Rhino Rediscovery: Wounded Bird to Reissue Handmade Titles As Budget Sets

Rhino Handmade is back! Sort of.

Reissue label Wounded Bird Records will release this week seven titles originally released on Warner Music’s boutique label in the early to mid-2000s. These sets were originally handsome vault-clearing exercises for a diverse crop of artists who were on the Warner, Atlantic or Reprise labels at some point in their careers, including works by Doug Sahm of Sir Douglas Quintet, blues legend Taj Mahal, rockabilly-punk outfit The Blasters, singer-songwriter Danny O’Keefe (“Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues”), Crazy Horse (sans Neil Young), John Sebastian and bluesman Long John Baldry.

A few notes are in order for the discerning buyer: if you’ve bought titles by Wounded Bird in the past, you might know that the packaging is not what you might expect from a major boutique label. The liner notes and in-depth track information that graced these original releases is unfortunately gone. Also gone in some cases is actual repertoire: John Sebastian’s The Reprise Recordings (originally titled Faithful Virtue on Handmade) loses two live sets on the third disc, including Sebastian’s set at Woodstock and another performance at Winterland in 1969. Two tracks recorded by The Blasters for the cult soundtrack to the film Streets of Fire in 1984 are also left off the band’s otherwise-complete set.

But if there is an upside, it’s that Wounded Bird has gotten seven long-out-of-print titles onto CD for the first time in nearly a decade – and for those interested in the music above all, that can’t be a bad thing. All titles are available in the States this Tuesday; hit the jump for a full breakdown of each with order links!