Release Round-Up: Week of July 22

The Beatles, The Japan Box (Apple/UMe)

Stereo remasters, mono remasters, U.S. albums…and now, the first five albums from Japan on CD! What will they think of next? (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Herbie Hancock, The Warner Bros. Years: 1969-1972 (Rhino)

UPDATE: This title has been delayed to August 5.  Three Warner Bros. albums (released before Herbie prolifically joined Columbia), each expanded with rare and unreleased promo single versions. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Jim Croce, Lost Time in a Bottle (Cleopatra)

A compilation of rare and unreleased demos and live performances from the celebrated singer, including two sets from 1964 and 1973. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Gentle Giant, The Power and the Glory (Alucard)

Steven Wilson remixes Gentle Giant’s 1974 album in stereo and 5.1 on a variety of formats!

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
DVD-Audio/CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Blu-ray Audio/CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Roslyn Kind, Give Me You/This is Roslyn Kind (Masterworks Broadway)

Masterworks brings together the 1969 and 1968 RCA albums from Barbra Streisand’s talented half-sister, Roslyn Kind, on one CD-R or DD – including songs by Harry Nilsson, Jimmy Webb, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and more!

Steve Lawrence with Eydie Gorme, Walking Proud: The Teen Pop Sides 1959-1966 (Teensville/Rare Rockin’ Records)

The Australian Teensville label compiles 33 sides from Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, individually and collectively, concentrating on the Brill Building-style pop songs they recorded for the ABC-Paramount, United Artists and Columbia labels! (Amazon U.S.)

Duran Duran, Rio (Expanded Vinyl) (Parlophone)

This 180-gram, 2LP version of the classic New Wave album (possibly available when the album was expanded in 2009) features the original U.K. album master of Rio with a bonus 12″ featuring five remixes by David Kershenbaum for the original U.S. pressing. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

You Don’t Mess Around With Jim: Croce Classics Arrive In The U.K.

When Jim Croce died in September 1973, the victim of a tragic plane crash, he was only 30 years old. He truly was in the prime of his career, riding the wave of the singer/songwriter movement with his sensitive, personal brand of storytelling. Croce’s vivid songs were alternately upbeat and sorrowful, introspective and AM radio-ready. Before his death, Croce only recorded four proper studio albums, the first in collaboration with his wife Ingrid. Those remaining three albums, originally released in the U.S. on the ABC-Paramount label, will be collected on July 25 by Edsel Records as The Original Albums…Plus, a 2-disc set also containing sixteen posthumously-released rarities. Croce is frequently underrated today or thought of as strictly a pop singles artist.  (Not that there’s any shame in that!)  So Edsel’s set is a potent reminder of his many incisive compositions which have survived him. One champion of the young musician was Frank Sinatra, who made Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” a centerpiece of his Main Event concert and LP.

Croce began to take music seriously during his college years, and after travelling on the folk and coffeehouse circuit, he recorded a 1969 LP for Capitol Records with his wife, Ingrid.  (Croce was reissued earlier this year by Cherry Tree.  Even earlier recordings from a self-distributed 1965 album have been released as Facets.)   But his career took off for the stratosphere with the July 1972 release of You Don’t Mess Around With Jim. The album produced three hits, all among his most beloved works. The boisterous story-song of the title reached No. 8 and “Operator” reached No. 17 in the US when issued as singles, and the album itself eventually got to No. 1. So did its melancholy, haunting ballad “Time in a Bottle,” though not right away. Yet album tracks “Photographs and Memories” and “New York’s Not My Home” were as good as anything released on a 45, both of them hauntingly evocative, personal ruminations in song.    Croce’s album cuts also often revealed a playful, even raucous side not always evident on the mellow singles.

Croce’s ABC follow-up, Life and Times, was issued in February 1973. With Croce’s first album still fresh in listeners’ minds, it placed at No. 7 and featured the No. 1 hit “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” Jim Croce had always had a grueling tour schedule, and planned to take a break and spend time with his wife Ingrid and infant son Adrian James (now known as AJ, a talented recording artist in his own right). Unfortunately Croce’s plans were cut short when his plane crashed in Natchitoches, Lousiana. Croce and bandmate Maury Muehleisen were among the five killed in the crash.

A sad irony is that Croce’s career soared even higher after his death. “I Got a Name” was released as a single in the singer’s lifetime, but the album of the name same didn’t arrive until after his death. So did “Time in a Bottle,” which had been released as a single off 1972’s You Don’t Mess Around with Jim but peaked posthumously. “I Got a Name” and “I Have to Say I Love You in a Song” also became hits and eventually, popular standards. (The former is unique in that Croce didn’t write it. “I Got a Name” is the work of Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, also responsible for Barry Manilow’s “Ready to Take a Chance Again,” Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” and the theme to Happy Days, among many other more-than-recognizable songs.) A hit 1974 collection, the aptly-titled Photographs and Memories, proved that demand for Croce’s music was still high, and it wasn’t long before his archives were tapped for the first of many collections of vault material.

Hit the jump for more details plus the complete track listings and discographical information!