Jeff Beck

"Performing This Week...Live at Ronnie Scott's"
Eagle

Jimmy Page wrote "Beck's Bolero" around 1966 for his Yardbirds
bandmate, Jeff Beck. The jazzy rocker serves as historical benchmark
and opening track for this searing album of live, instrumental
performances recorded at London's preeminent jazz club in 2007.

Beck may have evolved into one of the world's foremost jazz-rock
"fusioneers." Every note he plays, no matter how fast, drips with
emotional meaning. This is as true for his version of Stevie Wonder's
"'Cause We Ended as Lovers" as it is for his trio of tracks by
Mahavishnu Orchestra members John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, and Jan
Hammer.

There's a conversational quality to Beck's guitar-playing, whether
he's reinterpreting the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" or evoking Jimi
Hendrix's divine squall in "Big Block." Jeff Beck still has much
to say, and he comes across loud and clear on one of the year's best
live albums.


Omara Portuondo
"Gracias"
Montuno/World Village

"The life I have left will be spent smiling," sings 78-year-old
Havana legend Omara Portuondo in "Lo Que Me Queda Por Vivir" ("The
Time I Have Left to Live"), a song that arrives late in this stunningly
beautiful album full of valedictory overtones.

Portuondo was a Cuban star long before she sang with The Buena Vista
Social Club in 1996. This album includes luminous new recordings of
"Adiós, Felicada" ("Goodbye, Happiness"), "Vuela, Pena" ("Fly Away, Pain"),
and other deliciously melancholy tunes from her six-decade career.

Uruguay's Jorge Drexler joins Portuondo on the Brazilian-tinged title
track her wrote for her. Portuondo obviously loves Brazilian music,
and one of that country's greatest songwriters, Chico Buarque, joins
her on his beautiful and fatalistic "O Que Será (A Flor de
Terra)" ("Oh What Will Be").

Portuondo's deep, rich voice reveals multiple layers of feeling in
each of these bittersweet gems. "Gracias" concludes with "Drume
Negrita" ("Sleep, My Little Black Baby"), the lullaby she sang for her
son, her granddaughter, and now-accompanied only by percussion and
Cameroonian singer Richard Bona-for us.
 

Peter, Paul and Mary
"The Solo Recordings (1971-72)"
Rhino

After a successful run in the 1960s as folk-music superstars, Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers – Peter, Paul and Mary –decided to call it a day. After their breakup in 1970 (they reunited in 1978), each recorded a solo album; now collected in one album, the individual recordings still sound adrift.

Titled simply "Peter," Yarrow's album reflects the singer's deep commitment to both personal growth and social change in tracks such as "Take Off Your Mask" and "Don't Ever Take Away My Freedom." His music is conservative, acoustic, and heartfelt.

No less earnest, "Mary" reflects the state of early-'70s songwriting with lovingly rendered contributions from John Denver ("Follow Me"), Ewan MacColl ("The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"), Elton John ("Indian Sunset"), and Paul Simon ("Song for the Asking").

The collection's most ambitious and fun album of the three is Stookey's wittily titled "Paul and." The trio's most disaffected member worked out his political disillusionment, Christian beliefs and search for a simpler life in clever songs (mostly originals) that regularly break out of the PP&M mold. They ranged from his evergreen ballad, "Wedding Song (There Is Love)," to the psychedelic bossa nova, "Ju Les Ver Negre En Che Ese (Ed's Tune)." This one, at least, should be sold separately.


The Revolutionary Snake Ensemble
"Forked Tongue"
Cuneiform

Costumed in glittering Mardi Gras-inspired finery, this seven-piece Boston brass band threatened to blow out the walls of the tiny Brooklyn club where I recently heard them play music from their inspired second album.

"Forked Tongue" consists largely of traditional spirituals – including "Just a Closer Walk," "Give Me Jesus," and "Down by the Riverside" – and the group performs them with immense spirit and gusto. The New Orleans funeral-march traditional also courses through the band's surprising yet appropriately rearranged versions of Billy Idol's "White Wedding" and Doris Day's signature tune, "Que Sera Sera."

