After a lengthy and successful run on RCA from 1955-1962, Lena Horne cut a few albums for the small Charter label. Picking up on the period craze for all things Latin - mambo, bossa nova, or otherwise - Horne recorded this 1963 collection of swinging, Latinized standards for the company. With husband and bandleader Lennie Hayton directing a crack group through some fine Shorty Rogers arrangements, Horne shows off her powerful and supple voice on both obscure fare ("Cuckoo in the Clock") and perennial classics from Tin Pan Alley ("My Blue Heaven"). And while some might balk at the Mancini-like lounge touches informing highlights like the fiercely delivered "From This Moment On" and a bravura reading of "Night and Day," one must ask what would be better to temper the driving rhythms, frenetic horn charts, and Horne's theatrical phrasing…

Mental Train: The Island Years 1969-1971 is a deep dive into the wild, wooly years before Mott the Hoople discovered glam. In other words, it's Mott the Hoople before they had anything resembling a hit but were still one of the hardest, heaviest, and weirdest rock bands to roam the land – and one of the most prolific, too. This six-disc box set covers a mere three years, but it was three years where they released four albums, piling up B-sides and other strays along the way. Mental Train rounds up what seems to be every surviving scrap and adds them as bonus tracks to Mott the Hoople, Mad Shadows, Wildlife and Brain Capers, and presenting two discs of non-LP material: a disc of unreleased music and a disc of live material…

The '60s pop outfit the Happenings enjoyed a three-year run of several hit singles late in the decade. Formed in 1961 in Patterson, NJ, the group has seen their lineup change from time to time, but founding member/lead singer Bob Miranda has been a constant member through it all…

Stand! is the pinnacle of Sly & the Family Stone's early work, a record that represents a culmination of the group's musical vision and accomplishment. Life hinted at this record's boundless enthusiasm and blurred stylistic boundaries, yet everything simply gels here, resulting in no separation between the astounding funk, effervescent irresistible melodies, psychedelicized guitars, and deep rhythms…

UK two CD set containing the British singer/songwriter's first three albums. Includes: Bedsitter Images, his debut album, released in 1967; Love Chronicles, his second album, released in 1969 (musical support from legendary musicians including Jimmy Page, Ashley Hutchings, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson); and Zero She Flies, his third album released in 1970…

In the United States, Brazilian trombonist Raul De Souza is best known for his Capitol releases of the late '70s. But his first session as a leader actually came in 1964, when he recorded À Vontade Mesmo for the Brazilian market. The LP wasn't released in the U.S., and it wasn't until the '70s that De Souza provided any American releases. These 1964 performances are excellent. When De Souza (who is listed as Raulzinho) recorded this album, the bossa nova explosion was in full swing - and plenty of musicians (both Brazilian and American) were trying to cash in on bossa nova's popularity. But while À Vontade Mesmo is instrumental Brazilian jazz, the album isn't bossa nova - certainly not in the Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd sense…

It's often unfair to compare the Rolling Stones to the Beatles but in the case of the group's mono mixes, it's instructive. Until the 2009 release of the box set The Beatles in Mono, all of the Fab Four's mono mixes were out of print. That's not the case with the Rolling Stones. Most of their '60s albums – released on Decca in the U.K., London in the U.S. – found mono mixes sneaking onto either the finished sequencing or various singles compilations, so the 2016 box The Rolling Stones in Mono only contains 56 heretofore unavailable mono mixes among its 186 tracks…

Child Is Father to the Man is keyboard player/singer/arranger Al Kooper's finest work, an album on which he moves the folk-blues-rock amalgamation of the Blues Project into even wider pastures, taking in classical and jazz elements (including strings and horns), all without losing the pop essence that makes the hybrid work. This is one of the great albums of the eclectic post-Sgt. Pepper era of the late '60s, a time when you could borrow styles from Greenwich Village contemporary folk to San Francisco acid rock and mix them into what seemed to have the potential to become a new American musical form. It's Kooper's bluesy songs, such as "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" and "I Can't Quit Her," and his singing that are the primary focus, but the album is an aural delight; listen to the way the bass guitar interacts with the horns on "My Days Are Numbered" or the charming arrangement and Steve Katz's vocal on Tim Buckley's "Morning Glory." Then Kooper sings Harry Nilsson's "Without Her" over a delicate, jazzy backing with flügelhorn/alto saxophone interplay by Randy Brecker and Fred Lipsius.

Guitarist T-Bone Walker is one of the links–if not THE link–between the suave, intricate jazz styles of Charlie Christian and Lonnie Johnson and the crackling electricity of Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix. Not only is he massively influential as a guitarist, but he was a dynamic showman (played that guitar behind his head way before Hendrix did) and his original songs have become standards ("Stormy Monday Blues"). Originally entitled HOME COOKING, this 1966 album from blues wizard T-Bone Walker, where he's accompanied by only three other musicians (with no drummer), proves the blues can be mellow without losing the sting or the zing.

16 original albums on 10 CDs!
This Box Set combines the best recordings from the crucial first decade of Brubeck's career. The great live recordings at college and festival appearances, the series with odd rhythmic meters that started with "Time Out," his first solo album, the recordings with musical impressions from his worldwide concert tours, and the totally underrated "The Real Ambassadors ", featuring Louis Armstrong, Carmen McRae and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross with a fantastic libretto by Brubeck's wife Iola.

When people think of top white blues performers from the 60's, names like Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, John Mayall and Al Kooper come readily to mind. While those guys all have their place in history, so does Charlie Musselwhite. Musselwhite learned the blues straight from old timers like Homesick James and Robert Nighthawk on Maxwell Street in the Windy City. This release, "Stone Blues" is his second solo release on Vanguard Records and while it contains no Musselwhite originals, the ten songs covered here, songs of Walter Jacob, Elmore James and Clay Cotton, provide ample opportunity to hear and enjoy the warm vocals and exemplary harp playing of Musselwhite.