These discs below I've been listening to on my trips to and from my morning walks. They're an eclectic collection to accommodate most moods.
Sometimes you just want a jolly upbeat start to the day and Ian Dury is your man.
A wordsmith of prodigious Cockney proportion, often tongue in cheek, sometimes outright salacious (Mash It Up Harry) sometimes achingly poignant (My Old Man) sometimes brutally hilarious (Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, Billericay Dickie) but always with a tale to tell, and backed by The Blockheads, a formidable band to colour his vision, mixing rock, funk, jazz, music hall and reggae. Sadly he passed in 2000 but his works live on.
And some mornings you just want straight up rock 'n roll and who best to deliver?
Beggars Banquet was the 1968 album which recovered the Rolling Stones' career from the flabby excesses of Their Satanic Majesties Request. Opening with the almighty Sympathy for The Devil, possibly Jagger's
best vocal performance and lyrics, then the prophetic No Expectations, ironically with Brian Jones ( a possible subject) on slide, the album dwells on various aspects of humanity's yoke, all sympathetically portrayed with a rejuvenated band on fire, supplemented by Nicky Hopkins on keyboards, and Jimmy Miller's production. The sound on the 50th anniversary edition is superb - the late Nicky is thanked for his contribution and long departed Rev Wilkins is acknowledged as the writer of Prodigal Song - previously Jagger/ Richards, an old Stones joke...
I bought their live set El Mocambo from 1977, the basis of their earlier Love You Live, but this is the total show released in 2022 and it's wonderful. A small club, audience of 300, old rockers mixed with songs from their recent Black and Blue with Billy Preston on organ, original member Ian Stewart on piano and additional percussion from Ollie Brown, it's a steamer!
And sometimes you just need something different - Mulatos has been in the car for a few years now, as have the two beneath it. Omar Sosa is a jazz pianist from Cuba, and this album is from 2004 and was remixed for the dance floor, it's tunes and rhythms being cool and compelling.
I do love soul and Sam and Dave were two of the best exponents, their music being well favoured by the black audience. Love those gritty harmonies, those Mar-Key horns, that production, the drum sound at Stax in Memphis, backed by Booker T & the MGs, engineered by Jim Miller and recorded live in one take, it was visceral, real. Hold On, I'm Comin'... Other artists - Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha, Carla Thomas - wonderful, oh yeah not forgetting Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and James Brown, the innovators.
This double album has the best sound, I have another album, a re-recording, nowhere near as good.
Dave Brubeck was a great jazz composer and pianist. The album Time Out has been in my collection since 1965. The Ken Burns Jazz compilation box set accompanies the excellent TV documentary series issued in 2000. Aside from the compilation, single disc CDs were also released for major artists and this is one. The 2 CD Essential covers similar ground adding more. The early tunes are just as spectacular as the later material, showing his rhymical complexity - check out the 1953 Le Souk recorded live, Brubeck's piano is stunning.
This double CD below was gifted to me by Steve Fox from Raw Art & Blues in the town of Mogo
in 2007, after he learned that my music collection had been incinerated along with our house in the 2003 bushfire here in Canberra. It was such a generous gift and one which I tried to repay by advertising his wonderful musical and artistic wares on my Mystery Train radio program. Sadly the village of Mogo was decimated by bushfire in 2019. Steve Fox had departed for another business enterprise well prior. The CDs are packed with rare tracks, some being from the sole recording, some on acetate, unissued; the sound generally is very good. You can read Steve's dedication to me below; such a kind man.
Some mornings you just need a brain scraper, which Jimi will provide. This generous box set was first issued in 2000, then again with 4 extra tracks and better sound to my ears, in 2013.
Jimi recorded prolifically, he loved to create and his recordings both studio and live, always explore. No two are the same and that's fortunate for the Hendrix family who have released many albums since his death, and mostly all are really good IMHO, great notes, photos, production and of course fab tracks.
This one was the first box set, the 2013 second version, and it's a cracker with alternative versions, fabulous live tracks and rarities. This is the indulgence after the main course.
JS Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are wonderous, pure music, harmonies, colour and rhythm in six different settings, here with an added two orchestral suites. I have a number of performances but I love the sound of this one by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert Von Karajan. Karl Grebe in his notes states that the Brandenburg Concertos, among all Bach's works, 'have attained the greatest popularity and universal recognition. Nevertheless they remain what they always have been: a precious possession and a musical treasury in which there are always fresh delights to be discovered.'
