In 1960, pop vocalist Julie London was really cranking out albums for the successful label Liberty Records. The success of her 1955 hit "Cry Me a River" put Liberty into overdrive and London responded by making some of the strongest records of her career. Her ability to interpret a song was at its strongest in the late '50s and early '60s, as is evidenced on the shimmering Around Midnight. While some of her best recordings were front of small jazz combos, Around Midnight proves that London was just as effective in front of larger orchestras and bands. The drowsy "Black Coffee" and lazy "Lush Life" typify the late-night feel of the album, leading right into "The Wee Small Hours of the Morning."

Forty-two songs cut between November 1940 and August 1946, and the perfect companion to Bear Family's It's Magic box set – anyone who's been even tempted to own that will have to get this more modestly priced precursor to that material. Day's period singing with Les Brown is, today, regarded with a degree of love and affection reserved for Ella Fitzgerald's era with Chick Webb, or Frank Sinatra's work with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. Yet Sony Music's own releases devoted to Doris Day and Les Brown spread the music around to several different CDs, and suffered from sound that, today, seems substandard. These newly remastered tracks, offered in chronological order, including one previously unissued song ("Are You Still in Love with Me"), not only display a far richer, warmer sound, but have been presented with the kind of care that is normally reserved for the best parts of a label's catalog – which these sides definitely are. Day's voice during this period (she was 16 when she cut her first sides with Brown) was an astonishingly expressive instrument.

It's fitting that singer Billie Holiday began the most celebrated part of her career with Columbia in 1933, when the country was in the throes of the depression, and ended it in 1942, when the world was gripped by war. Her anguished delivery fit in perfectly with the times. As she projected the torments of her life through music, she gave us an escape from our own troubles, by reminding us of how bad life could get. Regardless, Holiday's sublime Columbia recordings, which originally appeared on the Brunswick, Vocalion and Okeh labels, are among the true treasures of jazz. The complete recordings were released a few years ago in a mammoth box set. This four CD collection pares the material down considerably, although the producers have not just taken the cream of the crop…

Resonance Records with the cooperation of National Public Radio (NPR) is proud to announce the release of Sarah Vaughan's Live At Rosy’s, New Orleans on March 25th, 2016 The deluxe 2-CD set is comprised exclusively of newly discovered recordings by “Sassy” capturing the legendary jazz singer’s live performance at Rosy’s Jazz Club on May 31, 1978.

Julie London wasn't really a jazz singer, but she possessed a definite jazz feeling and many of her finest albums (such as Julie Is Her Name and Julie…At Home) feature small-group jazz backings. About the Blues was aimed at the 1950s pop market, but it may just be her best orchestral session. Since downbeat torch songs were London's specialty, the album features an excellent selection of nocturnal but classy blues songs that play to her subtle strengths instead of against them. Likewise, Russ Garcia's clever arrangements bleed jazz touches and short solos over the solitary strings and big-band charts. Like June Christy, London usually included a couple of new songs in with a selection of standards, and her husband, Bobby Troup, wrote two excellent numbers for the album. One of them, the emotionally devastating "Meaning of the Blues," is the album's highlight, and was turned into a jazz standard after Miles Davis recorded it the same year for Miles Ahead.

Caro Emerald is a Dutch jazz singer who emerged in 2009 with the smash hit single "Back It Up" and made her chart-topping album debut in 2010 with Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor. Born Caroline van der Leeuw on April 26, 1981 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, she studied music at the conservatory, specializing in jazz and subsequently working as a vocal coach. Her breakthrough success came in 2009 with the single "Back It Up," written and produced by David Schreurs and Jan van Wieringen of Grandmono Records, along with songwriter Vincent de Giorgio. "Back It Up" began as a summertime hit but ended up spending 21 weeks on the Dutch charts, from July to December. Its popularity was enhanced by a couple different remixes, one by Kraak & Smaak and another featuring Madcon.

This is an essential package! Whoever put this together obviously knew what they were doing, and all is placed in chronological order. Discs 1-3 are a terrific compilation of material from the MGM years, consisting of commercial recordings of soundtrack materal. If no recording was commercially released, the original soundtrack is used-great for such numbers as "Hoe Down" with Mickey Rooney! But the last disc makes this package essential-here is a pristine soundboard recording of Judy's final performance at the Palace Theater, MYC-2/24/52! She was concluding a 19-week engagement, and the atmosphere is electric. Fantastic stuff!

