dimanche 20 septembre 2026
Teena Marie - The Definitive Discography & Extra Tracks
Mary Christine Brockert (March 5, 1956 – December 26, 2010), known professionally as Teena Marie, was an American soul and R&B singer, songwriter, and producer. She was known by her childhood nickname Tina[2] before taking the stage name Teena Marie and later acquired the nickname Lady T,[3] given to her by her collaborator and friend Rick James.
She was known for her distinctive and soulful soprano vocals,[4][5][6] which caused many listeners to believe she was black.[7] Her success in R&B and soul music, and loyalty to these genres earned her the title Ivory Queen of Soul. She played rhythm guitar, keyboards, and congas. Teena Marie was a four-time Grammy Award nominee, winning posthumously in 2023 for Best R&B Song for co-writing "Cuff It".
Chocolate Milk - Groove City (The Collection)
Early sessions with producer Allen Toussaint resulted in the band being signed to RCA Victor in the summer of 1975, and releasing 'Action Speaks Louder Than Words' (#15 R&B / #69 pop), which was sampled often in the hip hop era. The group eventually released 8 albums for RCA. Other hits include 'Girl Callin' / Thinking Of You' (#14 R&B) and 'Blue Jeans' (#15 R&B).
The group disbanded in 1983 after their final album Friction failed to take off in the charts.
samedi 19 septembre 2026
The Gap Band - Outstanding (In The Studio)
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Five Star - The Gold Deluxe Anthology
vendredi 18 septembre 2026
Midnight Star - The Studio Recordings (On Solar & Reel Star Records)
The group was formed in 1976 at Kentucky State University by trumpeter Reggie Calloway, vocalist Belinda Lipscomb,[1] guitarist/drummer/vocalist Melvin Gentry, bassist Kenneth Gant, multi-instrumentalist Bill Simmons, keyboard player/vocalist Bo Watson and guitarist/keyboardist Jeff Cooper, as a self-contained group. They later added non-KSU student trombonist Vincent Calloway (Reginald's younger brother). A 1978 New York City showcase inspired SOLAR Records chief Dick Griffey to sign the group. They released their debut album The Beginning (1980) with some studio musicians. In 1981 their second album, released on Solar Records, Standing Together, reached position #54 on the U.S. R&B chart.[2] In 1982 they released the album Victory. Using elected band leader Reggie Calloway's production skills, Midnight Star hit the U.S. R&B chart with early singles "Hot Spot" and "I've Been Watching You".[2] Drummer Bobby Lovelace joined the group in late 1982, freeing Gentry to sing and play guitar exclusively.
Midnight Star's fourth album, No Parking on the Dance Floor, was released in 1983, and proved to be their breakout. Featuring a mix of R&B and funk with vocoder vocals, the album hit No. 2 on the Billboard magazine Top Black Albums chart[3] and No. 27 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape[3] and it went double platinum in the U.S.[4] Its first single, "Freak-A-Zoid", went to No. 2 on the U.S. Black Singles chart.[2] The Washington Post's J. D. Considine argues that this song served to "establish [the] group's stylistic identity" and that it "put Midnight Star on the pop music map because it so perfectly combined the group's technopop tendencies with its R&B roots"[5] Other singles from the album included "Wet My Whistle", and the title track. The album's three singles all charted on Billboard's Hot 100, Black Singles and dance charts.[3] and the album tracks "Slow Jam" (co-written by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds) and "Electricity" received significant airplay.
Planetary Invasion had the same "basic sound...from the chattering electronic pulse to Vincent Calloway's chatty vocoder" as the band's previous release[5] and also went platinum.[4] "Operator", the first single, made the pop top 20 and the number one spot on the R&B chart; it remains the band's only Billboard top 40 hit to date.[2]
In 1985, Midnight Star, Kool & the Gang, Shalamar and Klymaxx performed at the Marriott Convention Center in Oklahoma City. The band continued to do concerts in San Antonio and Little Rock.[6]
In 1986 the band released the Headlines, which was their third album to sell at least gold. It was to be their last with the Calloway brothers. Due to irreconcilable differences with the other members, Reggie was out of the group, and Vincent left shortly thereafter. They achieved their biggest success in the UK with "Midas Touch", which made #8, and "Headlines", a #16 hit earlier the same year.[7] Without the Calloways who formed the group Calloway and released an album that spawned the 1990 hit single "I Wanna Be Rich",[8] Midnight Star recorded two more albums, the self-titled Midnight Star and Work It Out. These two albums proved not as successful as their previous three releases, but the singles "Don't Rock the Boat" and "Snake in the Grass" did reach the top ten on the R&B singles chart.[2] The group went on a long hiatus, though they never officially broke up.