Bandleader-saxophonist Ken Fields's four original compositions fit perfectly into the album's theme of making the old sound modern. "Slots" and "Minor Vee" are no less loud, proud, and pleasurable than anything else on this remarkable blast from the remade past.
 

Liza Minnelli
"The Complete A&M Recordings"
Collectors' Choice
 
The four albums Liza-with-an-M released on the A&M label between 1968 and 1972 went relatively unappreciated at the time. While the world wanted rock, Minnelli was steeped in standards, jazz, and show tunes. And while she had the good taste to sing three Randy Newman songs on her 1968 album, "Liza Minnelli," today it sounds like a warm-up for the following year's "Come Saturday Morning," a rich, risky blend of thoughtful songwriting rendered with subtle drama. (And who's brilliant notion was it to have her combine Jimmy Webb's "MacArthur Park" with "Didn't We," the B-side of Richard Harris's hit single?)
 
Another great idea was to let Minnelli record "New Feelin'," an album of standards, in R&B-steeped Muscle Shoals, Ala. She sounds like Dusty Springfield after a long run in a Broadway cabaret. By 1972, Minnelli was too busy being a movie star to record a fourth studio album, so A&M wisely chose to release "Live at the Olympia in Paris," an energetic 1969 performance that concludes with her first live version of "Cabaret," the song that got her the part that made her a star.
 
 
Jimi Hendrix
"At Last...The Beginning: The Making of 'Electric Ladyland'"
Universal Music Enterprises DVD
 
Released in conjunction with a sonically spiffed-up "Collector's Edition" CD/DVD of Jimi Hendrix's 1969 masterpiece, this 96-minute documentary about the creation of "Electric Ladyland" is a Hendrix-head's dream.
 
"Ladyland" co-engineer Eddie Kramer plays the role of ringmaster, fading Hendrix's fascinatingly concocted instrumental and vocal tracks in and out on a mixing console as album cuts are discussed. The late drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding discuss the difficulty of working with a single-minded genius, differences that led to the band's dissolution during the course of the album's production. That the group was simultaneously touring and recording didn't make things easier.
 
Another prominent voice in this revealing documentary belongs to Hendrix's then-manager, Chas Chandler, who also quit during the album's production after suffering through dozens of retakes. As a member of the Animals, Chandler had cut most of their hits in a single take. But Hendrix was a perfectionist. "It wasn't just slopped together," said Hendrix of his sprawling and innovative effort. "Every little thing that you hear on there means something."
 

Charlie Louvin
"Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs"
Tompkins Square

Proudly sounding all of his 81 years and backed by a solid group, the
surviving Louvin brother revisits the timeless trove of melancholy
Americana he and his older sibling, Ira, waxed on their hit 1956 album,
"Tragic Songs of Life."

Charlie's disaster material—including "Wreck on the Highway," which
echoes Ira's demise—sounds dated only because few singers perform
topical material nowadays. And the "murder" songs, you may be relieved
to learn, deal mainly with untimely, accidental deaths. Yet "My Brother's
Will," "The Little Grave in Georgia," and the rest of these saddies
still pack an emotional punch that's largely due to Charlie's faltering
pipes. He sounds as though he knows all too well whereof he sings.


Asha Bhosle
"Precious Platinum"
Times Square

As Bollywood's preeminent "playback" singer (her songs have been mimed
in nearly 900 films), Asha Bhosle holds the distinction of being the
world's most recorded vocalist. Quality matches quantity in Bhosle's
case, and the soprano sounds as lively and assured as ever on this album
released in celebration of her 75th birthday.

A thorough pro, Bhosle sings in four Indian languages (untranslated,
alas) on tracks that veer into jazz, reggae, Latin rock, and bhangra
(Punjabi dance music). Bhosle has been studying Indian classical music,
and it shows in the polished and thoughtful ornamentations that make
everything she sings sparkle. If you're new to her music, start with the
gorgeous "Tum Jo Mile" or "Kamsin Kamsin Main." If she captures your
heart as she has South Asia's, you're in luck: 13,000 more Asha Bhosle
tracks await your discovery.
 

