Bear Family Records Press Archive

Press - The Platters - Rock - vintage rock
The Platters were, without doubt, one of the biggest selling vocal groups of the rock'n'roll era on both sides of the Atlantic. Famed for both their ballads and the singing of lead vocalist Tony Williams, they cut their share of uptempo dance numbers, and Germany's Bear Family h

Presse - The Platters - Rock - no depression
Like many of rock ‘n’ roll’s founding acts, the decades have largely reduced the Platters’ memory to their hits - “Only You,” “The Great Pretender,” “My Prayer,” “Twilight Time” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” But, also like many of their colleagues, there was a great deal more to the Platters catalog than these iconic singles. Bear Family’s generous thirty track collection explores beyond the group’s familiar ballads, and focuses on mid- and uptempo tracks from the Mercury years of 1955-1962.

Press - Tages - Studio (180g Vinyl & DVD) - http://www.brooklynvegan.com
The 50 best psychedelic rock albums of the Summer of Love...
They could have been bigger than the Beatles. Well of course not, but they were the biggest and best pop band to come out of Sweden in the ‘60s. Before this record they were a straight up beat pop rock and roll band, having released two albums in Sweden that were huge hits there.

The Knoxville Sessions Finalists for the 2017 ARSC Awards for Excellence
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2017ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. Winners will be announced in September 2017, and the awards will be presented at a ceremony in May 2018, during ARSC’s annual conference. Additional information about the conference and the ARSC Awards for Excellence can be found at www.arsc-audio.org.

Press - Sly & Robbie present Taxi Gang In Discomix Style - Goldmine
There are no words for how magnificent this collection is – eight solid Taxi discomixes that dig into the studio’s late seventies fascination with American soul and disco, spreading out across “Fever” (Marcia Griffiths), “Break Your Promise” (Barry Biggs), “Show and Tell” (Ken Boothe),“Could It Be I’m Falling in Love” (Home T-Y) and “Inner City Blues” (Delroy Wilson)…. So titles and artists alone let you know what you’re in for, and with “Rainy Night,” at a mere 6.54, the shortest track in sight, you can imagine the rest. Or feel it in the pit of your stomach.

Press - Sly & Robbie present Taxi Gang In Discomix Style - reggaeville.com
Bear Family Records outta Germany, worldwide known for their high quality reissues of vintage music, releases their first Reggae album this month via their sublabel Cree Records: Sly & Robbie Present Taxi Gang In Discomix Style 1978 - 1987

Press - George Jones - Birth Of A Legend - Rhythms Magazine
GEORGE JONES BIRTH OF A LEGEND Bear Family COUNTRY

Bear Family have already released box sets detailing the '60s career of country great George Jones. For their first box set release of 2017, the label has finally gone back to the early years on Starday and Mercury with a 6 CD set. Over the last 40 years this has been the most requested box set for Bear Family. Due to the difficulty in locating many of these early recordings this has been a set 20 years in the making!

Press - George Jones - Birth Of A Legend - Country Music People
GEORGE JONES Birth Of A Legend - The Truly Complete any And Mercury Recordings 1954-1961 ****

6 CDs - 200 tracks - 174 pages hardcover book Producer: Various Bear Family 7:38:00
This six CD boxed set is one of Bear Family's most requested sets ever. Charting the beginning of the greatest career in country music, it includes all of Jones' classic early recordings including Why Baby Why, White Lightning, Window Up Above, and 22 more charted hits. It also includes the Thumper Jones rockabilly single and duets with Janette Hicks, Bobbie Ellison, Margie Singleton, and Virginia Spurlock and comes with a whopping 174 page book and a newly researched biography and discography. Bear Family first started working on this discography more than 20 years ago and have spent goodness knows how many man hours figuring out who owned what and making sense of tapes logs and session contracts.