George Benson Simply one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history, George Benson is an amazingly versatile musician whose adept skills find him crossing easily between straight-ahead jazz, smooth jazz, and contemporary R&B. Blessed with supreme taste, a beautiful, rounded guitar tone, terrific speed, a marvelous sense of logic in building solos, and, as always, an unquenchable urge to swing, Benson's inspirations may have been Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery, but his style is completely his own. Not only can he play lead brilliantly, he is also one of the best rhythm guitarists around, supportive to soloists and a dangerous swinger, particularly in a soul-jazz format; skills he first garnered attention for as a member of Brother Jack McDuff's band in the early '60s. Benson can also sing in a lush, soulful tenor with mannerisms similar to those of Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway. In a sense, he is the guitar-playing equivalent of Nat King Cole, a fantastic instrumentalist whose smooth way with a pop vocal helped solidify his prowess in the marketplace. It is this combination of singing and guitar playing that has garnered him numerous accolades and chart success, including most notably his 1976 breakthrough Breezin', which topped the pop, R&B, and jazz charts and took home Grammy Awards for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and Record of the Year.

The fourth volume in Verve's Verve Remixed series was a long time in coming considering how quickly the label spit out the first three. Nonetheless, it is a welcome addition to that shelf if remixes are your personal thang. This set concentrates, once more, on vocalists, and the array is rather startling on the surface, though it's sequenced beautifully. As with any of these packages some cuts work better than others, but there are some true highlights here. Marlena Shaw's reading of Ashford & Simpson's "California Soul" is given a killer treatment by Diplo and Mad Decent, keeping the entire thing rooted in its source material and stretching it with judiciously added bits of early funk, Ramsey Lewis-style soul-jazz, and hip-hop…

The Classics volume on Anita O'Day covering 1945 through 1950 takes her through the first five years of her solo career - after her breakout with Gene Krupa (and "Let Me Off Uptown"), but before the immense success of her Verve years. The only hit present is the bright novelty "Hi Ho Trailus Boot Whip," but fortunately O'Day didn't record many castoffs then; instead, par for the course during the late '40s was her bluesy romp version of "What Is This Thing Called Love?," another Cole Porter tune recorded at the same session. Her sweetly swinging versions of "Them There Eyes" and "I Told Ya I Love You, Now Get Out" are excellent, and the backing includes high-caliber musicians Benny Carter, Dave Barbour, and pianist/arranger Ralph Burns.

Ndidi Onukwulu integrates jazz, rhythm and blues, world, folk, and bluegrass - to name a few genres - into a sound that is silky and soulful, whimsical and relevant"- Critics At Large

Jazz critic Will Friedwald has stated that Julie London's records were so popular in the 1950s mainly because she looked so drop-dead gorgeous on the album covers. The marketing hook behind Calendar Girl may just be the main example for those critical of London's musical career, since its sleeve has made it a prized collector's item. The famous wraparound cover depicts cheesecake shots of London posed for every month of the year, while original issues of the album included a more-than-suggestive insert photo of the singer stretched out in bed. While Friedwald's correct about London's physical beauty, he's wrong in suggesting that the vocalist didn't have the talent to go along with her looks. Like Chet Baker, Julie London had an extremely limited vocal range but she did the most with what she had, possessing a special knack for torch songs that cast her in the role of a woman constantly being destroyed by love in general and by men in particular…

The most beautiful jazz & soul songs by Otis Redding, John Coltrane, Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles and many more on one compilation!

George Benson's two-disc Anthology from Rhino ultimately manages to encapsulate Benson's career. These 32 tracks not only highlight the obligatory vocal pop hits "Turn Your Love Around," "Give Me the Night," and "On Broadway," but dish out a heavy dose of his early jazz recordings that followed in the footsteps of Wes Montgomery, and his many appearances throughout the years with Brother Jack Mcduff, Lonnie Smith, Hubert Laws, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Smith, Earl Klugh, and the Count Basie Orchestra. If you're only accustomed to Benson's pop/jazz crossover work, check out this definitive overview.

For decades, Joe Mooney's only Atlantic LP, Joe Mooney's Songs, was out of print - and if a collector was able to find a rare copy at a vinyl swap meet, he/she knew that the thing to do was grab it at once. Then, in 1999, the album finally became available on CD when Koch Jazz reissued it as Lush Life. An intimate session that finds Mooney on vocals and organ, Lee Robinson on guitar, Milt Hinton on bass, and Osie Johnson on drums, Lush Life shows just how charismatic a singer Mooney could be. Some of Mooney's admirers compared his casual, smooth, relaxed style of singing to that of Nat King Cole, and while that isn't a bad comparison, Mooney's highly accessible versions of "Lush Life," "My One and Only Love," "Polka Dots and Moonbeams," and other standards point to the fact that he was most certainly his own man…