Soul Searching spotlights Shirley Scott's accelerated development as a composer - originals like "Duck and Rock" and "Plunk Plunk Plunk" are solidly yet spaciously constructed, affording Scott's Hammond organ the room to vamp, flutter, and wail its way in and around the melodies. Longtime collaborators Wendell Marshall on bass and Arthur Edgehill on drums are typically effective in establishing the simple but lively rhythms that keep Scott's more self-indulgent impulses in check - each song is a model of energy and efficiency as tight as an outgrown pair of shoes. Still, taken as a whole Soul Searching wears thin - the austerity of the arrangements offers little variation from track to track, and after a while one wishes for additional elements in the mix, à la Scott's more soulful outings with husband/tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine.

Japanese original release. First box set of Andy Williams includes seven original albums "Canadian Sunset," "To You Sweetheart, Aloha," "Moon River and Other Great Movie Themes," "Days of Wine and Roses and Other TV Requests," "The Wonderful World of Andy Williams," "The Academy Award-Winning Call Me Irresponsible and Other Hit Songs from the Movies," and "The Great Songs from "My Fair Lady" and Other Broadway Hits" plus a bonus disc with Japanese version(s) of songs, rare tracks, and more. Features remastering and cardboard sleeve faithfully replicating its US LP jacket design. Comes with lyrics and a description.

New York comedy and cabaret singer-cum-jazz vocalist Donna Brooks is heard here on her third recorded outing for the Dawn label, and her first true full-length. Recorded in 1956, the smoky, sultry-voiced Brooks has a delivery that is a dead cross between Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. With a fronting band of a generic piano trio, Brooks is nonetheless a fine interpreter of modern jazz song. Here she covers the Kaye/Mossman classic "Full Moon And Empty Arms," Mel Torme's "A Stranger In Town," Rodgers and Hart's "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To," and the Martin & Blane nugget "An Occasional Man," and infuses them with a beautifully haunting femme fatale quality, with a perfect ear for nuance and color, and stunning pronunciation and articulation…

3-CD Box set, 60-page booklet including comprehensive biography, original liner notes and cover art, rare photos, unseen memorabilia and extensive discography. Shelly Manne (1920-1984) was one of the most important drummers in jazz history. Opening with his first recordings as a leader for Dee Gee Records in 1951 (Chicago) and 1952 (Los Angeles), this collection covers both these septet sessions and the great series of all-star septet and quintet recordings made for Contemporary by Shelly Manne and His Men between 1953 and 1958. Here’s that Manne.

These 20 CDs comprise over 25 hours of music captured on-stage in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s at KWKH’s legendary Louisiana Hayride radio show. Staged live in Shreveport, the Hayride featured national country music stars, soon-to-be legends, regional break-outs, and talented newcomers. Most of this music has not been heard since the day it was broadcasted.

Sidney Foster, 1917-1977, was undoubtedly one of the greatest pianists of his time, but he is all but unknown today, and made almost no commercial recordings. In 1993, the International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland issued a two-CD set of Foster performances taken from live concerts. This year Marston is celebrating Foster’s centenary by issuing a seven-CD set of solo and concerto performances from live concerts, never before issued. Foster’s breath-taking virtuosity, the volcanic intensity he was capable of unleashing, and his beautiful sound, are immediately apparent, but it is his gift of supreme music-making that places him solidly in the top rank of twentieth century pianists.

Tam…Tam…Tam…! is a 1958 album by José Prates, which has since become one of the most valuable albums to come from Brazil. This is from a 2014 remaster, reissued by the Trunk label.

Love Me or Leave Me was one of Doris Day's greatest, and least likely, successes. Coming out of a string of light movie musicals, she turned in a dramatic performance in this film biography of singer Ruth Etting. She looked nothing like Etting and made no attempt to sound like her, either. But since Etting's recordings of the 1920s and '30s were long out of print and she made only a few films, that was less of a problem than it would have been for a performer whose voice and appearance were better preserved and available. The film was a popular and critical success, but the soundtrack, consisting entirely of Day's renditions of Etting signature songs like the title tune and "Ten Cents Dance," plus a couple of newly written songs, was a blockbuster, spending months at the top of the charts and becoming far and away the best selling of the relatively new 12" LPs of 1955…

