Real Gone Music artist: Freddie King - The Complete King Federal Singles - New Release Review

I just received The Complete King Federal Singles, the first-ever compilation devoted to Freddie King's King-Federal singles, released by Real Gone Music. This is an incredibly comprehensive package including 55 tracks of Freddie's best work. I have been a fan of Freddie King's for such a long time and it's great to have all of this great music on 2 CD's. King had his own signature style that was uniquely his own. Passing at an early age Freddie didn't have the advantage of time like the other two renown kings of the blues, Albert and BB. Freddie's catalog includes a wide variety of musical takes on the blues like swing on See See Baby with the honking sax and Come On; It's Easy, Child with a R&B but Tex Mex styling; Bossa Nova styling shown on The Bossa Nova Watusi Twist (cool instrumental); deep blues on Look, Ma. I'm Crying (Incredible); Elmore James style like Takin' Care of Business; Tbone Walker style of I'm On My Way To Atlanta or (The Welfare) Turns It's Back On You (most of you haven't heard this cut..you should); surf music? yup ... Surf Monkey (cool 60's instrumental), Texas Oil and Heads Up; R&B Louisiana style like Meet Me At The Station, Sittin' On The Boat Dock and If You Believe; jump blues like Driving Sideways; fast shuffle like High Rise (instrumental of course); classic R&B like If You Have It; holiday blues with Christmas Tears and I Hear Jingle Bells; pop tracks like the President Twist; You Can't Hide and instrumental Just Pickin' but also great vocal tracks that demonstrate that Freddie isn't just a guitar player like the spectacular duet with Lulu reed on Let Your Love Watch Over Me. Of course this package includes all of Freddie's best known classics like You've Got To Love Her With A Feeling; Have You Ever Loved A Woman; Hideway; It's Too Bad Things Are Going So Tough; San Ho Zay; The Stumble; Side Tracked; I'm Tore Down; Sen-Sa-Shun; Someday, After A While; She Put The Whammy On Me; Full Time Love; Use What You've Got and You've Got Me Licked which are all amazing. And don't get me wrong, this is no padded cd with the greatest hits and a bunch of fluff. This is packed full of great music wall to wall!  The package includes 8 pages of great liner notes by Bill Dahl and a number of cool photos. This is a package that was begging to be done and a terrific tribute to a terrific performer! This is a must have.

  If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Real Gone Music's February: Short Month, Big Release Schedule

REAL GONE MUSIC'S FEBRUARY: SHORT MONTH, BIG RELEASE SCHEDULE

              

February 26 Releases Include Titles from Fanny, Freddie King, Rod McKuen, Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys, the Hello People and Grateful Dead

Los Angeles, California-Real Gone Music's February releases, due out on the 26th of the month, continue to cut a wide swath through the various genres of popular music, with entries ranging from to folk cabaret to electric blues to chick rock to even mime rock! At the front of the line is the first-ever standalone CD release of the debut album from Fanny, the first-ever all-female group signed to a major label, and a thundering, 54-track double-CD set from blues guitar legend Freddie King featuring all of his King and Federal label singles, both A and B-sides. And Real Gone is, by exclusive arrangement with the artist himself, releasing what are arguably the two signature albums of poet-singer-songwriter-actor Rod McKuen's career with copious bonus tracks.

The focus shifts firmly to rock for the label's other February releases, featuring the debut album by Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys, which was co-produced by none other than Jimi Hendrix. The unique "mime-rock" of The Hello People, who later collaborated with Todd Rundgren, sees its first-ever reissue of any kind with the release of their album Fusion. And Real Gone continues its dance through the Grateful Dead's Dick's Picks catalog of rare live recordings with another first-time-ever retail release of Dick's Picks Vol. 25.

It's hard to overstate the importance of Fanny's self-titled 1970 debut album. For the first time, a group of women (sisters June and Jean Millington, Alice De Buhr and Nickey Barclay) wrote and sang their own songs, played their own instruments and, perhaps most importantly, rocked just as hard as any male band out there. And, as the first all female band signed to a major label (Reprise) and with superstar producer Richard Perry at the board, these four women seemed poised for stardom.  But, without a reference point with which to review them, the rock press was less than kind, often dismissing them as a novelty act. Fanny would have to become that reference point, and so they did for the generations of female rockers to come after them, from Joan Jett to Girlschool to Courtney Love and beyond. They were truly the Godmothers of Chick Rock. Now, Real Gone Music is proud to reissue, for the first time on a stand-alone CD, the self-titled debut release from Fanny, complete with the original gatefold album art and sporting new liner notes from none other than June Millington with contributions from Alice De Buhr and Jean Millington, whose tales will take you inside the studio and out to the front lines of rock's feminist makeover. Grrl power starts here!

