Bill Evans' third and final recording of overdubbed solos differs from the previous two in that he utilizes an electric piano in addition to his acoustic playing. Evans plays quite well on this album (which includes four of his later originals, obscurities by Cy Coleman, Cole Porter and Duke Ellington and "Nobody Else but Me") but the results are less memorable than one might expect for Bill Evans seemed always at his best in trio settings.

Originally released 1969 on MPS Records Germany - which became world famous for Dave Pike´s Noisy Silence Gentle Noise released in the same era. This is a true jewel for all progressive music enthusiasts.Ahead of its time the album is an eclectic mixture of beat, psychedelia and little hints of jazz rock. The album is compared with the similarly styled debut of Burnin' Red Ivanhoe. 14 Minutes title song 'Maxwells Street' sounds like a continuation of the Rolling Stones' 'Their Satanic Majesty's Requests'. Lars Bisgaard and Bent Hesselmann later played with Rainbow Band. Comes with bonus tracks, digitally remastered from the original tapes and with informative booklet.

A Blowin' Session is one of the greatest hard bop jam sessions ever recorded; it is filled with infectious passion and camaraderie. It's also the only time tenor saxophonists Johnny Griffin and John Coltrane would play together on record. Initially Coltrane wasn't scheduled to be on this date, but Griffin saw him on his way to Rudy Van Gelder's studio and asked him to join the remaining musicians, third tenor Hank Mobley, trumpeter Lee Morgan, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Art Blakey. These musicians were all associates within the same East Coast hard bop scene of the time; they came from the Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis' quintet, and many had played with Dizzy Gillespie's big band…

The Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Alf Emil Eik recorded and released this album on the Harvest-label in 1979. Eik produced the album himself and played all the instruments, including bass, drums, guitar, bells, moog, Mellotron and string-synths. Musically this is symphonic progressive rock with a jazzy edge. The songs vary from lush, beautiful and Mellotron-drenched tracks like "Crying" (great use and combination of the string and choir-sounds of the Mellotron) and "Heart" to energetic, jazzy instrumental journeys like "Joy" and "The Present Age". "Breath of Eternity" is also quite jazzy, but in a much more laid-back style and creates some pleasant and dreamy atmospheres. "To You" and "Care" are nice vocal-tracks with obvious Yes-influences in the arrangements, and there are also some nice interludes like "Morning Glory" and the majestic "March of Earth" here.

Originally released in 2000, expanded version with Japanese traditional instruments, synthesizers and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and Yoshiko Sakata's narration of the famous old Japanese tale, translated into modern Kyoto dialect.

Retaining the buoyant musical feel of Paul Simon, but employing a more produced sound, There Goes Rhymin' Simon found Paul Simon writing and performing with assurance and venturing into soulful and R&B-oriented music. Simon returned to the kind of vocal pyrotechnics heard on the Simon & Garfunkel records by using gospel singers. On "Love Me Like a Rock" and "Tenderness" (which sounded as though it could have been written to Art Garfunkel), the Dixie Hummingbirds sang prominent backup vocals, and on "Take Me to the Mardi Gras," Reverend Claude Jeter contributed a falsetto part that Garfunkel could have handled, though not as warmly…

It's always sad when, for whatever reason, a worthwhile recording goes unreleased for a long time - and that's exactly what happened with Pepper's Hangout. On March 29, 1977, a 48-year-old Jimmy Johnson entered a Chicago studio and recorded what was meant to be his first studio LP as a leader. The LP had a working title of "Chicago Roots," and Living Blues editor Jim O'Neal was hired to write the liner notes. But regrettably, an album that should have come out in 1977 wasn't released in the U.S. until 2000, when Delmark was finally able to release the session as Pepper's Hangout. Better late than never - this CD finds Johnson in fine form and makes one wish that the singer/guitarist hadn't waited until his late 40s to record some albums…

