Release Round-Up: Week of December 10

Eric Clapton, Give Me Strength: The ’74/’75 Recordings (Polydor/UMe)

One of Clapton’s most prolific periods is revisited with this six-disc box, featuring expanded versions of 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974), There’s One in Every Crowd (1975), a remixed and expanded double-disc version of live album E.C. Was Here (1975), a disc of sessions at Criteria Studios with blues legend Freddie King and a Blu-Ray featuring new 5.1 surround and original quadrophonic mixes.  (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Ella Fitzgerald, The Voice of Jazz (Verve/UMe)

A ten, count ’em, ten-disc overview of one of the greatest jazz vocalists ever. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Jellyfish, Radio Jellyfish (Omnivore)

Join the fan club! The power-pop cult legends took a stripped-down approach for a 1993 radio tour, and we now get to enjoy these performances for its first official release.

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

John Mellencamp, John Mellencamp 1978-2012 (Mercury/UMe)

All of Mellencamp’s official studio albums for Riva, Mercury, Columbia and Rounder – from 1979’s John Cougar to 2010’s No Better Than This – plus the out-of-print soundtrack to his 1992 acting and directorial debut, Falling from Grace. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

The Velvet Underground, White Light/White Heat: 45th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Polydor/UMe)

The VU’s second album gets the deluxe treatment as a triple-disc set, featuring the album in mono and stereo with 11 bonus tracks, plus a third disc recorded live at New York’s Gymnasium in 1967. (A double-disc version omits the mono disc.)

3CD Deluxe Edition: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
2CD Deluxe Edition: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Neil Young, Live At The Cellar Door (Reprise)

A previously-unreleased disc culled from Young’s late-1970 run at the small Washington, D.C. club – the latest in his ongoing Archive Performance Series.

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

Thomas Newman, Saving Mr. Banks: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Walt Disney Records)

The deluxe version of this new release – from a new Disney film telling the tale of how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) brought P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson)’s classic children’s novels to the screen – contains never-before-released “pre-demos” from the original 1964 film! (In the U.K., those demos are available on a new double-disc reissue of the original Mary Poppins soundtrack.)

Various Artists, The Complete Motown Singles Volume 12B: 1972 (Hip-O Select/Motown)

The final volume in the long-running box set series features five discs of soul-pop classics from the back end of 1972. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Various Artists, Verve – The Sound of America: The Singles Collection (Verve/UMe)

A new five-disc anthology from one of America’s most notable jazz labels. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Merry Christmas, Baby! “A Very Special Christmas” Reissued with New DVD at Target Stores

If you can get over the shock of a good amount of holiday CDs available on the shelves at Target, you’ll find a surprise new exclusive: a reissue of the classic 1987 compilation A Very Special Christmas with a brand new DVD about the long-running holiday benefit series.

Produced by acclaimed engineer-turned-label impresario Jimmy Iovine, A Very Special Christmas featured the brightest stars in pop music, from Springsteen to Madonna, recording new versions of classic carols (plus one modern classic, Run-D.M.C.’s “Christmas in Hollis”). Nearly all of its 15 tracks have become staples of holiday radio, and the original album has moved more than 4 million units in the United States. The best part? Proceeds from the sale of the album went to The Special Olympics, Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s worldwide organization allowing intellectually-disabled children and adults to compete in sporting events. (Over $100 million has been raised by the album series, now spanning across nine titles.)

With a new subtitle, The Story and The Music, appended to its iconic Keith Haring-designed album sleeve, this new version of A Very Special Christmas features a new 60-minute DVD of highlights from the series’ quarter century-plus history. It comes alongside the most common pressing of the original AVSC album – which substituted a live cover of “Back Door Santa” by Bon Jovi for the same band’s studio recording of a new ballad, “I Wish Every Day Could Be Like Christmas.” (You’ll hear more from us soon on the package, from mastering to bonus content, in a forthcoming review – albeit one closer to the holiday season!)

Head to your local Target to buy this new set now, or order it through the store’s website. Full product specs are after the jump!

The Best That He Could Do: John Mellencamp Collects Albums for New Box

While the 1980s have become synonymous with pop/rock music that allegedly valued image, craft and style above the emotional rush of the music itself, one of the decade’s most popular entertainers had an image as rough-hewn and rugged as they could come: John Mellencamp. The Indiana-bred musician earned his keep making tuneful rock steeped in the traditions of the genre as well as the vision of the average, working-class middle American. And with a list of hits that includes “Jack and Diane,” “Small Town,” “Pink Houses” and “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” – just part of the list of 22 Top 40 hits he scored – it’s safe to say Mellencamp was a winner.