Rolling Stone ranked him the #15 greatest guitarist of all time. His sharp treble tone, hooky melodic licks and innovative fingerpicking style-using metal banjo picks on electric guitar-were a profound influence on such British guitar gods as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Peter Green and Mick Taylor. And his live performances were so incendiary, so unstoppable-and his build so imposing-that he was nicknamed "The Texas Cannonball." Yet to date, no collection has focused on the original single sides Freddie King cut for the King and Federal labels in the '60s, the blistering tracks that made his reputation and continue to be the centerpiece of his recorded legacy. The Complete King Federal Singles rounds up all 54 of those original single sides and carefully packed them on to two CDs for about 155 minutes of pure blues guitar heat, featuring such hits as "Hideaway," "Lonesome Whistle Blues," "San-Ho-Zay!" and "I'm Tore Down." Notes by Freddie King expert Bill Dahl, photos and pristine mastering complete as concentrated a dose of blues guitar greatness as you will ever find.

Poet, writer, performer, songwriter, singer, producer, actor-Rod McKuen was the true Renaissance man of the '60s generation. However, despite having notched a number of charting albums, almost all of McKuen's recorded work remains out of print. Now, by special arrangement with the artist himself, Real Gone Music is releasing two signature albums from Rod McKuen's career, complete with a bounty of bonus tracks from his private archive, personally annotated and remastered under his supervision. Recorded on his 36th birthday on April 29, 1969, the double live album Sold Out At Carnegie Hall was the highest-charting (double platinum) release of Rod McKuen's career, and exposed a whole new audience to the man's multifaceted talent. This Real Gone reissue of this landmark live recording adds an unreleased track, marking the most complete version of this legendary concert that has ever been released, and also offers 13 tracks from his triumphant, platinum-selling Back to Carnegie Hall album, recorded on his 40th birthday in 1973. And McKuen's 1967 release Listen to the Warm, which was based on his poetry book of the same name-then the bestselling poetry book of all time-was his first charting album. Our Real Gone reissue presents over a dozen bonus tracks-all never before available in the U.S.-that in effect create an unreleased Listen To The Warm Volume Two.

Though the 1969 debut release from Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys was co-produced by none other than Jimi Hendrix (they were long-time friends, the band opened for the Experience on tour, and had the misfortune of sharing the same manager, Mike Jeffrey), Cat Mother was far more than a footnote to a superstar's career. Not only did The Street Giveth...and the Street Taketh Away score a Top 40 hit with "Good Old Rock 'N Roll," but it's also a marvelously eclectic affair beloved by record collectors of every stripe-just do a quick Google search-with elements of folk, country and late '60s riff rock alongside the hit's tongue-in-cheek revivalism. This album's been briefly reissued on CD twice before and commands huge sums online; it's not JUST for Hendrix completists (though they will want it, too).

There was a lot more to The Hello People than just whiteface. Their roots actually trace back to the father of French mime, Etienne Decroux. During the '60s, Decroux taught painting to a group of musicians, who learned to paint so quickly that Decroux reasoned that musicians could also learn mime and apply it in some new way to create a new form. Thus inspired, the manager of the musicians Decroux had taught, Lou Futterman, then put together The Hello People, who went on to appear on The Tonight Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, tour with Todd Rundgren during the '70s, and release four albums for Philips and ABC-Dunhill during the late '60s and early '70s. Fusion, their second (1968) album for Philips, is easily their best; it features "Anthem," whose stark, antiwar lyrics ("So I'm going to prison for what I believe/I'm going to prison so I can be free") penned by band songwriter W.S. "Sonny" Tongue (who had been incarcerated for resisting the draft) led to its being banned in a number of radio markets. Our Real Gone reissue includes the original gatefold art and adds new liner notes; it's the first album from this one-of-a-kind group ever released on CD.

