits (Wounded Bird)

Some great LPs, all rare or new to CD, coming from Wounded Bird.

Various Artists, Complete Pop Instrumental Hits of the Sixties, Vol. 2: 1961 (Complete ’60s/Eric)

A three-disc set of every instrumental song that ever charted in 1961. The second in a volume of a series we’ve covered before.

Various Artists, David Merrick Presents Hits from His Broadway Hits (RCA Victor/Masterworks Broadway)

Ann-Margret joins John Gary and the Merrill Staton Voices in this vintage tribute to the legendary impresario behind such musicals as Hello, Dolly! and Gypsy.

Diana Ross, Diana Ross: Deluxe Edition (Hip-o Select/Motown)

The latest set from Select is a heavy-duty expansion of Miss Ross’ 1976 album, which featured “Theme from ‘Mahogany’ (Do You Know Where You’re Going To?)” and “Love Hangover,” two classic singles from a classic career. Alternate mixes, rare singles and early versions abound on this set.

High Anxiety: Wounded Bird Offers Blood, Sweat and Tears, Phil Everly, and…Mel Brooks?!?

No need to suffer from high anxiety (it’s always the same)! Chances are that Wounded Bird Records might make you so very happy with a trio of new releases slated for February 21. Phil Everly’s 1973 solo offering for RCA Records, Star Spangled Springer, has never before been available on CD despite contributions from Warren Zevon and Duane Eddy, and so Wounded Bird’s reissue will undoubtedly fill a gap in more than a few Everly Brothers collections. It’s joined by the 2-CD release of Blood, Sweat and Tears’ In Concert, a 1976 double LP originally released overseas (and retitled Live and Improvised for a long-out-of-print 1991 CD presentation). Finally, pass the beans. Mel Brooks’ Greatest Hits, a combination of compilation LP and soundtrack for Brooks’ 1977 film High Anxiety, makes its CD premiere offering selections from Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, The Producers, and all of Brooks’ earliest and most beloved flicks.

When Phil Everly released Star Spangled Springer in 1973, he was still performing with brother Don as part of The Everly Brothers, a point the original LP liner notes took pains to emphasize. (“I’m taking this opportunity…to dispell [sic] any rumor that denies the continuance of the Everly Brothers.”) It wasn’t long, however, before the brothers split acrimoniously, and Don, too, was left to fly solo. The album’s lead-off track, Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood’s “The Air That I Breathe,” actually predates The Hollies’ smash hit version. Phil Everly was the first to cover the song, introduced on Hammond’s 1972 album It Never Rains in Southern California. Every other song on the album was written, or co-written, by Phil. Warren Zevon’s participation stemmed from his role in the Everly Brothers’ band, both as a keyboardist and an arranger. Duane Eddy contributed memorable guitar licks to the album’s closer, “Snowflake Bombardier.” The Wounded Bird release is the first time Star Spangled Springer has been revisited in the compact disc era.

Blood, Sweat and Tears’ In Concert was drawn from performances at four different venues during the group’s 1975 tour: New York, New York; Ottawa, Canada; Monterey, California; and Boston, Massachusetts. It celebrated lead vocalist David Clayton-Thomas’ return to the band after a sabbatical between 1972 and 1975. Drummer/album producer Bobby Colomby chose to emphasize the band’s jazz fusion side for the sprawling set, although most of the band’s hits were present, including “And When I Die,” “Spinning Wheel” and “You Make Me So Very Happy.” BS&T was touring behind New City, Clayton-Thomas’ return, and from that album included Allen Toussaint’s “Life,” John Lee Hooker’s “One Room Country Shack” and a reworking of Blues Image’s “Ride, Captain, Ride.” The group even reached back to its Al Kooper-helmed debut for “I’ll Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know,” and covered fusion pioneer Chick Corea with “(I Can Recall) Spain.” (An aside: founding members Kooper and Colomby had a major falling out, leading Kooper to quip in his autobiography, “If they can live with ‘Lucretia MacEvil’ and their Las Vegas desecration of ‘God Bless The Child,’ then God bless them.”) Only one more album for Columbia Records would follow (1976’s More Than Ever) after which Bobby Colomby departed the ranks. For 1977’s Brand New Day on the ABC label, Colomby served as co-producer with Roy Halee. After just one more album with an even more altered line-up, 1980’s Nuclear Blues, Blood, Sweat and Tears would basically hang up their studio shoes. That wasn’t an auspicious end to a band that initially showed such tremendous promise, but nonetheless, In Concert preserves some fine instrumental interplay looking back on a strong legacy.

Hit the jump for the full track listings of Star Spangled Springer and In Concert, plus – Bialystock and Bloom are back!