This year, Universal Music Enterprises will celebrate Mellencamp en large with John Mellencamp 1978-2012, a box set featuring virtually all of his solo material from start to finish. This 19-disc set features his early works for Riva Records as John Cougar (a nom de rock bestowed upon him early in his career when he’d signed to MCA for two poppy albums omitted from this set), including breakthrough albums American Fool (1982), which yielded chart-topper “Jack and Diane” and No. 2 hit “Hurts So Good,” and 1983’s Uh-Huh, the first credited to “John Cougar Mellencamp.” The singer continued to have major success with his brand of increasingly country-infused rock through the decade, signing to Mercury for 1985’s Scarecrow and remaining there through the 1990s. That same year, Mellencamp was one of the co-founders of the Farm Aid charity concert series, raising money for those who made American agriculture their life’s work.

After a period in the 1990s that saw him experiment with urban and rhythmic music, Mellencamp returned to the top of the charts in 1994 with a cover of Van Morrison’s “Wild Night,” which hit No. 3. In 1998, Mellencamp released his first of three albums for Columbia, including the folk covers project Trouble No More in 2003. 2010’s Life, Death, Love and Freedom saw Mellencamp, along with producer T-Bone Burnett, move into a very critically-acclaimed period of soulful roots rock, a vein he’s tapped ever since (most recently with this year’s release of the soundtrack to Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, a stage musical he co-created with author Stephen King.)

While bonus tracks are few and far between on John Mellencamp 1978-2012 – the box uses the 2005 remasters of his Mercury catalogue, all of which had a bonus track appended – UMe has reached across the aisle to include all of his studio material for other labels, including Columbia, Hear Music and Rounder Records. There’s also one long out-of-print disc from Mellencamp’s career in this set: the soundtrack to the 1992 film Falling from Grace, which Mellencamp starred in and directed. The disc features two new Mellencamp originals plus tracks from Janis Ian, Dwight Yoakam and others.

Each disc is housed in a uniform, black-bordered mini-jacket, and it’s all packed in a neat little box that looks to fit nicely on a shelf. It’s out on December 10 and can be pre-ordered now. And, as always, a full track list is after the jump.

Review: “Woody Guthrie at 100! Live at the Kennedy Center”

The new CD/DVD set is entitled Woody Guthrie at 100! Live at the Kennedy Center, but in fact, Woody never made it past 55. This document of an altogether lively concert program from a wide assortment of admirers proves, however, that his music has not only lasted ‘til 100, but will likely survive us all.  This is a celebration, yes, but a celebration with a conscience.  A strong thread of morality and social awareness ran through all of Guthrie’s songs, as he believed music could make a difference in America.  That same belief is shared by the performers who took the stage of Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center on October 14, 2012, including Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash, Donovan, Judy Collins, Tom Morello, John Mellencamp and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.  That evening, they showcased the spectrum of Guthrie’s work from protest songs to children’s sing-alongs.

As produced by Woody’s daughter Nora Guthrie, Bob Santelli and Garth Ross, the concert is well-sequenced, beginning with the joyous barrage of nonsense lyrics in Old Crow Medicine Show’s bluegrass-style “Howdi Do.”  The string band continues the jamboree with Guthrie’s rapid-fire story of a “Union Maid” who’s “stickin’ to the union ‘til the day I die,” and indeed, Guthrie’s commitment to the ideals of unionization recur throughout the program.

A major highlight is the mini-suite of songs thematically connected by imagery of the open road and the hobo, with contemporary folksinger Joel Rafael’s harmonica-accompanied “Ramblin’ Reckless Hobo” (for which he set Guthrie’s lyrics to his own music), Jimmy LaFave’s “Hard Travelin’,” Donovan’s “Riding in My Car” and Rosanne Cash’s “I Ain’t Got No Home.”  Listening to Rafael, it’s hard not to hear a Bob Dylan influence, or more precisely, how Guthrie influenced Dylan and in turn, Rafael.  Texas singer LaFave’s “Hard Travelin’” contrasts a jaunty melody with the story of a hard-working itinerant who brushes up against the law; “I Ain’t Got No Home” introduces a similar character with an even sadder tale.  While “Hard Travelin’” utilizes awkward grammar (“I’ve been layin’ in a hard-rock jail, I thought you knowed”) and jolts of dry humor in its lyric (“Damned old judge, he said to me, ‘It’s 90 days for vagrancy”), “I Ain’t Got No Home” is all too touching and troubling.  Cash, accompanied only by her own guitar and that of guitarist-vocalist-husband John Leventhal, gets to the root of the song in her low-key, empathetic vocal.  She doesn’t overplay the despair but rather renders the character she embodies with a quiet resolve and dignity.

