Boz Scaggs has always been a musical artist of complexity. He founded his connection to music through the blues, but his lasting legacy is one of glamorous and romantic pop songwriting.

He possessed a somewhat shy and sensitive demeanor never totally at home in the public eye, yet his claim to several chart-topping singles and albums, particularly the millions-selling and critically acclaimed Silk Degrees (1976), demanded constant exposure. The persona he expressed through his music was laid back, effortlessly cool, sophisticated, stylish, romantically charming, and suave. But the immense success he achieved in his career pointed in part to the driven and determined artist within.

Lowdown: The Music of Boz Scaggs examines the uniqueness of these contradictions and Boz Scaggs’s sixty-plus-year career and his rich and diverse musical catalogue. Over the decades, Scaggs collaborated with an array of talented heavies, from the Steve Miller Band to the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (which included a young Duane Allman) on Boz Scaggs (1969), from the session players on Silk Degrees (1976) who would form the hit band Toto to Donald Fagen and Michael McDonald on the Dukes of September’s 2010 Rhythm Revue tour.

This first-ever book on Boz, written by The Vinyl District writer Jude Warne (author of America, the Band: An Authorized Biography) is constructed around intensely thorough analysis of his complete discography, and new and exclusive in-depth interviews with a selection of Scaggs’s associated colleagues from his vast career.

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Celebrating Mick Ralphs on his 81st birthday. —Ed.

Mott the fookin’ ‘Oople—you gotta love ‘em. They were the first band I ever sang along with in front of the mirror, imaginary microphone in hand, checking out my rock star moves. The song was “All the Young Dudes,” of course, and the album bearing the same title belonged to my oldest brother, who was the closest thing my tiny hometown had to an actual glam rocker; he glammed up a couple of pairs of stacked-heel shoes with sky-blue paint and glitter, and actually walked around in them, which took balls in a place where shoes like that practically screamed fag and Grand Funk Railroad was considered avant-garde.

The Mott the Hoople story is legendary; they recorded four albums that didn’t do very well, mainly because they were a diffuse mix of sludgy hard rock, irksome folk, Ian Hunter’s Dylanesque musings, and covers of everyone from Little Richard to Melanie to yes, you heard me correctly, Sonny Bono. That said, LP number 3, 1971’s Brain Capers, was a real breakthrough, containing as it did such weird and wonderful numbers as “The Moon Upstairs,” “Death May Be Your Santa Claus,” and that bizarre little ditty “The Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception,” not to mention a stunning cover of Dion DiMucci’s harrowing but ultimately redemptive heroin confessional, “Your Own Backyard.”

Still, the band had decided to call it quits following a disaster of a gig in an abandoned gas holder in Switzerland—you know you’re in trouble when you’re reduced to playing an abandoned gas holder anywhere–which Hunter recounts in detail in the excellent “Ballad of Mott the Hoople (26 March 1972)” off 1973’s Mott. When who should come knocking to beg them to reconsider but Ziggy Stardust himself, who as an incentive offered them first dibs on “Suffragette City,” which they turned down (!). So the Zigster sat down and wrote “All the Young Dudes” specifically for them. Said lead singer Ian Hunter, “I’d been waiting to hear something like that all my life.” The band regrouped, this time adorned in the outrageous trappings of glam.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | TASCHEN and Atlantic Records proudly announce the release of 75 Years of Atlantic Records, a celebration of one of the most influential record labels in music history. This official and definitive photographic history showcases Atlantic’s monumental impact on global culture, marking a legacy of 75 years of innovation, diversity, and artistic excellence.

As Bruno Mars writes in his foreword to the book, “The Atlantic crew changed the way records were made and how people heard them. It was an explosion in Sound, and it was pure magic.” Atlantic Records revolutionized the industry by championing a wide range of genres, from R&B, soul, and jazz to rock, pop, and hip-hop. 75 Years of Atlantic Records brings this history to life through stunning imagery and compelling narratives, offering fans an intimate journey into the label’s musical and visual evolution.

Four years in the making, 75 Years of Atlantic Records features: Iconic portraits and rare behind-the-scenes photographs of legendary artists such as Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Led Zeppelin, and Bruno Mars. Unpublished imagery from Atlantic’s extensive archives, showcasing pivotal moments in music history. Insightful essays by award-winning writers David Ritz, Ben Ratliff, Barney Hoskyns, and others. A foreword by Bruno Mars, celebrating Atlantic’s transformative role in shaping the soundtracks of our lives.

“This book is a testament to the artists, visionaries, and stories that have defined Atlantic Records over the past 75 years,” said Benedikt Taschen, founder of TASCHEN. “It’s a celebration of music’s power to transcend boundaries and bring people together.”

