Album Reviews

Petra Haden, the very talented daughter of the late bassist Charlie Haden, and former member of That Dog released in 2005 an a cappella version of The Who Sells Out that is charming, entertaining, ingenious and loads of fun. It was CD only until now.

Nick Drake was born June 19, 1948 in Rangoon, Burma. Such unusual beginnings for a shy singer-songwriter who would die of a drug overdose twenty-six years later might seem exotic to some. But the gentle music he created sounded quite ordinary to most, if they heard it at all.

Recorded late 1971 during a multi-night gig at New York City's Academy of Music and released the next summer, Rock of Ages was intended to be a celebratory send-off for one of the greatest bands of that era as it contemplated a long touring and recording break that went on for far longer than expected.

The late Carl E. Jefferson's Concord Records, (now owned by Concord Music Group, which owns Fantasy, Prestige, Riverside, Stax, Specialty, Telarc, Hear Music etc.), founded in 1972 at a time when the pioneering jazz "majors" Blue Note and the above mentioned Prestige, Riverside, etc. had been bought and turned into catalog to be "asset managed" with little or no forward direction, remains, like Norman Granz's Pablo Records, among the most underrated and undervalued on the used LP market.

Bassist Scott LaFaro's death in a Geneva, New York car accident ten days after the Sunday, June 25th, 1961 recording of this Village Vanguard set did more than add a tragic luster to the story. It upended what might have been a very different track order here and on Waltz For Debby, the second record sourced using tracks recorded that day by engineer David Jones on a modified Ampex 350 using Scotch 111 tape.

In 1972 and '73 you'd hear this classic album playing in every hippie crash pad and college dorm room in America. It was a "chick" album guys could dig. Her friend James Taylor had encouraged the veteran song writer to sing her own songs.