Donovan leads a sing-along on Guthrie’s children’s song “Riding in My Car,” which fits snugly among the other, more “adult” songs.  It’s no mystery why: Guthrie wrote for adults in the same simple and lyrically unadorned style he wrote for children.  Grown-ups will likewise want to sing along to the mandolin- and fiddle-adorned refrain of The Del McCoury Band and Tim O’Brien’s “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh.”

Hit the jump for more!

Release Round-Up: Week of June 18

Patty Duke, Don’t Just Stand There/Patty / Sings Songs from Valley of the Dolls/Sings Folk Songs (Time to Move On) (Real Gone Music)

All four of Patty’s United Artists albums released on a pair of two-fers, including 1968’s unreleased Sings Folk Songs.

The Supremes, Cream of the Crop / Love Child / I Hear a Symphony / Join the Temptations / Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland / Supremes A Go-Go (Motown MS 649, 1966) (Culture Factory)

A bunch of Supremes classics – six albums from 1966’s The Supremes A Go-Go to 1969’s Cream of the Crop, their last with Diana Ross – all get the mini-LP treatment from Culture Factory.

Diana Ross, The Boss /An Evening with Diana Ross (Culture Factory)

Culture Factory also brings Miss Ross’ long out-of-print concert disc back to CD, along with a new, mini-LP edition of the Ashford and Simpson-helmed favorite The Boss.

Julia Fordham, Porcelain / Swept: Deluxe Editions (Cherry Pop)

The second and third LPs by U.K. singer Julia Fordham are expanded and remastered for the first time.

Porcelain: Amazon U.K. / Amazon U.S.
Swept: Amazon U.K. / Amazon U.S.

Various Artists, 20 Feet from Stardom: Music from the Motion Picture (Columbia)

The soundtrack to the anticipated new documentary about the best backup singers you might not have known, from Darlene Love to Merry Clayton. (Legacy’s releasing Clayton’s first-ever best-of compilation next month.) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Paul Young, Remixes and Rarities (Cherry Pop)

Two discs of rare or new-to-CD bonus material from the ’80s crooner. (Amazon U.K. / Amazon U.S.)

Various Artists, Woody Guthrie at 100! Live at the Kennedy Center (Legacy)

Not sure if this concert kills fascists, but this CD/DVD tribute to a folk legend, featuring John Mellencamp, Lucinda Williams, Rosanne Cash and more is a fitting way to honor one of the century’s best songwriters. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Bound For Glory: Rosanne Cash, Judy Collins, John Mellencamp, Donovan Celebrate Woody Guthrie at 100

On July 14, 2012, Woody Guthrie would have turned 100 years old.  The Oklahoma-born “Dust Bowl Troubadour” died in 1967, just 55 years of age, but all these many years later, his compositions such as “This Land is Your Land,” “Grand Coulee Dam” and “The Sinking of the Reuben James” are cornerstones of American song.  The folk hero, whose guitar was famously emblazoned with the slogan “This machine kills fascists,” was celebrated last year with Smithsonian Folkways’ impressive 3-CD/hardcover book box set Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial.  On June 11 of this year, Legacy Recordings will release a special CD/DVD set which should prove a fine companion to that hefty musical tome.  The October 14, 2012 concert Woody Guthrie at 100! Live at the Kennedy Center found the late songwriter feted by musicians young and old, all of whom were influenced by Guthrie’s captivating folk songs and many of whom have carried on his life’s work of singing for a better life and better country.

The concert’s line-up included politically-minded singer-songwriters decades apart but close in ideals (Jackson Browne, Tom Morello), country music royalty (Rosanne Cash), rockers (John Mellencamp), folk singers (Ramblin’ Jack Elliott), genre-defying vocalists (Judy Collins, Lucinda Williams), psychedelic survivors (Donovan), an a cappella ensemble (Sweet Honey in the Rock) and even a string band (Old Crow Medicine Show).  All showed their great affection for the immortal music of Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie.

Legacy’s release coincides with the television premiere of Woody Guthrie at 100! Live at the Kennedy Center which will occur on PBS in June.  But the CD/DVD package makes room for eight performances from the Washington, DC show which were excised from the broadcast version of the film: two spoken-word pieces from actor Jeff Daniels, and six musical performances from Old Crow Medicine Show, Rosanne Cash, Jimmy LaFave, Lucinda Williams, Judy Collins and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.  The CD has nineteen tracks in total, while the DVD boasts 22.