The group reunited in 2000 with many of the original members (including all of the singers) and released the album 15th Avenue two years later.[1] Since then, the group has toured sporadically, most recently with a lineup that includes Belinda Lipscomb, Kenneth Gant, Melvin Gentry, Bo Watson, and Bobby Lovelace, with Bill Simmons sometimes joining as well.
Hot Chocolate Featuring Errol Brown - In The Studio
Hot Chocolate are a British soul band formed by Errol Brown and Tony Wilson. The group had at least one hit song every year on the UK Singles Chart from 1970 to 1984.[2]
Their hits include "You Sexy Thing", a UK number two which also made the top 10 in three decades, reached number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number five in Canada, and also featured in the film The Full Monty (1997); "So You Win Again", which topped the UK Charts; "Every 1's a Winner" which reached number five in Canada and number six in the US; "It Started with a Kiss", which reached the UK top five, and "Emma", which charted at number three in the UK, number five in Canada, and number 8 in the US. In 2004, Brown received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.
jeudi 17 septembre 2026
Justo Almario - Interlude (1981)
Justo Pastor Almario Gómez (born 18 February 1949) is a Colombian-American flutist, saxophonist and Latin jazz group leader.[1][2][3] He was among several Colombian musicians recruited by Mongo Santamaria for his band in the 1970s, notably on the album, Afro–Indio (1975).[4][5] He is based in Los Angeles.
Crown Heights Affair - The Studio Albums With Bonus Tracks (Box Set)
Crown Heights Affair is an American R&B / funk / disco group from Brooklyn, New York City, founded in 1967.
Originally known as Ben Iverson and the Nue Dey Express on Britne Records, founded by then-bassist Donnie Linton, the group was renamed for a neighborhood in Brooklyn. The line-up consisted of Phillip Thomas (vocals), William Anderson (guitar/vocals), Howard Young (keyboards), Bert Reid and James "Ajax" Baynard (trumpets), Raymond Reid (trombone), Arnold 'Muki' Wilson (bass), Julius Dilligard Jr. (trombone), and Raymond Rock (drums, percussion). Under contract to RCA they recorded their self-titled first album in 1974, featuring their first single "(You Can't Bend My) Super Rod".[1]
Personnel changes followed, along with a shift in 1975 to De-Lite Records. The record label's subsequent liaison with Polygram Records saw the group gain worldwide audiences for singles such as "Dreaming a Dream", "Every Beat of My Heart", "Foxy Lady" and "Dancin'".
"Dreaming a Dream" reached Number one on the US Hot Dance Club Play chart in 1975, (plus US Billboard Hot 100 #43); and they topped out at #2 on the US Dance Chart later that year with "Every Beat of My Heart" (Billboard Hot 100 #83).[2] In the UK Singles Chart they made the top 40 in 1978 with "Galaxy of Love", and #10 in 1980 with "You Gave Me Love". Both tracks were huge disco hits in the UK, with a powerful brass section on "Galaxy of Love" and strong chorus vocals on "You Gave Me Love".[3]
Their follow-up album, Do It Your Way, contained the tunes "Dancin'", "Far Out" and their answer to New Birth's song "Gotta Get a Knutt', "(Do It) The French Way". In the 1980s they were successful record producers for some Prelude Records acts like France Joli ("Gonna Get Over You"), and they produced two songs for Amii Stewart in 1981. Crown Heights Affair disbanded in 1984.[1]
On 22 June 2013, they reunited to play at the Coronet in London, as part of the Streetsounds Summer Ball.[4]
Bert Reid died of lung cancer on December 12, 2004, at the age of 48.[5] Thomas joined the Flamingos in 2007.