Trace Adkins
"X"
Capitol Nashville

Despite the suggestive title, the only thing explicit about Trace
Adkins's 10th album is his. The country singer-
songwriter comes across once again as a good ol' bad boy with a
conscience. He's the kind of guy you might have shared a drink or
three with back in the day, but you're now more apt to run into at
an AA meeting. Or as Adkins sings it: "Sometimes a man takes a drink,
but sometimes the drink takes the man."

Adkins the ruffian emerges in rockers like "Sweet" (which
stutteringly celebrates a girl who's "Sweet like the diamond bling/
Dangling down from a b-b-b-belly button ring") and "Hillbilly Rich."
He also covers lust ("Let's Do That Again," "Hauling One Thing") and
divorce ("Better Than I Thought It Would Be," "Marry for Money"), but
they just seem like stepping-stones to the middle-aged peace of mind
displayed in the family-affirming "Happy to Be Here" and "All I Ask
for Anymore." In other words, he could just as easily have titled the
album "PG."


Femi Kuti
"Day By Day"
Mercer Street

Nigerian bandleader Femi Kuti plays Afrobeat, the volcanic blend of
rock, soul, jazz, funk, and West African rhythms invented by his
father, the late Fela Kuti. But where Fela specialized in 20-minute-long

instrumental excursions punctuated by passionate political
diatribes, Femi opts for economy: "You Better Ask Yourself," the
longest track on his seventh album, clocks in at a mere six minutes.

What this saxophonist, trumpeter, and keyboardist lacks in endurance,
though, he compensates for in variety. A Latin lilt lifts "Oyimbo,"
"Do You Know" offers a crash course in swinging Afro-jazz, and the
title track suggests an African lullaby. But head straight for
"Tension Grip Africa" in order to savor the intoxicating drums,
blaring horns, hectoring organ, and sassy female chorus that define Afrobeat in all its undiluted pleasure and rage.

 

Neil Young

"Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968"

Reprise Records

Neil Young seems to chat nearly as much as he sings during this revealing and endearing solo performance. Recorded in November 1968, several months after the breakup of Buffalo Springfield, the album was issued a few days prior to the release of Young’s solo debut.

In between amusing stories about songwriting, rock stardom, and how he got fired from a bookstore, the 22-year-old sings 13 songs, half of which—including "On the Way Home," "Expecting to Fly," and "Mr. Soul" (that he admits took all of five minutes to write)—were in Buffalo Springfield’s repertoire. Young seems to be heading in a somewhat darker direction, though, in "The Loner" and in three other songs from "Neil Young."

Young’s acoustic guitar sounds rudimentary compared to how his playing would develop. In the end, it’s that strange, high-tenor voice that made Neil sound real. It’s what distinguished him from countless other contemporary singer-songwriters—not least of all when he’s aping Bob Dylan’s free-associative verbosity in "The Last Trip to Tulsa."

David Byrne & Brian Eno

"Everything That Happens Will Happen Today"

Todo Mundo/Opal

Former Talking Heads front man David Byrne reunites with the experimental British musician who produced some of the Heads’ best music (and most of U2’s greatest hits) for an album containing what Byrne refers to in a liner note as "simple, heartfelt" tunes and that Eno describes as a kind of electric gospel.

"Everything That Happens" traffics mostly in gorgeous affirmations of everyday life, but with a twist. In the opening track, "Home," for example, Byrne evokes a place where familiar smells and "compassion—for things I’ll never know" are as prevalent as fighting neighbors and a world "breaking in two."

Optimism in the face of adversity is the theme of such beautiful anthems as "One Fine Day," "The River," and "Everything That Happens" (which describes a car crash on a day when "nothing has changed but nothing’s the same"). Eno’s subtle electronics, meanwhile, substitute for the swelling choirs one easily imagines singing these sublime choruses.

David Gans

The Ones That Look the Weirdest Taste the Best

Perfectible Recordings

David Gans neatly bridges the gap between folk-rocker and rabble-rousing protest singer on his seventh self-released album since 1997. The Oakland singer-songwriter is also a veteran radio man, and his best music draws elegant connections between real people and real life in places where individuals and their communities intersect. 

Thus "An American Family" depicts the travails of a family shaken by our failing economy, with one all-too-recognizable character singing, "This family’s ailing fortunes may be more than I can take/I am married to a decent man who cannot get a break."