After the jump: we have plenty more details, including pre-order links and track listings for both the CD and DVD portions of the package!

Elton, Orbison, Plant, Mellencamp, Allman Salute “The Producer” On New T Bone Burnett Comp

T Bone Burnett epitomizes cool.  The former Joseph Henry Burnett, with his omnipresent sunglasses, is so cool, in fact, that he makes the name “T Bone” sound hip!  He’s the producer as rock star, an artist whom superstars and fresh-faced talents alike seek out for a shot in the arm.  He’s also the man who made bluegrass trendy.  And lest his cool credentials be in doubt, the man toured with Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue!  Raised in Texas, by way of Missouri, Burnett relocated to Southern California as the seventies began, fronted a couple of bands and gained major notice in 1980 with Truth Decay, an album bearing little relation to anybody else’s music at the dawn of that decade.  It was during the 1980s that the musical revivalist began making significant inroads as a producer for other artists, eventually amassing a resume dotted with names like Roy Orbison and Elton John, John Mellencamp and Robert Plant.  And oh yeah, he picked up an Oscar, too.  The career of T Bone Burnett, producer, is the subject of a most unique new compilation from Starbucks Entertainment, available now at the ubiquitous coffee shops.  The simply-titled T Bone Burnett: The Producer collects fifteen of his finest productions as well as a booklet with track-by-track notes by Burnett recalling the stories behind the songs.

Journalist Bill Flanagan has suggested that Burnett is “the conscience of the music industry,” if such a thing is possible, opting instead that he’s “a one-man counterculture.”  The story of the one-man counterculture began in Texas where he was running a studio at an early age.  (He even cut a number of pop songs with future Broadway star Betty Buckley there!)  Always a man of mystery, he appeared on a 1968 album by a group with a name that could only have come out of that era: Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit and Greenhill.  Which was T Bone?  Productions for another group, The Case Hardy Boys, followed, as eventually did another album, The B-52 Band and the Fabulous Skylarks.   Burnett began frequenting the clubs of New York’s hallowed Bleecker Street, where he reportedly met Bob Dylan.  Whatever the circumstances, it wasn’t long before Burnett was appearing alongside Mick Ronson and Bobby Neuwirth on the Rolling Thunder Revue.  He then formed The Alpha Band at the behest of Arista’s Clive Davis, though the charts were hardly bothered by the band’s albums.   It was on 1980’s solo Truth Decay (ironically not produced by its singer and songwriter but by Reggie Fisher that Burnett’s “voice” became evident via its collection of what Rolling Stone termed “mystic Christian blues.”  The songs were inspired by Sun Studios, and old blues and folk records, and despite the title, arguably had more truth in them than much of the synthesized popular music storming the charts.  Burnett was on his way.  Hit the jump to join T Bone in 1987!

Elton, CSN, Costello, Taylor and More Salute Neil Young on Tribute DVD and Blu-Ray

What do David Crosby, Luciano Pavarotti, Bono and Neil Diamond all have in common?  Each gentleman is a past honoree as MusiCares Person of the Year.  Administered by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and chosen by the MusiCares Foundation, the title is bestowed upon artists to commend both artistic achievement in music and commitment to philanthropy.  A tribute is to paid to the recipient with an evening of eclectic performances celebrating his or her legacy.  In 2011, the award went to Barbra Streisand, and one year earlier, Neil Young was the honoree.  On May 31, Shout! Factory will bring to DVD and Blu-Ray the gala concert celebrating Neil Young’s career as musician and philanthropist, at which Young was joined by such luminaries as Dave Matthews, James Taylor, Elton John, Jackson Browne, and of course, his bandmates David Crosby (the first-ever MusiCares Person of the Year, back in 1991), Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.

A MusiCares Tribute to Neil Young features all of those performers and more.  It will also be featured on MTVs’s HD channel Palladia on Memorial Day Weekend 2011.  Hit the jump for the full program line-up and pre-order links!

R-O-C-K in the B-O-X

Awesome! After what feels like years, Island Records and Universal Music Enterprises have finalized a release date and track listing for On the Rural Route 7609, a career-spanning box set from John Mellencamp.

Drawing from more than 30 years of recordings, this four-disc set features 15 previously unreleased recordings, liner notes by Rolling Stone veteran Anthony DeCurtis, Mellencamp’s track-by-track annotations and 72 pages of notes and photos, all packaged in a book-style case.

Hit the jump to get all the tracks, and you can pre-order the set at Amazon (word of warning: the current price, $89.99, is somewhat steep for a four-disc set, even for as good an artist as Mellencamp). On the Rural Route is released June 15, just in time for Father’s Day.