Pop & Rock News

Until recently the band released its records on a variety of Danish labels, but has now signed a contract with Ruf Records. This new collaboration reflects Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado's great international potential, placing the band in the fine company of artists such as Walter Trout, Candye Kane, and Omar and the Howlers.

For this latest recording, the band assembled a strong team for its recording session at the Medley Studio in Copenhagen, with Søren Andersen as engineer and Jesper Yebo Reginal in charge of mixing. This time the band has chosen to produce the album themselves

Pat Hall was a much sought after vocalist in the late 60's early 70's having worked with Joe Cocker as one of the 'Sanctified Sisters' along with Gloria Jones. In 1972 Pat (& Gloria) became backing singers on the U.S T.Rex concerts and in mid to late 1973 Marc Bolan decided he was going to produce an album by Pat Hall, being well ahead of the then interest in black American soul by fellow pop stars David Bowie John Lennon and Elton John. The album was recorded but never released. These 2 tracks are outtakes from that album session both tracks written and Co-written by Marc Bolan and this is the very first time any Pat Hall material has ever been issued on vinyl. Limited to only 300 copies and designed in the Light Of Love Wax Co house bag style the single comes dinked in the U.S import northern soul single style. All profits go to the Marc Bolan School of Music & Film

My First Time Around is the 1968 debut LP by Betty Wright. The album was recorded when Wright was 14 years old. It includes the Top 40 hit single 'Girls Can't Do What the Guys Do'.
Remembered primarily for one Atlantic hit, 'Clean Up
Woman,' Ms. Wright has been in the news lately for helping
18-year-old Joss Stone sound like a credible soul singer. Wright was writing her own songs at an even younger age: My First Time Around has crackling stories of the kind of love you regret even while you're making it ('I'm Gonna Hate Myself In The Morning'), with men you should be ashamed to know ('He's Bad, Bad, Bad').
The music is note-for-note perfect, from the organ accenting 'Circle of Heartbreak' to the horn section on 'Girls Can't Do What The Guys Do,' appropriately the record's hit single. Featuring Clarence Reid on piano.

Full House is the fourth studio album by Frankie Miller, released in 1977. A little more funky than most of his albums but overall, this is another fine batch of songs.

The Andy Fraser composition 'Be Good to Yourself' was issued as a single, and reached No. 27 the UK singles chart, becoming Miller's first chart hit.

It features a mix of Miller originals and covers, including a version of John Lennon's 'Jealous Guy'. Of the five originals here, one was co-written by the man who discovered Miller (Robin Trower) and one of the songs was later covered by Lou Ann Barton.

Jimmy Scott's The Source (1969) is as beautiful and strong today as it was when it was recorded for Ray Charles' Tangerine Records. The lyrical links of 'Unchained Melody' are absolutely righteous and the strains of 'Exodus' could lead a listener to cry the Red Sea or to part it. While 'Motherless Child' aches with orphaned loneliness, 'Our Day Will Come' is confidentially encouraging.

Jimmy Scott was an American Jazz vocalist famous for his unusually high contralto voice and his sensitivity on ballads and love songs. After a series of successes in the 1940s and '50s, Scott's career faltered by the early '60s. He slid into obscurity before launching a well-received comeback in the 1990s.

His unusual singing voice was due to Kallmann's syndrome, a very rare genetic condition. For over 40 years, Scott's frankly feminine registers, delayed deliveries, easy shapings, and full-Soul bellows have been a source of inspiration and style for everyone from Nancy Wilson to k.d. lang, and this album carries that legendary legacy into the 21st century.

Bitter Tears is a concept album released by Johnny Cash in 1964. It is one of several Americana records by Cash. As the title implies, the tracks on the album focus exclusively on the history of and problems facing Native Americans in the United States.

And not without success: 'The Ballad of Ira Hayes', about the story of Ira Hayes, a young Marine of Pima, reached No.
3 on the Country charts.

The album is a sensitive, clear-eyed take on the unfair treatment of the American Indian. It's stark and moving, his best Americana album of the '60s.

The Sky Is Crying (1991) is the fifth studio album containing performances spanning most of the career of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble.

What makes the record work is its eclectic diversity. Vaughan plays slide guitar on 'Boot Hill' and acoustic on 'Life by the Drop'. But it's not just musical diversity that makes the record work, it's also Vaughan's emotional range.

Released about one year after Vaughan's death in 1990, the album features ten previously unreleased tracks, originally recorded between 1984 and 1989.

An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band: 2nd Set is a live album by the American group the Allman Brothers Band. It was recorded in 1992 and 1994, and released in 1995.

The old Allman material gets fresh new approaches. The quality of the recording make this a most rewarding 70 minutes of live music on a purely technical level. You can practically hear the action on the guitars during the acoustic set.

An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band: 2nd Set is available on vinyl for the first time. It also includes the Grammy Award-winning classic 'Jessica'.

The Way It Is is Bruce Hornsby and the Range's debut album, released in 1986. Led by its hit title track, the album went on to achieve multi-Platinum status and helped the group to win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

The group has a distinct sound of its own, often led by Hornsby's bright piano chords and elastic tenor. There is New Age music here, as well as Jazz and Country, and the mixture is presented naturally by musicians who seem to have been playing with each other for some time.

It's no surprise that the music is so accomplished. Hornsby was no teenage neophyte when he made it, having kicked around the music business and gotten into his thirties, and the band includes such veterans as David Mansfield, who remembered as a member of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder troupe and the Alpha Band, as well as being a film composer.

Always a staunch fan of the quartet vocal group tradition - whether spiritual or secular here King Elvis celebrates the vocal harmony music of The Clovers, The Drifters and The Four Fellows! Pressed on pink vinyl!

117 Degrees (1998) is the second studio album by former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin, and his first musical work not released under a band name. The album picks up right where The Ju Ju Hounds left off, offering a set of 14 bluesy hard rockers in the vein of Chuck Berry, the Stones, the Faces, Aerosmith, and Guns N'Roses.

117 Degrees features appearances from Stradlin's former Guns N' Roses bandmate Duff McKagan and former Ju Ju Hounds' bandmate Rick Richards, also ex-of The Georgia Satellites. The tracks 'Memphis, Tennessee' and 'Good Enough' feature the Ju Ju Hounds lineup, as the songs were recorded by the band before breaking up.

This album rocks harder than most roots-Rock albums of the late '90s. None of his contemporaries were even trying for this kind of unassuming, straightforward, well-crafted Hard Rock.