Otis Redding's recording career really only lasted five years, from 1962 through 1967 (seven studio albums in all), and the balance of it, along with his biggest hits, really only came in the last two years of that time, with his biggest hit and first number one, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," released after his death. All of it was enough, though, to establish Redding as the greatest performer of the classic deep soul era, a designation he undoubtedly deserves. There are plenty of greatest-hits-type collections out there for those interested in Redding's pop and R&B chart impact, and at first glance, Lonely & Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding seems like another of those. It has some of his classic hits, true, like "I've Been Loving You Too Long," "Free Me," and "These Arms of Mine," but the rest of the dozen tracks are more obscure, although they're neither filler nor randomly chosen, each contributing to the overall theme, emerging as a powerfully unified compilation full of the pain, loss, and yearning that go along with being in love. Then there's the look of this set. It's done up to look like a Stax album release from the 1960s, and even the liner notes are in the present tense, as if this were simply a long lost reissued Redding album with nothing changed as it pops up again in the 21st century. It pulls off the hat trick of being a nice introduction to the deeper side of Redding's catalog, an intelligent, carefully considered facsimile of one of his original Stax albums, and a fresh statement on the issues and risks of love, all of which lead the listener straight back to the greatness of Otis Redding. It's the way reissues should work in a perfect world, not just presenting old material, but also arranging it in a striking new manner that leads us back to a great artist we thought we already knew.© Steve Leggett /TiVo

Although his recording career only lasted five years, from 1962 through 1967 (seven studio albums in all), with his biggest hits coming in the last two years of that time, and his only number one, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," after his death, Otis Redding is still widely considered the greatest performer of the classic soul era, a designation he undoubtedly deserves. A dynamic performer and a more than competent songwriter ("Dock of the Bay," for instance, is a Redding original), he brought the energy and directness of gospel into the secular world with a fervor and passion that made his songs, and particularly his live versions of them, into gritty sermons on the joy, loss, pain, and yearning that attends being in love. It helped, too, that his backing outfit on most of his tracks was the great Stax Records house band the MG's, who knew how to punch in and stomp it and also when to lay back in a quiet storm behind him, and the band and Redding together were an unstoppable force. There have been plenty of Redding compilations over the years, with this one, The King of Soul, being yet another one, but it is distinctive for its breadth, tracking the arc of Redding's career through 92 tracks arranged chronologically over four discs, and because it also, particularly when covering the early years, includes mono mixes, which often carried more tightly focused punch than the stereo ones. Appearing during the 50th anniversary year of the release of Redding's debut album, Pain in My Heart, this set tells the story of the King of Soul as well as any other compilation out there. Everything essential is here, and with Otis Redding, it's pretty much all essential. He was that kind of artist.© Steve Leggett /TiVo

One of the greatest and most influential artists to rise from the Southern Soul movement of the '60s, Georgia-born Otis Redding was a powerful vocalist, capable of swaggering braggadocio and soul-bearing heartache in equal measure. Redding was also a gifted songwriter who penned many of his most memorable songs, and an unstoppable force as a stage performer, often regarded as James Brown's only real rival as the most exciting soul performer of the '60s. Redding's recording career lasted only seven years before he lost his life in a plane wreck in 1967 at the age of 26, but his catalog remains one of the strongest of any artist from soul's golden age. Pure Southern Soul is epic-scale digital collection of Redding's recordings for the Stax/Volt label, featuring 60 songs that encompass his biggest hits and superb deep cuts. This is a treasure trove of classic soul, and a superb, thorough introduction to a landmark talent. Selections include "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," "I've Been Loving You Too Long," "Respect," "Try a Little Tenderness," "Love Man," "These Arms of Mine," "Mr. Pitiful," "Shake," and many, many more.