Press - George Jones - Birth Of A Legend - Oldiemarkt
This exhaustive anthology offers a fascinating overview of Jones' progression as he graduated to Mercury, especially his mastery of the heart-tearing ballad ("Cup Of Loneliness"; "Colour Of The Blues"; the majestic "The Window Up Above"). Legendary names like Grady Martin, Hank Garland and Buddy Emmons are at hand to shape the music, from rockabilly to honkY-tonk, and there's alsothe first appearance

Press - Sly & Robbie present Taxi Gang In Discomix Style - Mojo Magazine
Present Taxi Gang In Disco Mix Style 1978-1987 CREE. CD/DL/LP Sublime Sly & Robbie pop reggae and lovers rock mixes. This selection taken from Sly & Robbie's Kingston-based Taxi label is top notch from start to finish with the Rhythm Twins driving disco and soul covers by Delroy Wilson, Marcia Grif-fiths et al. The latter's take on Fever is slinky and jazz-tinged, although Griffiths is

Press - Various - SUN Records Great Guitars At Sun - Mojo Magazine
compilation putting the ckbe t in the front sPat. There's a famous newsreel clip of a 1950s Southern hellfire preacher - Hank Snow's son, as it happens - denouncing rock'n'roll, claiming that what sent the kids over the edge was "the beat! the beat! the beat!". This fine collection shines the spotlight squarely on the people delivering that beat, none more so than the magnificent Jimmy Van Eaton, who drummed on 173 of the 330 songs issued during his time at Sun. He's on 14 of the 28 here, from Billy Riley's Red Hot to Jerry Lee's Whole Lotta Shakin' and Charlie Rich's

Press - Sly & Robbie present Taxi Gang In Discomix Style - Goldmine Magazine
Maybe it’s just me, but it’s impossible to hear a reggae retake of “Rainy Night in Georgia” without Prince Buster’s “Big Five’ leering its way into the room. But maybe not so much now, as Tinga Stewart turns in what we might call a more conventional cover… albeit one that is weighted down by the mighty Sly and Robbie, a terrific vocal take that edges ever so sweetly into a balls-out bullworking dub.

Press - Groovin` The Blues - Rockin` The Groove - Livingblues.com
VARIOUS ARTISTS Groovin' the Blues: When Groove Was More Than Just a Habit Bear Family — BCD 17411 Rockin' the Groove: When Groove Was More Than Just a Habit Bear Family - BCD 17212
Due to the World War II shortage of shellac, a resin that was used in the manufacturing of 78 r.p.m. records, major labels such as RCA Victor and Columbia cut way back on recording music that appealed primarily to African Americans and other minority populations. largely limiting their focus to mainstream pop. Independent companies such as Gilt Edge. Juke Box. Philo. Exclusive and Apollo emerged to fill the void and soon dominated the blues and gospel markets.

Press - Sly & Robbie present Taxi Gang In Discomix Style 1978 – 1987 - gaffa.dk
Når man siger Jamaica, siger man ofte også Bob Marley eller reggae. Men udover Bob Marley, så er der næppe nogen jamaicanske musikere, der er så internationalt kendte og anerkendte som d’herrer Sly Dunbar (trommer) og Robbie Shakespeare (bass).

The Riddim Twins gik sammen i midten af 1970'erne efter i nogle år at have arbejdet hver for sig som professionelle studiemusikere og er uden sammenligning de mest anvendte studiemusikere på reggaeøen.

Vintage Rock Special - George Jones - Birth Of A Legend - The Truly Complete Starday And We've got a cracking competition prize courtesy of Bear Family Records to give away to lucky readers this issue. George Jones: Birth of a Legend - The Truly Complete arday anctiffercury Recordings (1954-1961) is a superb 6-CD s hat comes with a 174-page hardback book

Press - Bill Haley - Crazy Man Crazy (10inch LP) - Vintage Rock
Due on 24 February, this Bear Family Vinyl Club Exclusive is an exact reproduction of a 10-inch LP first out on the Australian London logo. Although it first came out in 1957, London reached back to Haley's early-'50s pre-stardom sides for Dave Miller's Essex label,

Press - Wanda Jackson Wanda Jackson (10inch LP) - Vintage Rock
Rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson was red-hot in Japan in 1959, riding high on the strength of her torrid hit Fujiyama Mama. Maybe that's why Capitol's Japanese imprint unleashed a 10-inch compendium of some of Wanda's hottest rockers at right around the same time, including Mean Mean Man, Money Honey, Long Tall Sally and Party

Press - Boxing Florida: Obscure Rockabilly Rebels From the Sunshine State
Various Artists - The Florida Box : 1950s & 1960s Oddball Labels
You gotta get your mind right before you tackle this one. A case of beer oughta do for starters. Roll up a couple of gorilla fingers, hang your stereo speakers out the windows of your shack or single-wide, stretch out in your lawn chair, crack open a cool one, and let 'er rip. Don't be botherin' with any of them new fangled dee-vices, your I-poodles or I-foamz or whatever. This stuff came from 45s, so it needs to be played out loud and in your and your neighbor's faces. In a perfect world, you'd be diggin' out your Sears and Roebuck Silvertone console and crankin that bastard up to 11 to get the maximum effect out of these bad boys. But vinyl is kinda scare these days, and even if you had the originals you'd need a handtruck and a strong back to cart this 250 track record collection around, so you gotta make do with CDs.

