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Got You on My Mind

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Customer Review:

A real breath of fresh air!

2 albums in 9 years??! I couldn't imagine what Madeleine Peyroux was up to!
Than a newsletter arrives & informs me of GOT YOU ON MY MIND. What a treat!! William Galison & Madeleine are a great match. How I would've loved to see them live!
This is just one wonderful recording!

Got This Album On My Mind

"Got You On My Mind" (Waking Up Music) is the musical collaboration of William Galison & Madeleine Peyroux featuring a series of standards and original genre pieces. The subject of the album seems to focus on relationship ideas, positive and negative, collectively spinning through a multitude of styles to reach its final destination. This album was recorded prior to Peyroux's own sophomore effort "Careless Love," during a time that the two shared a romantic and artistic relationship. Legal issues with Peyroux's current label prevented the immediate release of this compilation, which thankfully offers multiple pieces of interest for the appreciative audience

The opening track is a delightful cover of "Back In Your Own Back Yard" that is sizzling good swing superior to a multitude of previous versions of this standard. As always, Madeleine Peyroux sounds like Billie Holiday reincarnated for a modern audience. Her voice is a wonder to behold-and if anything, Peyroux's vocals offer slightly more whimsy than those of the great Holiday. The pairing with Galison and his excellent multi-instrumental skills focusing here on the harmonica and guitar, gives this track, along with many others, that Django like sense so popular with the current dance crowds. "J'ai Deux Amours" allows Peyroux to offer cheer to a lover with delicate French chanteuse styling, and great tempo changes in the musical tapestry. "Flambee Montalbanese" is a Viennese Waltz brought to the listener by way of a covered gypsy wagon--an excellent fast-paced instrumental piece with an eastern European feel. The album's title track "Got You On My Mind" is a slow bluesy riff that gives the artists the opportunity to blend vocals, and knowing the origins of the album, becomes a strangely fitting and contemplative recording on reflection.

Other provocative selections on this compilation include "The Way You Look Tonight" played in a folksy-style with a bossa nova pulse under Peyroux's magical singing, and Galison's repentant lead vocals in the deeply bluesy "Shoulda Known," featuring Carly Simon as the Scorpion. There's a bit of a tribute to John Lennon with the slow and pensive "Jealous Guy," and a bit more comedic musical background entertainment with Galison's "Rags for Madi." The album's closer, "Heaven Help Us All" which gives the listener another duet from the artists, reaches out with a plea for the saving of mankind, but based on the overall themes presented, it may be a request for salvation from the things that exist in all of our hearts and our constant struggles with how we relate to each other.

Peyroux & Galison Make Magic On This Superb CD!!

Vocalist Madeleine Peyroux, who has become one of my favorites, collaborates with multi-instrumentalist musician William Galison in this outstanding CD recorded in 2003. The combination of Ms. Peyroux distinctive voice, and Mr. Galison masterful accompaniment on the harmonica and guitar, make this album a must have. As a team the duo conjures-up pure magic! The chemistry between them is absolutely palpable. There are three solo instrumentals on the disc, original compositions by Galison. His virtuoso work on the harmonica is superb, and the mournful "Jealous Guy" is one of my favorite cuts. The two are backed by some of the industry's top musicians, including drummer Shawn Pelton, Bob Dylan's bassist Tony Garnier, and Rod Stewart's bassist Conrad Korsch. Carly Simon makes a delightful cameo appearance in "Shoulda Known."

The opening track, "Back In Your Own Backyard" simply swings. Josephine Baker's sultry "J'ai Deux Amours is updated here, and Ms. Peyroux's rendition of Jerome Kerns' "The Way You Look Tonight" is performed with extraordinary depth, as is the title track. Galison and Peyroux sing a duet in "Heaven Help Us All" to the sound of Jean Baptiste Bocle's Hammond B3. Songs made famous by John Lennon and Stevie Wonder are also featured.

I first heard Madeleine Peyroux sing when I bought her highly acclaimed CD, "Careless Love." I was enchanted by her voice and her selection of songs and wanted more. Thus, "Got You on My Mind" joined my CD collection and certainly enriches it. I have heard many people couple Ms. Peyroux's name with Billy Holiday's. I don't want to be contrary, but I don't want to compare her smoky smooth sound to anyone else's either. To me, there is no other like "Lady Day," nor does there have to be. Madeleine Peyroux, who brings a husky, full-throated sensuality, along with joyous spontaneity and, at times, a romantic languor to her songs, certainly does not have to stand in another vocalist's shadow. She clearly stamps the music with her own special style - and a very classy one that is.
JANA

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Keywords: Jazz; Pop; Pop Vocals; Rock/Pop; United States of America; Vocal Jazz;

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You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music

It's fitting that this Charlie Poole box set comes in a beat-up cigar box. Enclosed are the stories, both in song and print, that serve to foreshadow a stereotypical hard-living country musician. Poole's tunes of gambling, girls, guns, and gin are real-world tales of a rambling drifter and fighter with a bum pickin' hand (broken on a drunken dare) and broken teeth (shot out during a run-in with the law).