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I spoke with author and filmmaker Jamie Taylor about his new book Studio Electrophonique, which is the amazing story of the home studio in Sheffield that helped launch some of Britain’s most beloved bands.

Sheffield mechanic Ken Patten’s makeshift home studio became the launch pad for a group of young musicians who would shape the futuristic sound of 1980s pop. The Human League, Heaven 17, Pulp, ABC and others made their early recordings with Ken, whose DIY ethic was the perfect fit for a city facing industrial decline but teeming with ideas. Jamie tells his story vividly and beautifully. It’s a real love letter to Sheffield and the era.

Studio Electrophonique arrives in April via the Manchester University Press. I encourage you to visit their site. If you are US based you’ll have to visit an online retailer to find it.

Radar features discussions with artists and industry leaders who are creators and devotees of music and is produced by Dylan Hundley and The Vinyl District. Dylan Hundley is an artist and performer, and the co-creator and lead singer of Lulu Lewis and all things at Darling Black. She co-curates and hosts Salon Lulu which is a New York based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.

Celebrating John Evan, born on this day in 1948. —Ed.

Despite their much-vaunted reputation for producing ambitious concept albums of enormous heft, Jethro Tull are bearable only as a singles band. Sure, Tull’s 1971 concept album Aqualung is a classic, but I’d sooner be hit with a brick than listen to the following year’s concept album Thick as a Brick, and the only passionate feelings I can summon up for 1973’s concept album A Passion Play (yes, they hit the trifecta!) can be summed up with the words “Turn it off.” But “Bungle in the Jungle” and “Living in the Past”? Count me in!

Ian Anderson has always been an entertaining and exasperating crank—stand him on one leg like a deranged flamingo and hand him a flute and he will tie your mind into sailors’ knots with his folk-rock swoops, loops, and other assorted paradiddle, that is when he isn’t spouting folksy wisdom and moralistic sermons of the sort you’d expect from the stewed Diogenes permanently welded to the end stool in your local pub.

I disagree with The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau, who wrote of old flamingo leg “Ian Anderson is one of those people who attracts admirers by means of a principled arrogance that has no relation to his actual talents or accomplishments” for the simple reason that Anderson is talented—he has simply misused his talent for evil. Thick as a Brick is ample proof of this fact.

But it takes a real genius to fritter away all of one’s talent, and Anderson isn’t that sort of real genius. Seemingly despite himself he has produced songs that don’t happen to be almost forty-four minutes long. And I’m talking pithy and unique songs, the best of which made seventies FM radio a happier place. But eccentric that he is he didn’t manage to come up with enough radio-ready classics to fill a greatest hits compilation, which is at least in part what makes 1976’s M.U. – The Best of Jethro Tull so interesting.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings and Jazz Dispensary proudly unveil the latest release in their sought-after Top Shelf series: 1975’s City Life, from the legendary jazz-funk ensemble, The Blackbyrds. Arriving May 30th, the chart-topping album features such delicacies as the effervescent “Happy Music,” the dancefloor-ready title track, and the group’s heavily sampled signature hit, “Rock Creek Park.”

Celebrating City Life’s golden anniversary, this reissue returns the album to vinyl in style, with all-analog mastering by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, 180-gram vinyl pressed at RTI, and a gatefold tip-on jacket. Additionally, a deluxe digital edition of City Life will be available across streaming platforms on May 30th, featuring five bonus tracks, including such rarities as a disco mix of “Happy People,” a 12-inch version of “Rock Creek Park,” and a previously-unreleased extended cut of “All I Ask.” In conjunction with the release, Jazz Dispensary will also be releasing a brand-new official Blackbyrds T-shirt illustrated by acclaimed artist Madalyn Stefanak, inspired by the band’s iconic “Rock Creek Park” music video, available exclusively on the Craft Recordings store.

The story of The Blackbyrds begins with the celebrated trumpet player and vocalist, Donald Byrd (1932–2013). Rising to prominence during the hard bop era, Byrd played alongside a who’s who of jazz legends, including John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and Herbie Hancock. By the turn of the ‘70s, however, Byrd found himself at the forefront of the fusion movement. Working with pioneering producers Larry and Fonce Mizell (better known as the Mizell Brothers), Byrd scored a string of hit records, beginning with 1973’s Black Byrd.

That same year, while serving as a professor at Howard University’s music department, Byrd encouraged several of his students to form their own group, in what was meant to be a real-world lesson in the music industry. Inspired by the title of their professor’s hugely popular debut, the fusion ensemble—including vocalist/drummer Keith Killgo, keyboardist Kevin Toney, and bass guitarist Joe Hall—called themselves The Blackbyrds. Before long, the group signed to Fantasy Records and released a pair of bestselling albums (both produced by Byrd) in 1974: The Blackbyrds and Flying Start.

