George Liberace — Hi-Fi Fun
Okay, I bought this at a yard sale over on Prospect Street a couple of years back, 100% for the FABULOUS cover photo. It’s a beauty. But am I actually going to play a...
Category: ’50s
Sleepy LaBeef — Early, Rare and Rockin’ Sides
This is another record that will be forever associated with my bleakest summer, the summer of ’81. Not quite 21, I was drunk and adrift. I had skipped the previous semester because of financial...
Elmore James — The Collection
I first became aware of Elmore James through Eric Burdon, of the Animals. On an odd import soundtrack album by the Eric Burdon Band from 1982, he sings a song called “No More Elmore,”...
Wanda Jackson — Town Hall Party
I’ll admit that despite having a bit of love for rockabilly, I barely had a sense of Wanda Jackson until relatively recently, probably when she was produced by Jack White back in 2011. I...
Howlin’ Wolf — Howlin’ Wolf
Until I bought this record about three years ago – a brand new reissue of his second album, with a gorgeous new cover but no hint of the iconic “rocking chair” by which the...
John Lee Hooker — I’m John Lee Hooker
As I’ve already said, JLH released and re-released a lot of the same or similar songs – different title, different version, different session. So if you scoop up two different records that both have “I’m...
John Lee Hooker — I’m John Lee Hooker
This is a beautiful Spanish 180 gram reissue of a 1959 Vee Jay release. The tracks are from 1955-59, and, as with the other John Lee Hooker discs, they sound like they could have...
John Lee Hooker — Plays & Sings the Blues
There are very few artists who mean more to me than John Lee Hooker. Ever since I really started to dig down deep, after seeing him perform in Saratoga in 1990 (Lee had seen...
Buddy Holly — The Complete Buddy Holly
Wow, I came close to completely missing this because the box sets are off on another section of the shelves. (In fact, I’ve got to double back and talk about Willie Dixon, whom I...
Things We Said Today