The cover illustration by R. Crumb and the photos enclosed within hardly hint at Poole's being one of country music's earliest outlaws--rather, they portray him as a coiffed businessman-cum-banjo. It is in the three discs and the 35-page booklet that we begin to see a true picture of Charlie Poole. Though he didn't write the songs, he sang his rough-and-tumble life in the ones he chose: "Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight Mister?," "Husband and Wife Were Angry One Night," and "I'm the Man That Rode the Mule 'Round the World." These are songs of a simple and stubborn man in trying times. It's not all misery and strife though. The pure George Formby style of "Monkey on a String" hints at a lighter side. "Sunset March" (inspired by Fred van Eps's "Infanta March," also included in this set) may be the track that best gets at Poole's banjo style. "Hellions both, the pair loved nothing more than traveling, raising Cain, playing music, and having a drink, and another tune, and another drink."
--Henry "Hank" Sapoznik on Poole and close friend Posey Wilson Rorrer (from the booklet) It's not the lightning speed that the world would hear in the bluegrass greats, but a unique clawhammer arpeggio plucking style that comes across rough yet streetwise, like the player himself.

Not all the tracks in this set are performed by Poole, hence the subtitle ...and the Roots of Country Music. Also included are a couple dozen tracks recorded by Poole's mentors and contemporaries, giving excellent context to Poole's work. The term "bluegrass" was yet to be coined and the country outlaw profile was still a good 20 years away. It's surprising to learn that Charlie Poole only recorded and released records during a five-year period leading up to the hell-bent bender that led directly to his death at 39.

In terms of packaging, this box set is top-notch. The design, typography, and photographs are as genuine as the music. The booklet contains a brief introduction by Roanoke, Virginia, DJ Kinney Rorrer, whose father was close with Poole. Also included are accounts of Charlie's run-ins with hecklers, women, and the law, as well as an in-depth bio that surely contains the majority of what is known of his short life. Perhaps only Rorrer's out-of-print Rambling Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole reveals more about this grandfather of country music and godfather to country ruffians. --Peter Hilgendorf

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Futures

Box set;

Original recording remastered;

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Customer Review:

Brilliant, Original Thematic Exegesis

In this dissection and distillation of the roots of Charlie Poole's music, the early incidence of the folk mutation from commercial phonograph records is clearly and meticulously demonstrated by the erudition of the Hank Sapoznik selections. The most originally conceived anthology since the alchemical song-matching of Harry Smith. An education in sound, and very rewarding.

Give Charlie Poole's music another shot in the arm

Comprised of three generous CDs with a total 72 tracks, this box set compiles music of Charlie Poole. In his book "Classic Country," Charles K. Wolfe relates an anecdote about a group of musicians pulling up to country store in Virginia in the late 1920s. Examining the watermelons, a jug-eared man asked the shopkeeper, "How much are those cucumbers? I'm down from North Carolina, and we have cucumbers bigger than these things." After introducing himself, Charlie Poole introduced himself, grabbed his banjo, and played a few tunes. The shopkeeper went into the back and returned with a half-gallon of prime moonshine. Stories are still told about Charlie today, and his songs are still sung today. Born in a textile mill town in 1892, the rough, unsettled and temperamental hard-living man was a skilled banjo picker, songwriter, and arranger of the old folk songs. Some of his songs are "Take a Drink on Me," "Hungry Hash House," and "Husband and Wife were Angry One Night." Liking a good fight, in "Coon from Tennessee," he sings about wanting to run a cemetery of his own.

Poole recorded 84 songs from 1925-31 for such companies as Columbia, Paramount and Brunswick. Joining him for his earliest New York sessions were fiddler Posey Rorer and guitarist Norman Woodlieff. "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down" would become a bluegrass standard. I don't see his other hit, "Can I Sleep in your Barn Tonight, Mister?" included in this compilation. After selling over 100,000 copies of the first disc (about five times the normal sales for a 1925 hit), the band released "The Man That Rode the Mule Around Town" and "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee." Both selections are included on this CD set. Fingerstyle guitarist Roy Harvey replaced Woodlieff, and various hits followed.
Included in this collection are White House Blues, There'll Come a Time, Leavin' Home, Budded Rose, and Hungry Hash House. The Depression hurt record sales, but his legacy remained with songs like "Old and Only in the Way," "If the River was Whiskey," "It's Movin' Day," and "He Rambled" (a New Orleans funeral song).

True to his band's name, North Carolina Ramblers, Charlie Poole would sometimes disappear for weeks. Columbia Records wanted him to stick to older musical styles, but Charlie wanted to explore new ones. He formed The Highlanders with piano and twin fiddles. In this box set, "Lynchburg Town" and "Flop Eared Mule" are two selections from this band. "A Trip to New York" is attributed to The Allegheny Highlanders, a name used when they recorded for Brunswick. Poole's drinking led to a heart attack and his ultimate demise in 1931 at age 39.