Press - George Jones - Birth Of A Legend - The Truly Complete Starday And Mercury Recordings -
Wall Street Journal
When George Jones died in 2013, at the age of 81, his standing as the greatest of male country vocalists had been in place for decades. As color artwork in this typically lavish new Bear Family Records set “George Jones: Birth of a Legend—The Truly Complete Starday and Mercury Recordings 1954-1961” illustrates, by the mid-1960s the Starday and Mercury labels for which he first recorded were touting him on LP covers—reasonably—as “King George” and “Country and Western #1 Male Singer.” In the decades that followed, the Texan’s singular, even mysterious genius for lyric interpretation, emotional nuance in performance and communication with audiences—and the evidence of over a hundred singles and even more albums—cemented that reputation.

Press - George Jones - Birth Of A Legend - The Truly Complete Starday And Mercury Recordings -ekstrabladet.dk
read more

http://ekstrabladet.dk/musik/intlalbum/druk-hor-og-vanvid-i-otte-stive-timer/6551701

Press - George Jones - Birth Of A Legend - The Truly Complete Starday And Mercury Recordings -TheArtDesk
In May 1956, the Texan label Starday issued a wild rockabilly single by Thumper Jones. Its top side, the kinetic “Rock It”, was primal, uncontrolled and wild. The flip, “How Come It”, was less frenzied but still driving and infectious. Original pressings of the two-sided pounder in either its 45 or 78 form now fetch at least £200. This is not your usual rockabilly rarity though. The record’s label credited the songs to a Geo. Jones. Thumper Jones was a pseudonymous George Jones (1931–2013), who was cashing in a hip style: the only time he did so with rockabilly.

Press - Roy Acuff & The Smoky Mountain Boys The King Of Country Music - JUKEBOX 2-17
BCD 17300 ROY ACUFF "The King of Country Music"
Cncore un travail colossal de Bear Family consacre a un des artistes les plus importants de la country, le Ore fondateur Roy Acuff : « THE KING OF COUNTRY MUSIC, The Complete Foundational Recordings 1936-1951 (BCD 17300, coffret 9 CD + 1 DVD).

Press - Roy Acuff & The Smoky Mountain Boys The King Of Country Music - Mojo March 2017

Roy Acuff ***** The King Of Country Music — The Complete Foundational Recordings 1936-1951 BEAR FAMILY. CD/DL Superb 9 CD anthology of the man who was Nashville.
Hank Williams claimed that "In The South it was Roy Acuff, then God." The first living inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Acuff only notched 16 chart records in his lifetime but had enormous influence on the rise of the music he loved.

Press Archive - Louis Jordan - Somebody Up There Digs Me (10inch LP) - Louis Jordan signed to Mercury in 1956 and released two albums for them. The first, 1957's Somebody Up There Digs Me, is reissued here in original UK 10-inch form with replica sleeve, enhanced sound and the first 500 copies on fetching yellow wax. With his best years supposedly behind him, the label had Jordan return to the classics which made his name. With arranger Quincy Jones at the controls, jump blues becomes rockin' blues and Caldonia, the centrepiece, proves Jordan is still very much relevant: "Caldonia! Caldonia! What makes your big head so hard?" he yells over a blistering whirl of guitar by Mickey Baker and wild sax wailing from Sam 'The Man' Taylor. The rest of the band are red hot too, Jordan included as his alto sax peps up a frantic rerun of Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens. An excitable Run Joe, meanwhile, has never sounded better. Lois Wilson

Press - Roy Acuff & The Smoky Mountain Boys The King Of Country Music - The Art Desk

In 1942, Roy Acuff set up Acuff-Rose Music in partnership with Nashville-based songwriter and talent scout Fred Rose. The new publishing company was dedicated to treating songwriters decently. They would not be cheated out of their copyrights. There would be clear and honest accounting. The contracts offered would have better percentages than rival publishers. There would be no shady deals. Acuff-Rose cocked a snook at the country music establishment and, in time, had writers as important as The Everly Brothers, Lefty Frizzell, Don Gibson and Roy Orbison on its books. Acuff and Rose had changed the way the Americana music business worked.

