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Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 September 2019

Rhino R2 591470
Format: CD

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Estimates vary, but it seems that some 400,000 people showed up in Bethel, New York, for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair: An Aquarian Exposition in White Lake, N.Y. -- 3 Days of Peace & Music, which ran from Friday, August 15, 1969, into the morning of Monday, August 18. Something close to that number were unable to attend at all, due to traffic jams caused by the festival. In 1969, there was no social media. Rolling Stone magazine had begun publication two summers before and was not yet widely distributed on newsstands. FM rock radio, which leaned toward playing unedited album cuts and even full albums, was only a couple of years old and broadcast in only a few markets.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 August 2019

Verve B0030218-02
Format: CD

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Love Will Find a Way, Philip Bailey’s 12th solo album, is his first since 2002, but in the intervening 17 years he hasn’t been coasting. He’s made four albums with Earth, Wind & Fire, the group he’s led since the late Maurice White retired from touring in 1996. Love Will Find a Way is his third straight album to lean strongly toward jazz, and this time around he’s enlisted the help of younger musicians, including arranger, composer, and keyboardist Robert Glasper, and saxophonist Kamasi Washington. He’s also helped out by older players, such as pianists Chick Corea and Kenny Barron, and bassist Christian McBride.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 August 2019

Concord CRE00926
Format: CD

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I can’t think of another guitarist of the classic-rock era who’s recorded more unremarkable albums than Carlos Santana. After a run of great to very good LPs from the late 1960s through the late 1970s, things began to thin out with Inner Secrets (1978). Santana albums became dull, with perhaps only one or two decent tracks each. Bright spots, such as the Carlos Santana solo albums Havana Moon (1983) and Blues for Salvador (1987), were rare.

Read more: Santana: "Africa Speaks"

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 July 2019

Columbia 19075941972
Format: CD

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According to a note on his website, Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Western Stars, was inspired by “the Southern California pop records of the late ’60s and early ’70s.” Echoes of Glen Campbell’s late-’60s hits “Wichita Lineman” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” both by songwriter Jimmy Webb and both recorded in Hollywood, run through the album, along with Burt Bacharach’s productions of that period. Many Springsteen records have had layers of instrumental detail, but Western Stars is, by any measure, his most lavish.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 July 2019

Cooking Vinyl COOKCD731
Format: CD

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In the 38 years Mike Scott has led the Waterboys, he’s taken this Scots band in various musical directions while maintaining its distinctive identity. Scott has remained the only constant through many changes of personnel, so it’s really his musical vision that remains at its core. He injected stomping rock’n’roll into Modern Blues (2015), and on the two-disc Out of All This Blue (2017) Scott gave in to his love of R&B, blues, and soul. On Where the Action Is those strains are joined to hints of the group’s signature Celtic folk-rock.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 June 2019

Single Lock SL028
Format: CD

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The Hurting Kind is John Paul White’s second solo outing since he and Joy Williams ended their duo, The Civil Wars, in 2014. While a few of the songs can be broadly described as Americana, most have a strong hint of the Nashville Sound of the late-1950s and early ’60s, made famous by producers Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins, whose productions of albums by such singers as Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline included strings, background vocals, and other elements that broadened country music’s popularity. Further reinforcing the impression of what seems White’s veneration of country-music traditions are the assistance on three songs here of veteran songwriters Bill Anderson and Bobby Braddock.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 June 2019

Blue Note B002978602
Format: CD

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Norah Jones has avoided the Best New Artist Grammy curse, which usually leads to obscurity. Not only has she collected more Grammys since her big win in 2003, for her debut CD, Come Away With Me (2002) -- she’s continued to record albums that chart well and receive good notices from critics. Jones has also challenged herself by appearing on recordings by a variety of other musicians, including Q-Tip, Belle and Sebastian, Irma Thomas, and Bonnie Raitt.