Raymond Reid (born on November 30, 1952, in New York) died of cancer on May 21, 2013. He was 60.[6]
Trumpeter James "Ajax" Baynard died on February 20, 2015, after a car crash in South Jamaica, New York. He was 63.[7] The news of his death was posted on the Crown Heights Affair Facebook page.
Shalamar - The Ten Original Albums
Shalamar is an American R&B and soul music vocal group created by Dick Griffey and Don Cornelius in 1977 and active throughout the 1980s. Shalamar's classic lineup on the SOLAR label consisted of Howard Hewett, Jody Watley, and Jeffrey Daniel. It was originally a disco-driven group created by Soul Train booking agent Dick Griffey and show creator and producer Don Cornelius.[1][2] They went on to be an influential dance trio managed by Dick Griffey. Initially signed to Soul Train Records they transferred to Griffey's Solar Records after the Cornelius-Griffey Entertainment company was dissolved.[3] According to British Hit Singles & Albums, they were fashion icons and trendsetters, and helped to introduce "body-popping" to the United Kingdom.[3] Their name was created by Griffey.
mercredi 16 septembre 2026
Trouble Funk - The Funk Going Trouble / Box Set
Trouble Funk is an American R&B and funk band from Washington, D.C.[1] The group helped to popularize funk and the subgenre go-go in the Washington metropolitan area.[1] Among the band's well-known songs is the go-go anthem "Hey, Fellas". They released several studio albums including Drop the Bomb, In Times of Trouble, Live, and Trouble Over Here Trouble Over There (UK No. 54),[2] and two live albums, Trouble Funk: Straight Up Go-Go Style and Saturday Night Live. In 1982, they released a single "So Early in the Morning" on D.E.T.T Records, later reissued on diverse labels as 2.13.61 and Tuff City. Trouble Funk sometimes shared the stage with hardcore punk bands of the day such as Minor Threat and the Big Boys[3].
Trouble Funk's song "Pump Me Up" was sampled by many other artists, including Dimples D.'s "Sucker DJ", which went to No. 1 in Australia, Public Enemy's "Fight the Power", Kurtis Blow's song "If I Ruled the World" and MARRS's song "Pump Up the Volume". The song is also featured in the film Style Wars and on the fictional old-school hip-hop radio station Wildstyle in the game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002).
Keyboard player Robert "Syke Dyke" Reed died at the age of 50 on April 13, 2008, from pancreatic cancer.[4]
Trouble Funk remains active in the Washington, D.C. area live-music scene.
Hiram Bullock In The Eighties
Bullock was born in Osaka, Japan, to African American parents serving in the U.S. military. At the age of two he returned to Baltimore, Maryland, with his parents and showed musical talent. He studied piano at the city's Peabody Conservatory of Music, giving his first public performance at the age of six. After playing saxophone and bass guitar, he took up the electric guitar at age sixteen.[1]
Bullock attended McDonogh School for Boys in Reisterstown, Maryland. He was captain of the band in middle school. He studied at the University of Miami, where he met guitarists Pat Metheny and Steve Morse, and bass players Jaco Pastorius and Will Lee. He paid for tuition by performing at nightclubs in Florida before moving to New York. He became best known for playing with Lee on Late Night with David Letterman and working with David Sanborn and Bob James. His work can be heard on Steely Dan's Gaucho (1980), Paul Simon's One Trick Pony (1980), Sting's ...Nothing Like the Sun (1987) and Billy Joel's The Stranger (1977). He also worked with Harry Belafonte, Marcus Miller, Carla Bley, Miles Davis, Ruben Rada, and Gil Evans.
He recorded as a member of the 24th Street Band, which released three albums: 24th Street Band (1979), Share Your Dreams (1980) and Bokutachi (1981). In 1982, he released his debut album, First Class Vagabond, which was exclusively distributed for the Japanese market by the JVC-Victor Company and later reissued on CD. Also in 1982, he was an original member of The World's Most Dangerous Band, the house band on the NBC-TV program Late Night with David Letterman. He stayed with Letterman's show for about two years.
In 1986, Bullock released his first album as a leader for Atlantic Records called From All Sides, followed by the albums Give It What You Got in 1987, and Way Kool in 1990.