La-La Land Records and 20th Century Fox proudly presents the remastered and expanded 2-CD release of legendary composer Alfred Newman's (A CERTAIN SMILE, ALL ABOUT EVE, THE EGYPTIAN, AIRPORT) original score to the 20th Century Fox 1953 psychological biblical epic THE ROBE, starring Richard Burton, Jean Simmons and Victor Mature, and directed by Henry Koster. A rich, complex and important work in the Newman cannon, this powerful score injects heart into this film's large canvas while masterfully propelling its drama and spectacle. Studio head Darryl Zanuck said it best at the time, "I wish I could find some way to tell you that this is the greatest score ever written without sounding like the publicity department - but it is." Produced by Nick Redman, restored by Mike Matessino and mastered by Daniel Hersch, this remastered and expanded 2-CD SET sounds magnificent, is slightly longer than previous releases and features insightful liner notes from writer Julie Kirgo.

This was Duke Ellington's first film score, undertaken at the urging of Anatomy of a Murder's director, Otto Preminger. The full range of the composer's previous work was brought to bear on this 1959 work. Ellington was a natural choice to convey the rich and varied emotional moods of this drama. Tension and release, danger and safety, movement and stillness, darkness and light; the textural palette that was Ellington's signature was always compellingly cinematic. In these orchestral settings, Duke's soloists (Cat Anderson, Clark Terry, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, and others) shine, as their playing reflects true variations on a theme in a classical sense. That's not to say that this set doesn't swing, too – "Happy Anatomy" is a short but fully cranked gallop. This is an album of rich variety and evocative writing.

Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's unproduced stage play Everybody Comes to Rick's. The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid; it also features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson. Set during contemporary World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate who must choose between his love for a woman and helping her and her husband, a Czech Resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis. The music was written by Max Steiner, who was best known for the score for Gone with the Wind. The song "As Time Goes By" by Herman Hupfeld had been part of the story from the original play; Steiner wanted to write his own composition to replace it, but Bergman had already cut her hair short for her next role (María in For Whom the Bell Tolls) and could not re-shoot the scenes which incorporated the song, so Steiner based the entire score on it and "La Marseillaise", the French national anthem, transforming them as leitmotifs to reflect changing moods.

This reissue combines two similar Doris Day albums originally released on Columbia Records, You're My Thrill and Young at Heart, originally issued in 1949 and 1954 respectively. The 24 tracks include such pop standards as "You Go to My Head," "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered, "Imagination," and "Someone to Watch Over Me." Those who appreciate easy listening pop will find this a welcome addition to their collection.

French guitarist Henri Crolla is heard with a variety of different groups in this compilation of recordings from the 1950s. Although the first ten tracks were recorded as a tribute to the late Django Reinhardt, Crolla stays in the background to allow violinist Stéphane Grappelli to dominate the brief rendition of "Swing 39." In "Minor Swing," Grappelli clarinetist Hubert Rostaing and alto saxophonist Andre Ekyan solo prior to the leader, with Crolla capturing some of the flavor of Reinhardt without copying him outright. But the ballad features without Grappelli are the most surprising tracks. Reinhardt's lovely but obscure "Anouman" showcases Ekyan with the rhythm section, minus Crolla, who evidently sat out this number…

One of the most infamously acrimonious musical unions transpired between two of the leading purveyors of West Coast cool jazz: Chet Baker (trumpet) and Stan Getz (tenor sax). Their paths crossed only a handful of times and West Coast Live captures two of their earliest encounters in Los Angeles at the Haig on June 12, 1953, and the Tiffany Club on August 17, 1953. These recordings have been issued in Europe and Japan ad infinitum in varying degrees of quality, completeness, and often sporting erroneous data. However, enthusiasts should note that West Coast Live is the only release derived from producer/engineer Dick Bock's own master reels. For two men who purportedly would rather not be in the same room at the same time, Baker and Getz are able to create some legitimately brilliant improvisation. For the Haig set, Getz had been brought in to co-lead a quartet with Baker for an incarcerated Gerry Mulligan.

When Doris Day freed herself from those cotton candy films she appeared in, where her singing for the most part was limited to cute novelty tunes, she showed that she could successfully sink her vocal teeth into some solid standard material. The LPs compiled on this CD come from the late '50s, when she was recording for Columbia with backing from an orchestra headed by Paul Weston. The songs fall into two categories. The first are those where Weston employed a large, sugary string section. The far more interesting tracks are those where the strings were held out and Day was backed by a dance band group with some jazz personages present…