Gans also makes an elegant case for an agnostic-liberation movement in "Save Us From the Saved."  appears to have penned the local food movement’s national anthem with "The Bounty of the County" (the album title refers to heirloom tomatoes).

With fleet-fingered help from members of the fine New Jersey bluegrass group Railroad Earth, "The Ones That Look the Weirdest" sounds timely, classy, and classic at once.

Various Artists

The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 11A: 1971 Motown

Groovily packaged and musically mind-blowing, Motown Records’ comprehensive ongoing series of reissued singles dedicates volume 11 to just the first six months of 1971. The Temptations’ "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)" became the year’s best seller, while Marvin Gaye reinvented the Motown sound with "What’s Going On" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)."

The 116 other tracks in this informatively annotated five-CD set (with bonus vinyl single) include releases by Sammy Davis Jr. and Bobby Darin, a medley of protest songs, Meatloaf’s debut, and forgotten (and sometimes forgettable) releases from Motown’s rock subsidiary, Rare Earth. It’s a democratic enterprise too, with obscure B-sides and peculiarities (such as Chuck Jackson’s "Pet Names") right alongside some of the best work ever by the Jackson 5, Diana Ross, and Stevie Wonder.

Patti Lupone

At Les Mouches

Ghostlight



"I wanted people to know I was a brown-haired, brown-eyed comedienne, and not a blonde fascist tap dancer," writes Patti Lupone by way of explaining how she decided to perform a cabaret act every Saturday at midnight for 27 weeks in 1980 after bringing down the house in "Evita."

The current "Gypsy" star pulled out all the stops for her devoted Les Mouches audiences, and this collection of digitally restored performances is a wonderful way to relive that fabulous pre-
AIDS era.



In addition to a few songs from "Evita," including of course "Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina," Lupone sang an eclectic assortment of tunes. A brassy belter, Lupone comes off as a sophisticated cosmopolitan on 
this nicely curated collection of standards ("Love For Sale"), campy dance tunes ("Heaven Is a Disco"), rockers ("Because the Night"), hoochie-coochie jazz ("I’ve Got Those Feeling Too Good Today Blues"), 
and psychedelic folk songs (a particularly wistful "Mr. Tambourine Man"). But you can also hear Lupone’s reputation as the "people’s diva" emerging in her nervous laughter, shout-outs to visiting celebs, and awkward-yet-endearing patter between songs.


Warren Zevon


Warren Zevon


Asylum/Rhino



The late rocker Warren Zevon colorfully chronicled the Los Angeles rock demimonde he inhabited on his 1976 breakthrough album, reissued here with an extra CD’s worth of solo piano demos and alternate takes.



Originally produced by Jackson Browne, with musical assistance from pals in the Eagles, the candidly autobiographical "Warren Zevon" opens with "Frank and Jesse James," a song for and about his former employers, Phil and Don Everly. "Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded" memorializes his parents’ unlikely marriage, "The French Inhaler" sticks it to his unfaithful ex-wife, and the concluding "Desperados Under the Eaves" recalls a particularly low point in his career.



Zevon couldn’t blame anyone but himself for any subsequent career mishaps once Linda Ronstadt covered four of his songs. Not least, she named her hit album after Zevon’s "Hasten Down the Wind." And if the bleak-yet-bouncy "Warren Zevon" sounds a little dated today, it’s primarily because the singer’s raw, naive voice doesn’t meet the current, exaggerated vocal standards.

Brad Paisley
"Play"
Arista Nashville
 

Brad Paisley has included at least one instrumental track on each of his previous six albums, but the country star pulls out all the stops on this exuberant, gleeful, and mostly wordless survey of country-guitar acrobatics. After his high-octane opener, "Huckleberry Jam," Paisley shows off various aspects of his considerable virtuosity in the country-surf number "Turf's Up," a solo acoustic version of "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," the jazzy "Les Is More," and the competitive, "chicken-pick" gymnastics of a star-studded "Cluster Pluck."
 