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Remembering Ben Webster, born on this day in 1909. —Ed.

As one of the greatest of tenor saxophonists, Ben Webster amassed a sizable discography across a long career. His live performances were also extensive and on occasion, those nights were recorded. Released posthumously in 1985, At the Renaissance is a fine introduction to Webster’s full-bodied, mature style as he stretches out with a sharp band. There are certainly more important albums in Ben Webster’s body of work, but he rarely sounded better than he does right here.

Ben Webster is most renowned for his work with Duke Ellington, who he joined for an extended period in 1940 after playing in numerous bands, including those of Bennie Moten, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, and Cab Calloway. Considered one of the “big three” tenor saxophonists of the swing era (the others are Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young), Webster was the first major player on the instrument to have a significant role in Ellington’s band, though by 1943 he’d made his exit for the clubs of 52nd Street.

Webster briefly rejoined Ellington later in the decade (he’d first played with Duke in the mid-’30s), but from the mid-’40s onward his career path is noted for an association with promoter Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic initiative, co-led sessions with Hawkins, pianists Art Tatum and Oscar Pederson and saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, plus plenty of records and club dates as a leader.

At the Renaissance is just one of numerous albums capturing those club dates. Prior to departing for Europe in 1964, Webster gigged frequently at the Los Angeles club the Renaissance, often with Mulligan, but on October 14, 1960 he was leading the band heard here, with Jimmy Rowles on piano, Jim Hall on guitar, Red Mitchell on bass, and Frank Butler on drums.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Blue Bossa in the Bronx: Live from the Blue Morocco, a never-before-heard live performance from master hard bop trumpeter Kenny Dorham, will be released as a two-LP set by Resonance Records for Record Store Day (April 12, 2025).

The collection has been transferred from the original tape reels, mastered by Fran Gala at Resonance Records Studio, and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at 33-1/3 rpm at Le Vinylist as a limited-edition package. The storming all-star club date will be issued as a deluxe CD on April 18.

Both LP and CD editions include notes by two-time Grammy winner Bob Blumenthal; a Dorham appreciation by Dan Morgenstern, the late director of Rutgers University’s Institute of Jazz Studies and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master; remembrances from trumpeters Eddie Henderson, Charles Tolliver, Steven Bernstein, and Jeremy Pelt; and more.

The collection was recorded by Bernard Drayton in 1967 at the titular New York venue, a local bar at Boston Road and 168th Street that was operated by Sylvia Robinson (previously in the hit-making duo Mickey and Sylvia) and her husband Joe; the couple went on to found the groundbreaking rap label Sugar Hill Records.

Blue Bossa in the Bronx features a hard-hitting band comprising alto saxophonist Sonny Red, pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Denis Charles. It leads off with Dorham’s best-known composition, “Blue Bossa,” first heard on Page One, tenor saxophonist and longtime bandmate Joe Henderson’s 1963 debut as a leader. The repertoire also includes an untitled blues by Dorham, numbers originated by Charlie Parker, Milt Jackson, and Miles Davis, and the standards “Memories of You” and “My One and Only Love.”

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Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is considered to be one of the greats in the broad spectrum of 20th-century classical music, and he’s further distinguished as a trailblazer of “holy minimalism.” Befitting a composer of his stature, the discography of Pärt’s recorded works is vast, but from inside that number there resides a smaller group of releases holding particular import. On April 11, Mississippi Records’ Silentium is poised to join the list of essential Pärt recordings. Offering three selections on side one and a long and unique version of the title piece on the flip, the release is available on LP (in black or clear vinyl editions), CD, and digital. A 35”x35” silkscreen poster is also available.

Arvo Pärt came to prominence in his home country in the 1960s with a handful of recordings spanning the decade, but these are formative works that precede a long period of woodshedding after which Pärt reemerged with his tintinnabuli style of composing, a method where he utilizes two distinct voices (i.e. instruments), a tintinnabular voice restricted to the notes of the tonic triad and a melodic voice that can roam around freely.

Für Alina, first performed in 1976, introduced Pärt’s tintinnabuli style. It was eventually documented on one of numerous recordings made for the ECM label, a group of releases that comprise a significant chunk of his essential discography. The first recording of Pärt’s compositions released by ECM was Tabula Rasa in 1984, the title piece dating from 1977 scored for two solo violins, prepared piano, and string chamber orchestra (consisting of two violins, viola, cello, and contrabass).

The performance and recordings of Tabula Rasa were major successes integral to Pärt’s breakthrough as a composer and specifically as one of the three major pioneers of holy (or mystical) minimalism, alongside composers Henryk Górecki (of Poland) and John Tavener (of England). Holy minimalism is a sacred music of uncommonly deep feeling that’s strikingly devoid of concerns with passing fashions.

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