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Soul Manifesto is a fancy but accurate title for what is essentially another installment in Rhino's Original Album Series, where all the individual albums are presented as mini-LPs in paper sleeves, slid into a small box, and marketed at a low price. In this case, this rounds up the 12 albums that form the core of the Otis Redding discography: the five studio albums he released between 1964 and 1967 (Pain in My Heart, The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads, Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul, The Soul Album, Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul, the Carla Thomas duet album King & Queen), the live albums Live in Europe and In Person at the Whisky a Go Go, and the four posthumous studio LPs released between 1968 and 1970 (The Dock of the Bay, The Immortal Otis Redding, Love Man, Tell the Truth). While other rarities were dug up years later -- two noteworthy sets are 1992's Remember Me and the following year's box set Otis! The Definitive Otis Redding -- this has all the important music Otis made, all delivered in a handy and affordable little box. If you didn't own this seminal music already, this is a great way to get it.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Recorded and released in 1966, Otis Redding's fifth album, Complete and Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul found the rugged-voiced deep soul singer continuing to expand the boundaries of his style while staying true to his rough and passionate signature sound. Redding's ambitious interpretations of "Tennessee Waltz" and especially "Try a Little Tenderness" found him approaching material well outside the traditional boundaries of R&B and allowing his emotionally charged musical personality to take them to new and unexpected places, and while his cover of "Day Tripper" wasn't his first attempt to confront the British Invasion, his invigorating and idiosyncratic take on the Beatles' cynical pop tune proved Redding's view of the pop music universe was broader than anyone might have expected at the time. While Redding's experiments with covers on this set were successful and satisfying, it was on his own material that he sounded most at home, and "My Lover's Prayer" and "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)" are deep Southern soul at its finest, with Redding's forceful but lovelorn voice delivering an Academy Award-worthy performance. And once again, the Stax house band (centered around Booker T. & the MG's and the Memphis Horns) prove themselves both thoroughly distinctive and remarkably adaptable, fitting into the nooks and crannies of Redding's voice with their supple but muscular performances. With the exception of his duet album with Carla Thomas, Complete and Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul was the last studio album Redding would fully complete before his death, and it proves his desire for a broader musical statement didn't begin when he encountered "the love crowd" at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Among the major tenor saxophonists of the last 75 years, Charles Lloyd has always stood apart. Most of his peers were based in New York but Lloyd, a Memphis native, often worked out of the West Coast.  He frequently collaborated with rock musicians in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Beach Boys, the Doors, Roger McGuinn, and others; at the time, it was uncommon for an important jazz figure to have such close ties to the rock scene.  Those associations reveal an artist open to new sounds as he follows his own path.Decades later, the octogenarian continues to be a singular force, and on the excellent 2024 release, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow, he leads a stellar new band: pianist Jason Moran, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Brian Blade. Lloyd revisits older material with fresh ears, and the double album also includes six new compositions along with versions of the spiritual, "Balm in Gilead," and J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson's hymn, "Lift Every Voice and Sing."On the opener, "Defiant, Tender Warrior," which features an arrangement by Lloyd and Moran, Blade deftly deploys rumble, clatter, and hiss to create a foundation and an enveloping atmosphere. Lloyd's fluttering high notes, just-so breathiness, and speedy note-flurries sensitively play off Moran's take on the piece's tender melody.  Lloyd's sole alto sax performance occurs on the title cut, one of the album's new pieces. At first, the track sounds like a loosened-up version of bebop, but soon Moran's dissonant piano changes the vibe. A groove that recalls Keith Jarrett (a former Lloyd sideman), emerges, and a spare, bluesy section follows. Wherever the music goes, the engaged quartet brings it to full flower. On "Beyond Darkness," Lloyd displays a warm, nicely shaded tone on alto flute. Blade's rolls and cymbal hits, Grenadier's groove, and Moran's impressionistic lines create a gentle pelagic ambience for Lloyd's lyrical explorations. Beyond darkness, indeed, this is wonderfully blissed-out music."Defiant, Reprise; Homeward Dove" looks back to the opener. The two tracks perfectly bracket an album that gracefully takes the listener on a journey with Lloyd and his sensitively attuned band. As the last notes sound, there is a sense of a cycle completed.  © Fred Cisterna/Qobuz