The latest august addition to Real Gone's reissues of Grateful Dead live shows, Dick's Picks 25-May 10, 1978 New Haven, CT May 11, 1978 Springfield, MA hails from an extended East Coast run in the Spring of 1978, offering a pair of Dead shows that, with the loving touch of Bear and Betty Cantor-Jackson at the controls, rank as one of the most beautifully recorded entries in the Dick's Picks series. Both concerts-which appear here minus just two and three songs, respectively-find the group in exceptionally lyrical form on ballads like "Loser," "Stella Blue," "Looks Like Rain" and "They Love Each Other." Also not to be missed is a superlative, slowed-down version of "Friend of the Devil" and the rare performance of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" as an encore (the band only played it about a dozen times live). Full of diamonds for Deadheads.

February 26 Releases from Real Gone Music

Fanny: Fanny

Freddie King: The Complete King Federal Singles (2-CD Set)

Rod McKuen: Sold Out at Carnegie Hall (2-CD Deluxe Edition)

Rod McKuen: Listen to the Warm (Deluxe Edition)

Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys: The Street Giveth...and the Street Taketh Away

The Hello People: Fusion

Grateful Dead: Dick's Picks 25-May 10, 1978 New Haven, CT May 11, 1978 Springfield, MA (4-CD Set)

Rescheduled from January:

Patty Duke: Don't Just Stand There/Patty

Patty Duke: Sings Songs from Valley of the Dolls/Sings Folk Songs

Real Gone Music : John Hartford - Aereo-Plain/Morning Bugle: The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings - New Release review

John Hartford was an incredibly creative, talented, irreverent and funny musician and song writer. For the general public, Hartford's work is condensed to one track, Gentle On My Mind, made popular by Glen Campbell. I was more attracted to Hartford's incredible musicianship, ability to attract the absolute best talent in the bluegrass world and get them focused on his projects and just to write creative stories and funny songs. Hartford would "tap dance" along with his banjo playing to add his own percussion having fabricated a wooden platform with a microphone underneath to amplify his foot steps. Hartford also performed a number of bluegrass standards and, along with the likes of David Bromberg, Jerry Garcia and the New Grass Revival, brought the joy of the bluegrass movement into the public eye. This double cd recording includes the original 16 tracks from Aero-Plain plus an additional 4 unreleased tracks. The release opens with Turn Your Radio On, the opening track which is as earthy as they come. Done in a very pure form this track is a real treat. Hartford is in the middle of his most creative period when this recording was released and Up On The Hill Where They Do The Boogie is a good example. Followup track, Boogie, was always a crowd favorite and it still brings a smile to my face when I hear it. The most heartfelt grunts ever recorded! Presbyterian Guitar has a beautiful melody and holds its own with most any Lennon McCartney melody. Symphony Hall Rag gives the guys a great opportunity to just stretch out and do what they do best...sit back and enjoy! Tear Down The Grand Ole Opry, a collaboration with Taylor, is distinctively Hartford because of his vocal style but the arrangement of the vocals on this track are particularly smart. Leather Britches featuring Clements is another standout. If you have never seen Vassar, he's a treasure. Sweetheart Can't You hear Me Calling, the first of the unreleased tracks, is a terrific track with traditional bluegrass picking and harmonizing. Taylor and Blake wrote Weave and Way and that should be enough to perk your ears in itself. If you love listening to people who can really play.... this is it! Cumberland Gap adds fuel to the instrumental fire and the boys just jam out concluding with Orange Blossom Special. This is a terrific recording in it's entirety. The second cd, Morning Bugle includes the original 11 tracks plus 4 additional unreleased tracks. This is an extremely strong contemporary bluegrass recording, some of my favorites being Old Joe Clark, instrumental track My Rag, Got No Place To Go where Hartford creates and world of his own both with candid instrumentals and unique vocals and the extremely traditional sounding Flower Power. Among the unreleased tracks, Don't Let Your Deal Go Down gets a great Hartford-esqe treatment. Back Up And Push is another great instrumental that is a fortunate find. Hartford closes the package with original track Bye-Bye where the boys rip it up and Hartford has a good time on his vocals. A perfect send off. This package is also supplemented with a beautiful 14 page booklet which include the original liner notes and covers, 4 pages of history, a great photo of Hartford performing with Earl Scruggs and Norman Blake, one of Hartford playing banjo in front of the White House and another candid photo of Tut Taylor, Vassar Clements, Norman Blake and Hartford. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”