Latest album reviews
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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