Krall's first recording remains an eye and ear opener. Without the overt schmaltz, Krall proves a sincere singer and, more so, a fine pianist whose talent in this area would later become sublimated. If you want to hear not only the roots of Krall's jazzier and romantic side, not to mention the fun, you'll get it all on this remastered CD, with a bulletproof rhythm section of the peerless bassist John Clayton and always on-the-money/in-the-pocket drummer Jeff Hamilton. The program contains several songs that have become Krall's signature tunes. "Straighten Up & Fly Right" is typically cute as she nicely modifies the lyric. "Frim Fram Sauce" is easily swung and wittily rendered. Several standards such as the easy swinging, bluesy "I'm Just a Lucky So & So" with its impressive bridge piano or the straight read of "Do Nothin' 'Til You Hear From Me" seem like child's play. She uses delayed, staggered phrasings with energetic pianistics during "As Long As I Live," jumps in more pronounced and driving tones for "This Can't Be Love," and cleverly deviates from the melody in now typical Krall-ian fashion for the previously unreleased "On the Sunny Side of the Street." She's most convincing on the unaccompanied take of the classic "Body & Soul" and goes into semi-classical mode with Clayton's bowed bass during her lone original "Jimmie." There are two instrumentals: "42nd Street" swings very well with flourishes inserted here and there on a slight re-arrange, while Klaus Suonsaari's (not Charlie Parker's) "Big Foot" sports heavy modal introductory chords, impressive stop starts on a blues strut, and the most interaction during this set. Krall's fans should consider this an essential recording in her growing discography, and perhaps in many ways her best.© Michael G. Nastos /TiVo

Born out of the ashes of Joy Division in the early 1980s, New Order symbolises one of the first truly successful unions between rock’n’roll and dance music. The darkest Mancunian band of the punk era who had transformed into masters of the dancefloor signed the perfect soundtrack to the gloomy England under Thatcher. Released in the summer of 1987 on the label Factory, Substance brings together all their various styles and singles like the hits Blue Monday, Ceremony, Confusion, The Perfect Kiss or Bizarre Love Triangle. This was obviously the golden age for the quartet made up of Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris. Despite a few highlights (such as the album Technique in 1989), New Order never really reached this level of composition again... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Jazz songwriter and pianist Patricia Barber's 2006 album Mythologies, a song cycle based on Ovid's Metamorphosis, is a sprawling work of poetic and musical adventure. Upon its release, it garnered universal acclaim from critics and responsive concert audiences across the United States and Europe. After this rigorous undertaking, Barber could have been forgiven for taking a breather. And on its surface, that seems to be what the Cole Porter Mix is. But in Barber's case, this is far from true. While she claims in her bio that she's been singing his songs for years, and that he's her favorite songwriter, she does anything but a "standard" read on his tunes, though she never undermines their integrity. The album is called a "mix" because Barber has woven three of her own tunes -- written after the manner of Porter's -- into the fabric of the album. Given her austere yet highly original readings of his songs, they fit in seamlessly. She is accompanied here by her longtime backing group of Neal Alger (guitar), Michael Arnopol (bass), and Eric Montzka (drums), with drummer Nate Smith alternating on three tunes, and guest saxophonist Chris Potter appearing on five. Commencing with the opening number "Easy to Love," with its skeletal bossa nova rhythm (Barber doesn't play in the body of the tune and only contributes a wonderfully economical piano solo), and the relative austerity of her voice, it's obvious this isn't an ordinary standards set. She is faithful to the intent of these songs both lyrically and musically, but she shifts their arrangements in such a way that they are more suited to her deliberately restrained singing voice, and her own vocation as a songwriter. It's the songwriter she is paying tribute to here -- not the tradition. "I Concentrate on You" also carries within it the kernel of bossa, but this time, with her piano fills and artfully incisive manner of accenting, to quote Porter, "how strange the change from major to minor" without invoking the blues (the standard for doing so). Barber's pianism is elegantly idiosyncratic, even enigmatic. Her "cool" singing voice peels away the weight these songs have borne over the years, and instead returns to them their subtlety and gentle sense of humorous irony. There are some wild moments here -- such as the Latin polyrhythms at the heart of "In the Still of the Night," that set up a space for some serious blowing tenor by Potter -- but the spirit of "song" is never compromised. Barber's originals are truly canny, empathic evidence of her true understanding of Porter. "Snow," with its minor-key piano intro opens with: "Do you think of me like snow/cool, slippery and white? Do you think of me like jazz/as hip, as black as night?" The mysterious, dull ache of love and lust in "New Year's Eve Song" evokes the forlorn aspect of Porter but the strange, covert voyeurism of poet Robert Lowell's "Eep Hour": "Will he/peek in the mirror while she/knowing he's watching her tease/stripping the gown with ease/bare as the New Year, she/so in love with her is he..." All the while, the sense of a taut harmonic melody is inseparable from the lyrics, unveiling the secret intent in the song for both listener and singer. The Cole Porter Mix is a very modern form of imitation, as evidenced not only by interpretation but in her evocative compositions too; they mark the greatest form of flattery. But it is also an ingenious manner of reconsidering Porter -- and Barber -- with fresh ears.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Much of the material on this two-LP set has been since reissued on CD, but, one way or the other, this music (particularly the first 16 tracks) belongs in every serious jazz collection. In 1939, Hawkins returned to the U.S. after five years in Europe, and it took him very little time to reassert his prior dominance as king of the tenors. This set starts off with the session that resulted in Hawk's classic version of "Body and Soul," teams him with Benny Carter (on trumpet) for some hot swing (including a memorable rendition of "My Blue Heaven"), and then finds Hawkins using younger musicians (including trumpeter Fats Navarro and trombonist J.J. Johnson) on some advanced bop originals highlighted by "Half Step Down Please." The remainder of this set is also good, but less historic, with Hawkins being well-showcased with three larger groups in 1956, culminating in a remake of "Body and Soul."© Scott Yanow /TiVo

The Art & Soul of Houston Person is a unique compilation. The great saxophonist has recorded as a leader for labels such as Prestige, 20th Century, Muse, Savant, and is currently with High Note, where this appears. His tenure at Prestige is the only one longer than this one. As such, this massive, three-disc collection is drawn from a dozen High Note albums cut in as many years. The unifying factor in these cuts is that they were not chosen randomly to include simply stellar performances, but from his wide-ranging interpretations on standards; in addition, they were all recorded by Rudy Van Gelder at his studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. There are 30 performances in all, including four that open disc one which are all new takes on tunes he'd tracked previously, but this time out with his current quartet of pianist John di Martino, bassist Jon Burr, and drummer Jerome Jennings. Some of the other players on this comp include pianists Bill Charlap, Stan Hope, and Richard Wyands, bassists Ray Drummond, Ron Carter, Per-Ola Gadd, Peter Washington, and George Kaye, drummers Grady Tate, Chip White, and Kenny Washington, and guitarists Russell Malone and Paul Bollenback. The readings of these tunes make for a very unified collection because no matter who the personnel are and what gifts they bring to the table, Person has a way of playing songs that not only retain their melody, but their melodic integrity; his is simply not interested in employing them as frameworks for showboat improvisation. His own inventiveness is in how warm and dignified a melodist he is. He sings through the horn with the emotional commitment of Ben Webster, the soul of Gene Ammons, and the studied elegance of Paul Quinichette and Frank Wess. Listeners will have a great time picking their favorites out of this morass of excellent material, but it is safe to say that Person makes virtually all of it compelling -- there isn't a dull second here. Whether it's "Sentimental Journey,"and "All The Things You Are," or "Blue Moon" and "Mack the Knife," these sides are drenched in classy sophistication and down-home soul. Highly recommended.© Thom Jurek /TiVo