Shortly after the Atlantic albums, he recorded a few tracks from those sessions for a live event at the Indigo Blues Venue, in order to release it in Japan. His live band from the Indigo Blues sessions included Dave Delhomme (keyboards), Steve Logan (bass guitar), and Steven Wolf (drums).
On May 27, 2004, he teamed up with drummer Billy Cobham and the WDR Big Band for a performance of the works of Jimi Hendrix at the University of Cologne in Germany. An album of this performance was released posthumously in 2008.
He had his own signature model guitars made by Cort, the HBS & HBS-II.
After overcoming a bout of throat cancer in 2007, Bullock succumbed to his intermittent but long habit of substance abuse and died after a "crack binge" on July 25, 2008, in New York City, at the age of 52. Letterman band leader Paul Shaffer said after his death that Bullock “was the greatest guitar player ever, with the exception perhaps of Jimi Hendrix. Nobody was ever better.
The History Of Bob James
James was born on Christmas Day of 1939 in Marshall, Missouri, United States.[1] He started playing the piano at age four.[1] His first piano teacher, Sister Mary Elizabeth, who taught at Mercy Academy, discovered that he had perfect pitch. At age seven, James began to study with R. T. Dufford, a teacher at Missouri Valley College. At age 15, James continued his studies with Franklin Launer, a teacher at Christian College in Columbia, Missouri, with more music instruction during high school from Harold Lickey, conductor of the Marshall High School Band and Orchestra. Apart from the piano, James learned to play trumpet, timpani, and percussion. From 1950 to 1956, he competed in the Missouri State Fair piano competitions and received several blue ribbons.
James attended the University of Michigan,[1] but during his second year transferred to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. At Berklee his roommate was saxophonist Nick Brignola.
His first professional music job was when he was eight years old, playing for a tap dance class at Mercy Academy. During his adolescence, James's music career proliferated. Early jobs included being a member of the Earle Parsons Dance Band (c. 1952–55) which played various engagements around the Marshall area. During this time, he penned his first dance band arrangement.
During the summer of 1955, at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, James played for dancing and occasional jam sessions with the Bob Falkenhainer Quartet on the Governor McClurg Excursion Boat in the evenings. He recalls that "during the day we had free time and I became a proficient water skier that summer!" At age 16, a solo engagement followed in the summer when James traveled with good friend Ben Swinger to Colorado and ended up with a job in the piano bar at the Steads Ranch resort in Estes Park.
While in college at Michigan, James played free jazz with musicians in Ann Arbor and Detroit. In 1962, his band entered the Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival, where the judges included Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones. The trio entered the competition not expecting to win but wanting to provide some avant-garde music in a contest field that was primarily straight ahead music.[5] To the trio's surprise, they won the competition. Not long after, Jones signed James to an album deal with Mercury Records. Mercury released James's first album, Bold Conceptions (1963), a somewhat free jazz exploration that was produced by Quincy Jones and that differed from the smooth jazz for which he would later become known.[6][7][3]
In New York City, James worked as an arranger and was hired as piano accompanist for jazz singer Sarah Vaughan.[1] He reunited with Quincy Jones when Jones asked him to do some arranging for studio sessions.[1] Creed Taylor, producer and founder of CTI Records, was at the sessions and hired James to work for CTI as a producer, arranger, and studio musician.[1] In the 1970s, James worked on albums by Gabor Szabo, Milt Jackson, Stanley Turrentine, Grover Washington, Jr. (notably on Mister Magic), and Maynard Ferguson.
Creed Taylor invited James to record a solo album. The result, One (CTI, 1974), contained the song "Feel Like Making Love", with which Roberta Flack had already had a hit. James had been hired to play piano for the song on Roberta Flack's album two weeks before recording a version of his own, using the same band. Radio stations played both and contributed to the commercial success of One.[6] The album was notable for adapting classical music to a modern-day scene, e.g. "In The Garden" was based on Pachelbel's Canon in D and "Night on Bald Mountain" was a cover of Modest Mussorgsky's composition of the same name.
