Shadow Classics

Enthralled By Jazz, Joni Mitchell Sets New Moods

June 27, 2007 • Mitchell's work took an unexpected turn with Mingus, her streaky and often brilliant 1979 collaboration with jazz bassist Charles Mingus. After it, she sounded wiser and hipper, a jazz sophisticate whose melodies came bunched in waves and bursts of scat-singing capriciousness.

Masters of the Groove Get Loose and Propulsive

June 20, 2007 • Booker T. & The MGs recorded some of most enduring riffs and backbeats of the '60s. Because organist Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn and drummer Al Jackson Jr. recorded together constantly, they developed a signature sound.

Zumpano's Power-Pop: Predating Pornographers

June 13, 2007 • Zumpano may forever be known mostly as the answer to, "What band was A.C. Newman in before The New Pornographers?" The Vancouver group made two records for Sub Pop before Newman began his more lucrative New Pornographers pursuits.

Blues and Jazz Share Icons

June 6, 2007 • It took a renegade of modern film, Dennis Hopper, to engineer one of the great had-to-happen musical summits of modern times. To provide the music for The Hot Spot, the director hired greats from different musical worlds: bluesman John Lee Hooker and jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.

Part Swamp and Part Soul-Stomp

May 30, 2007 • The diversity of songs and styles makes Dale Hawkins' LA, Memphis & Tyler, Texas an odd artifact: It's part Southern boogie and part sun-kissed psychedelic rock, yet it feels like an original stew rather than a patchwork.

Reflecting and Transcending Paraguayan Tradition

May 23, 2007 • On From the Jungles of Paraguay, Australian guitarist John Williams celebrates Paraguayan composer Augustin Barrios-Mangore, an entrancing songwriter whose music went largely neglected by modern interpreters until the 1980s and '90s.

A Duck-Walking Rock Legend Gets the 'Blues'

May 16, 2007 • Even a ubiquitous figure like Chuck Berry has neglected gems gathering spiderwebs in remote corners of his catalog. Blues helps fill in a bit of his legend, showing how he transferred devices used by generations of blues guitarists into the then-new rebellion of rock.

A Wryly Caustic Songwriter, Served in 'Bulk'

May 9, 2007 • Jack Logan's homemade 1994 debut Bulk attracted attention for its staggering number of songs: 42, arranged in nine LP-style "sides" on two CDs. It displayed a remarkably bold range of styles, from scruffy post-punk screamers to gentle country weepers.

Pure Power-Chord Overdrive, Debatably Live

May 2, 2007 • It's not exactly "live," and to modern ears, its tightly scripted songs likely won't seem terribly "dangerous." Yet Live and Dangerous, a 1978 double album, is the best existing document of the under-appreciated Irish hard-rock band Thin Lizzy.

A Jazz Great Finds Rock's Rhythmic Abandon

April 25, 2007 • Tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson's brilliant Power To The People was recorded in 1969, when jazz musicians were confronting the influence of rock and soul. Some had trouble, but Henderson wrote tunes that always sneaked a step or two beyond convention.

Blues and Jazz Get Rollicking Together

April 18, 2007 • On 1969's Kidney Stew Is Fine, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson crafts scooting, good-time shuffle-blues, spiced with the harmonic sophistication of bebop. Vinson was a master of the blend: His seamless mix of ingredients makes Kidney Stew a delicacy.

A Graceful Triumph in Muted, Beautiful Shades

April 11, 2007 • Up! is the great misunderstood R.E.M. album, a noirish cycle filled with unsettling songs and "environments" that are brooding worlds away from the group's jangle-pop hits. Heard on its own, apart from the rest of R.E.M.'s output, it emerges as a graceful studio exploration.

Latin Jazz at Its Most Thoughtful and Thrilling

April 4, 2007 • In the world of Latin music, vibraphonist Cal Tjader commanded respect: He was considered one of the few Anglos who could hang with the heavyweights. Tjader recorded Latin jazz, bossa nova, salsa and boogaloo for more than three decades, and his titles are uniformly strong.

Sounds of the '80s, Minus the Artifice

March 28, 2007 • Media shorthand has reduced the music of the '80s to a set of telltale signifiers: big hair, skinny ties, and so on. But a few surviving documents, among them Richard Barone's fantastic Cool Blue Halo, demonstrate that the era was fruitful for classic pop.

Bringing Brahms Alive with Little Fanfare

March 21, 2007 • With virtually any mainstay of the classical repertoire, like Brahms' masterful violin sonatas, it's possible to find sparkling performances from lesser-known but artistically mighty interpreters. This recording, by Czech violinist Josef Suk and American pianist Julius Katchen, is an excellent example.

An Incendiary, Influential Funk Genius Gets Her Due

March 14, 2007 • Betty Davis could be sultry or earthy, strident or nasty. She seized heavy funk backbeats, and around them built commanding, sometimes taunting vocal entreaties that were way ahead of their time: Her work presages the stances and ideas of strong hip-hop women from Erykah Badu to Foxy Brown.

Michael Nesmith: Overcoming The Monkees

March 7, 2007 • The Serious Monkee had chops as a songwriter, as well as an unusual sound: a glossy merger of country and rock that took what The Byrds had been doing a step closer to pop. Magnetic South foreshadows the country-rock of The Eagles, whose debut arrived two years later.

The Shining Moment Before a Spectacular Downfall

February 28, 2007 • The Chamber Strings' Month of Sundays is wistful wounded-boy pop of the highest order. Singer Kevin Junior writes unassuming melodies that don't conform to the instant-hook template, and he sings them with the casual air of a cat stretched out on a sofa in the sun.

A Lively Dispatch from 'The Latin Motown'

February 21, 2007 • Like many at the Fania label, salsa bandleader Ray Barretto recorded quickly and often: Barretto Power is one of four albums he released in 1972. Some, inevitably, are duds, but this one is incandescent, exemplifying the label's genre-crossing creativity.

Brainy Jazz Meets Gut-Level Expression

February 14, 2007 • George Benson helped kick-start "smooth jazz," that not-so-distant cousin of "easy listening." But before that, Benson's early records — including the spry It's Uptown, which he recorded at age 23 — are more musically adventurous.

The Last Coherent Statement of a Genius

February 7, 2007 • Sly Stone's Fresh represents the singer and icon at his most intimate. Rather than trying to re-create the whiplash-inducing full-band intensity of There's a Riot Goin' On, he pares everything down, seeking a minimal attack driven by isolated shards of rhythm guitar.

A Guitar-Rock Great Gets Reissued and Revisited

January 31, 2007 • When Richard Lloyd's long-unavailable Field of Fire returns to shelves, it'll be as a two-disc "deluxe" edition, with one disc a remastered version of the original and the other a radically different "revisitation," with songs in a different sequence and two bonus tracks.