Nearly thirty tracks on these CDs feature some other old-timey musicians from Poole's time. Some of the singers and groups he learned from are sampled from old 78s and cylinder recordings. Such artists featured are Floyd County Ramblers, Arthur Colins, Dock Walsh, Uncle Dave Macon, Cal Stewart,Blue Ridge Highballers, Branch & Coleman, Fred Van Eps, Red Fox Chasers, Peerless Quartet, Gid Tanner, Eddie Morton and many others. Transferred by sound engineer Christopher King, these digital transfers have an amazingly high fidelity. "You Ain't Talkin' To Me" was produced by Henry Sapoznik, an old-time (and klezmer) musician himself. He also wrote the informative 6,000-word liner notes that accompany the package.

About 1960 following the folk revival, there was a revival of Charlie Poole's old-timey sound. This 3-CD set will give his music another shot in the arm and ensure he and the North Carolina Ramblers aren't forgotten. The release precedes the annual "Charlie Poole Festival" in May in his hometown of Eden, North Carolina. There is also a documentary film about Poole in the works. (Joe Ross, staff writer, Bluegrass Now)

Best box set of 2005 for the old-time fan

I had heard about this set several months before it was released and I expected the typical major label treatment for the very important, but largely ignored, Charlie Poole. This box set has completely reversed my expectations. Not only was the artist well-represented in the set, but the design, the notes, and especially the remastering were topnotch! Previous collections from Sony/Legacy left me cold, particularly the dull, overcompensated and heavyhanded remastering (like the Bluegrass box that came out earlier). Not so with this collection! Most of the material on this set sounds far better than I have ever heard and many of the tracks sound like Charlie, Posey, and Roy are in the room with you. I did check the notes and it was no surprise that this is due, probably in large part, to the efforts of Chris King who has done remastering for County, Old Hat, Bear Family and others. In addition, the notes & selections of the producer, Hank Sapoznik, are really exceptional. He shows a rare interest and insight into both the music of Charlie Poole (and old-time music) and also the musicians from which Poole learned. Add to this the fact that the set itself is extremely well-designed and attractive in a nostalgic sense (it resembles an old cigar box)with cover art by R. Crumb and period-style CD sleeves. This is really one well thought out project and I'm glad I pre-ordered it. I highly recommend this to fans of old-time, bluegrass, and roots music.

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Keywords: Appalachian Folk; Bluegrass; Country; Old-Timey; Pop; String Bands;

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Wicked (2003 Original Broadway Cast)

One of the most common complaints about musicals is that the books are flimsy pretexts from which to hang numbers. Wicked runs into the opposite problem: it has a great plot, but too often the songs just get in the way. Based on Gregory Maguire's novel of the same name, Wicked tells us what happened between Glinda the Good and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, before Dorothy showed up in Oz. And the show is lucky to boast a pair of ace leading women in the main roles. As Glinda, Kristin Chenoweth delivers a sensational star turn, displaying a crystal-pure voice and sharp comic timing; Idina Menzel lends her powerful pipes to the tricky role of Elphaba. Unfortunately, you wish they had better material to work with. Stephen Schwartz's pop score is often dragged down by overly synthetic orchestrations and sentimental lyrics (think Chicken Soup for the Witch). Still, at its best Wicked is a seductive slice of popular entertainment that could well give a younger audience a lasting taste for musical theater. --Elisabeth Vincentelli

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Futures

Cast Recording;

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Customer Review:

FANTASTIC!!

I love this show, and its music. The singers are phenominal!! Especially the evil witch. You just get taken away in her high belt! What a singer.

Amazing, Amazing, Amazing!!!

If you have no other Broadway Show cd's than make this your first. Words can not describe the wonderful lyrics and melodies contained in this recording. Now, proceed to checkout!!!

Great Show

Though the musical can not even begin to have the sophistication of the SUPERB book by Gregory McGuire, it is great fun. Though the original cast is good, the current broadway cast (Shoshana Bean as Elphaba, Megan Hilty as Glinda, Ben Vereen as The Wizard...) is a cast I wish I could have a recording of. Shoshana Bean blows Idina Menzel out of the water...her voice is more stable in all registers and her acting is far superior. I'm okay with spending $15 on the CD with Idina but I'd never have paid $200 for a ticket for her...Shoshana I plan to see at least 2 more times in NYC.

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Keywords: Cast Recordings; Music Theater; Musical Theater; Musicals; Original Score; Pop; Show Tunes; Showtunes / B'way;

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A Love Song for Bobby Long

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Futures

Soundtrack;

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Customer Review:

Sounds of the South

Very good summary of songs you might hear if you lived in Louisiana. The music can capture the emotions of people who like any genre of music.

A Love Song for Bobby Long

Not only was the movie good, the music is better. The mix of light blues and almost hillbilly roots style makes for great listening. There are names I've never heard of but voices I want to hear more of.

Got it all right

This CD beautifully captures the sounds and feelings of the south. This is one of my favorite CDs. The music is beautiful and deep. There is enough variety to please most.

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Keywords: Adult Alternative Pop/Rock; Alternative Country-Rock; Film Music; New Orleans Blues; Pop; Roots Rock; Soundtrack; Soundtracks; Soundtracks & Film Scores;

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