After three solo albums, James founded his own record label, Tappan Zee. Immediately thereafter, he cut a disco version of the Theme to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a 45 of which was included with the soundtrack LP, and recorded the album Touchdown (Tappan Zee/Columbia/CBS, 1978).[8] Among the songs on the album was "Angela", the theme song for the TV show Taxi. James provided all the music for Taxi and collected some of its music, including "Angela", on The Genie: Themes & Variations from the TV Series Taxi (Columbia/CBS, 1983).[9] When he toured in 1979, he was supported by a marketing campaign that included posters of him at the wheel of a New York yellow cab. The performances were documented on the album All Around the Town (Tappan Zee/Columbia/CBS, 1980), with a cover of James at the wheel of a taxi.
James turned from smooth jazz to classical music to record Rameau (CVS Masterworks, 1984), his interpretations of Baroque-period composer Jean-Philippe Rameau.[10] In later albums, he interpreted the work of two more Baroque composers, J. S. Bach and Domenico Scarlatti.
A year after Rameau, he moved to Warner Bros. Records and collaborated with David Sanborn on Double Vision (Warner Bros., 1986); the album won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance.[11] He would record albums for Warner Bros. (which also reissued Bob James' CTI and Tappan Zee/Columbia back catalog in the mid-1990s) for the next seventeen years. His collaboration with Earl Klugh, One on One, won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance in 1980 and has sold over one million copies. Another collaboration with Klugh, Cool, (Warner Bros., 1992) was nominated for a Grammy, as was Joined at the Hip (Warner Bros., 1996) with Kirk Whalum. He also recorded Flesh and Bone in 1995 with his daughter, Hillary James, and another solo album, Joy Ride (Warner Bros., 1999). Joined at the Hip was reissued with a 2019 Remaster on evosound.
Let's Smooth With Dave Valentin
Valentin was born on April 29, 1952, to Puerto Rican parents specifically from Mayagüez in the South Bronx in New York City Fox Street Tiffany Hunts Point, Bronx section, predominantly a Jewish neighborhood at that Time. His father was a Merchant Marine and his mother Sylvia Valentin Ramirez, a working housewife. He lived across St. Athanasius Church (Bronx). At age 13 his mother died. He attended The High School of Music & Art.[2] He learned percussion at an early age, and by 10 was playing conga and timbales professionally.[3][1] When he was 12, he began to practice the flute so he could get to know a girl in school who played the flute, Irene Cathcart. He borrowed a flute, bought a Herbie Mann record, and started to teach himself.[4] Years later, he recorded an album with Mann called Two Amigos.[2] He took lessons from Hubert Laws, who became his mentor.
In the 1970s, Valentin combined Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, and funk with jazz with his ensemble which featured at various times Bill O'Connell (piano), Lincoln Goines and Ruben Rodriguez (bass), Richie Morales and Robby Ameen (drums), Sammy Figueroa and Giovanni Hidalgo (congas).[3] He was the first musician signed to GRP Records, a label founded by Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen that specialized in smooth jazz, jazz fusion, and jazz-pop-Latin. He recorded his debut album with Ricardo Marrero in 1977.[2] Over time he recorded with Noel Pointer, Patti Austin, Lee Ritenour, Chris Connor, David Benoit, Eliane Elias, and Nnenna Freelon.[3] Until 1979, he was a schoolteacher.[1]
For several years Valentin served as musical director for Tito Puente's Golden Latin Jazz All-Stars, and also toured with Manny Oquendo's Conjunto Libre. In 2000, he appeared in the documentary Calle 54 performing with Tito Puente's Orchestra.[5][6][7]
For seven years in a row, he was chosen best jazz flautist by readers of Jazziz magazine. In 1985, he received a Grammy Award nomination as best R&B instrumentalist.[2][1] In 2003, he won a Grammy for Caribbean Jazz Project, an album he did with Dave Samuels.[8]
In March 2012, Valentin had a stroke which left him partially paralyzed and unable to perform. In 2015, he suffered a second stroke, and worked to overcome his disabilities in an extended-care facility.[9]
On March 8, 2017, Valentin died from complications of a stroke and Parkinson's disease in the Bronx at the age of 64. His lifelong "special friend", Irene, for whom he learned to play the flute, was at his side when he passed.
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