What Every Girl Should Know (1960). When Doris Day entered the recording studio to make her annual LP in December 1959, she was arguably at her peak as a movie star, having seen the release two months earlier of Pillow Talk, the first of the frothy comedies she would make in the late '50s and early '60s. But as a recording artist, she seemed to be in trouble. Since 1957, when both Day by Day and the soundtrack to The Pajama Game, in which she starred, made the Top Ten, she had not cracked the album charts, failing with Day by Night (1958) and Cuttin' Capers (1959). Unfortunately, What Every Girl Should Know was not the album to reverse this pattern. The concept, as expressed in Robert Wells and David Holt's 1954 title song, was the offering of advice to females, much of it, as it happened, written by men…

Guitar wizard Robert Fripp joins forces with some of the finest six-string pickers around, offering up a truly intricate variety of music on Show of Hands. With 17 guitarists contributing to 19 tracks, the likes of Trey Gunn, Paul Richards, and Curt Golden (just to name a few) decorate the album with elaborate string arrangements that range from avant-garde to classical in nature. Anyone who is a guitar enthusiast will be astonished at how tight Fripp comes across with his unique style. From time to time, vocalist Patricia Leavitt displays her beautiful falsetto voice a cappella for a fresh change of pace. The music is shaped, bent, and twisted with guitar atop guitar to culminate thick layers of movements, suites, and passages…

Software, Peter Seiler, Dancing Fantasy, Frank Fischer, G.E.N.E., Lisa Franco, Megabyte and others.

It is exactly what it says on the package, a full-fledged concerto that bucks every prevalent musical fashion (1978 was the age of punk, after all) by proving that prog wasn't only alive and well, it was also still capable of startling the unwary listener. With fellow Curved Air refugee Francis Monkman overseeing the orchestra, Way's electric violin has never sounded so adventurous, leading the way through four skillfully planned movements that the composer admits were influenced by Ravel, Bartók, and Prokofiev, but which have a personality all of their own. Certainly Way's Concerto withstands comparison with any other rocker's attempt to blend the classics with more modern disciplines (Keith Emerson's piano concerto was released the previous year), and it was poor promotion alone that prevented Concerto for Electric Violin & Synth from making heavier inroads into the period's consciousness.

Jan Dukes De Grey are a forgotten relic of progressive music. Their brilliant free-from album "Mice And Rats In The Loft" was the pinnacle of their musical expression, a semi-improvised journey into madness. Jan Dukes De Grey are unique in every way - from the diverse instrumentation handled by only 3 musicians, the way they utilise strange chords, key changes and varying tempos, to the very personal style of vocal expression.

Cant Take It is the second Delmark release from Chicago blues guitarist James Wheeler. Backed by pianist Ken Saydak, guitarist Billy Flynn (heard on the right channel), bassist Bob Stroger, drummer Marty Binder, and harp player Ron Sorin taking the place of James brother Golden Big Wheeler on this session. Wheeler's guitar playing is consistently flashy through this set, while other bright moments include Flynn's twangy solo on the dirty blues "You Make It Hard Baby" and Saydak's funky organ playing on the lazy shuffle "Goin to the Station." Wheeler isn't the strongest vocalist around but he gets his message across on tracks like "This Can't Be Happening to Me," "My Baby's Gone," and "I Can't Take It."

Fulfilling the potential promised on his Blue Note debut, Night Dreamer, Wayne Shorter's JuJu was the first great showcase for both his performance and compositional gifts. Early in his career as a leader, Shorter was criticized as a mere acolyte of John Coltrane, and his use of Coltrane's rhythm section on his first two Blue Note albums only bolstered that criticism. The truth is, though, that Elvin Jones, Reggie Workman, and McCoy Tyner were the perfect musicians to back Shorter. Jones' playing at the time was almost otherworldly. He seemed to channel the music through him when improvising and emit the perfect structure to hold it together. Workman too seemed to almost instinctively understand how to embellish Shorter's compositions…