Latest album reviews

Judy Collins' Fifth Album reviewed

Album Review

Judy Collins

Judy Collins' Fifth Album reviewed

Fifth Album

​At the time this album was released, it was easily the best album Judy Collins had delivered. It followed the format (and maybe formula) of her two previous albums, where she

 
Junior Wells brings the Chicago Blues

Album Review

Junior Wells

Junior Wells brings the Chicago Blues

Hoodoo Man Blues

Easily one of the greatest Chicago Blues albums and, in fact, this was the very first album of Chicago Blues recorded as an album.

 
Liam Clancy's debut solo album

Album Review

Liam Clancy

Liam Clancy's debut solo album

Liam Clancy

This was Liam Clancy’s solo debut and it received a fair amount of airplay on folk shows at the time. I didn’t get the album back then, though it certainly was on my want list with a classic Vanguard

 
10/10 for Joan Baez' new album

Album Review

Joan Baez

10/10 for Joan Baez' new album

Farewell, Angelina

​In the fall of 1965, Joan Baez released her sixth album, Farewell, Angelina. The album signalled a change and a departure in the subtlest of ways towards more contemporary songs, without discarding

 
Posthumous album from Sam Cooke

Album Review

Sam Cooke

Posthumous album from Sam Cooke

Try A Little Love

​In the years that followed Sam Cooke’s murder, (on December 11, 1964 by motel manager, Bertha Franklin), a string of albums were issued

 
'Play this record loud.' - The Paul Butterfield Blues Band debut

Album Review

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

"Play this record loud." - The Paul Butterfield Blues Band debut

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

​Sometime in the late summer or fall of 1965, the debut of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band appeared on Elektra Records. If my memory serves, somewhere on the original cover it said “Play this record

 
Otis Redding with one of the all-time great R&B records

Album Review

Otis Redding

Otis Redding with one of the all-time great R&B records

Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul

​Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul is one of the great albums of Rhythm and Blues. It’s probably bad form to frontload a music review with such a strong statement, but any other approach would feel

 
Album Review: Debut album from Eric Andersen

Album Review

Eric Andersen

Album Review: Debut album from Eric Andersen

Today Is The Highway

I’d already seen Eric Andersen play quite a few times, usually at Sunday afternoon “Broadside Hoots” at New York City’s Village Gate, when his debut album finally appeared on Vanguard Records

 
Dylan releases follow up to Bringing It All Back Home

Album Review

Bob Dylan

Dylan releases follow up to Bringing It All Back Home

Highway 61 Revisited

​It was a bright, sunny day and I was walking with my brother down the main street of our town, (a suburb of New York in northern New Jersey), when I saw what looked like a new Bob Dylan album

 
Tough Times For Paul Simon

Album Review

Paul Simon

Tough Times For Paul Simon

The Paul Simon Songbook

​1965 was a watershed year in the music industry. Just as labels were beginning to sign more folk acts, hoping to monetize on the new-old folk sound now permeating the world’s airwaves,

 
The Beatles begin their transition from up-beat commercial pop

Album Review

The Beatles

The Beatles begin their transition from up-beat commercial pop

Help!

​Help! occupies an unusual position in the canon of Beatles recordings, marking a transition from the up-beat commercial pop of early Beatlemania to the more introspective, melancholic song writing

 
Debut album from Sonny and Cher

Album Review

Sonny & Cher

Debut album from Sonny and Cher

Look At Us

​Phil Spector, so the story goes, initially hired Cher as a ‘baby-sitter’ for his girlfriend, Ronnie Bennett. She later graduated to backing singer in a number of Spector’s Wall of Sound recordings

 
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