Even the vocal tracks on "Play" celebrate the fret man's trade. Keith Urban joins Paisley on "Start a Band," B.B. King drops by to "Let the Good Times Roll," and Steve Wariner lends a hand on "More Than Just This Song," in which the duo recall a callous mentor they call Mr. Guitar. "Under his wings I learned to fly," they sing, as though it were a prayer, "on these six strings into the night."
 
 
Stephane Wrembel
"Gypsy Rumble"
Amoeba Music
 
Paris-born guitarist Stephane Wrembel fell under the spell of Django Reinhardt at an early age and has since devoted his life to pursuing and expanding the Gypsy jazz legend's string-driven innovations. California mandolin virtuoso David Grisman joins Wrembel's trio on "Gypsy Rumble" for a lively album devoted to fleet-fingered swing with a French twist.
 
As on Grisman's many duet recordings with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, the vibe is decidedly relaxed. Wrembel and the mandolinist trade articulate conversational solos on swinging tunes, such as "Swing Gitane," "Swing de Bellevue," and "Swing 48."
 
Smoky-voiced Brandy Shearer joins the pair for "Belleville Rendez-Vous" (the snazzy theme of the delightful animated film "The Triplets of Belleville") and "Dream All Your Troubles Away," a 1931 standard. By the time Wrembel’s rumble's over, you may consider yourself well swung.
 

It's beginning to sound a lot like Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. As fine as they are, these 10 tunes could hardly reflect everything joyful – and often a tad melancholy – about our mid-winter celebrations of peace, light, and last-minute shopping. What did we miss? Please gift us with your favorites in the comments section below.

Darlene Love has been setting off musical fireworks nearly every December since 1986 with her explosive rendition of "

" on "Late Night With David Letterman." Love's rendition of the tune Phil Spector wrote for his wife, Ronnie, seems to get better every year. But this 2005 clip remains a YouTube favorite.

Comedian Adam Sandler's "

" famously name drops celebrity Jews ranging from David Lee Roth to baseball Hall of Famer Rod Carew ("he converted"). With three versions to date, his list could well be endless.

The sexiest holiday song in the canon may well be R&B singer Charles Brown's "

," an elegant blues number that finds the singer waking up to a perfect day. How great does he feel? "Well, I haven't had a drink this morning/ But I'm all lit up like a Christmas tree."

You can hear a three-hankie movie's worth of love, struggle, and defeat in the Pogues' 1987 "

." Gravel-voiced Shane MacGowan and the late Kirsty MacColl sing of their doomed relationship in the Irish folk-rockers' beautiful and heartbreaking Christmas Eve fantasia. Watch the video here.

"White Christmas" is the biggest pop song ever. Even its writer, Irving Berlin, claimed it was "a publishing business in itself." And while no other song has sold more copies or been recorded as many times, Bing Crosby's version remains the most memorable. (But I prefer New Orleans singer

.)

Beginning in 1992, New York composer Phil Kline has enticed hundreds of boombox owners onto city streets for annual performances of "

" His ethereal minimalist composition will be presented once again this year in dozens of cities around the world. Our family has made a tradition of participating, and I suspect yours would enjoy it, too.

Even though Ernest Tubb waxed it first in 1948, Elvis Presley's 1957 recording of "Blue Christmas" remains the gold standard for this maudlin country classic. Thanks to the miracle of studio technology, Presley solidifies his hold on the oft-recorded tune this holiday season by singing it "with" Martina McBride on his posthumous "

" album.

Who doesn't have "Linus & Lucy" burned into his or her seasonal DNA? In his signature song from Charles M. Schulz's 1965 TV special, "

," pianist Vince Guaraldi conveyed the Peanuts gang's precocious joie de vivre with a spry melody and sophisticated rhythms.

Few songs warm up a long winter's night more efficiently than Frank Loesser's 1944 standard, "Baby, It's Cold Outside." Sung by a male "Wolf" and a female "Mouse," according to Loesser, the duet was heard first onscreen when Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams

in the 1949 film "Neptune's Daughter." Everyone from Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Jordan to

has since recorded it.

Ten years ago, the Indiana University a cappella group performed a hilariously bungled version of "

" in Bloomington, Indiana's Musical Arts Center. Nearly 8 million YouTube hits later, the group has reformed and released a new album, "Holiday Spirits," with a new live version of their hit. Who says there's no Santa Claus?