Press Archive - Louis Jordan - Somebody Up There Digs Me (10inch LP) - Nostalgia Magazine
Louis Jordan & his Typany 5 Somebody up there digs me (Bear Family) e.... Ea22 Pá 40-talet var Louis Jordan (1908-75) en av de stórsta rhythm'n'blues-artis-terna. Nár rocken slog igenom hyllade Elvis Presley, Little Richard och mánga andra honoro som den direkta lánken mellan r'n'b och rock'n'roll. Vilket gav Jordan ett uppsving.

Press Archive - Julia Lee - Party Time (Bear Family) 10-inch LP - ugly things #43
JULIA LEE — Party Time (Bear Family) 10-inch LP The classic R&B era was marked by the existence of a fun subgenre known as the party record, essential-ly the same jacked-up, hard-swingin' rhythms married to lyrics about... well, the very natural act from whence rock 'n' roll got its name. The records essentially had to be sold under the counter to adults only, ala the old Tijuana Bibles smutty comic books and porn mags prior to the advent of Playboy. Once in awhile, a party record would break free and become a hit, ala Hank Ballard & the Midnghters' "Work With Me, Annie," Dorothy Ellis' "Drill Daddy Drill," or The Toppers' "Baby, Let Me Bang Your Box." For the most part, howev-er, this stuff was a brand of raunch so blue, they were intended to be filed behind your Redd Foxx LPs. Going by this limited edition

Press Archive - Gene Vincent Bluejean Bop! (10inch LP) - ugly things #43
GENE VINCENT & HIS BLUE CAPS — Bluejean Bop! (Bear Family) 10-inch LP At first glance this 10-inch platter appears to be a shrunk-down repro of Gene Vincent's stellar 1956 debut LP. Not quite. Released as part of Bear Family's Vinyl Club Exclusives series, it's modeled on the original Australian release of Bluejean Bop, a 10-inch edition which had only eight songs instead of the 12 on the US Capitol LP. The title track and other stone-cold rockabilly classics like "Who Slapped John,

Press Archive - James Luther Dickinson Dixie Fried 180g LP - ugly things #43
JAMES LUTHER DICKINSON - Dixie Fried (Future Days/Light h the Attic) CD/2LP (Bear Family) LP Recorded on the cusp of his split from the Dixie Flyers, Dixie hied is the soundtrack of James Luther Dickinson's mind—an expansive universe steeped in his Southern upbringing, pre-war blues, carnival barkers, contemporary soul, rocka-billy and teen-band rock 'n' roll. Catalyzed by Ry Cooder's "high-end Hollywood art rock," Dickinson set his mind to music in sessions from November 1970 to January 1971—taking along his Flyers, Dr John and other Memphians for the ride. And like the proverbial '36 Pack-ard trekking a cloud of dust on a country road, that ride was sponta-neous—producing authentic roots music at a time when similar ef-forts were contrived.

Press Archive - Mansa Musa - Hold On To The Faith 180g LP - ugly things #43
MANSA MUSA - Hold on to the Faith (CreelBear Family) LP Although another excellent archi-val find from Trinidad and Tobego by Cree Records, this is far more than just a Carribean release. In fact, the occasional steel drum is the only indication that this is a West Indies record at all.

Press Archive - AMOS MILBURN — Rockin' The Boogie - Ugly Things - #43
AMOS MILBURN — Rockin' The Boogie (Bear Family) 10.inch LP Houston-born-and-bred Amos Milburn was a blazin' R&B comet during the late '40s and '50c. An absolute master of barrelhouse and boogie woogie piano stylings, he eventually became known for hooch anthems like "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer" and "Bad, Bad Whiskey," despite there being no personal life evidence of a drinking problem.

Press - Dan Penn — Nobody's Fool (Bear Family) LP - ugly things #43

With "I'm Your Puppet," "Dark End of the Street" and other South-ern soul classics, Dan Penn's song-writing landed him national hits and a vocation. His 1973 solo debut No-body's Fool didn't find the same com-mercial niche, but Penn did find his as a performer. .'grooved in Memphis, Nashville and' 'other nice places"

Press - Arthur „Big Boy" Crudup, A Music Man Like Nobody Ever Saw - ugly things - #43
ARTHUR 'BIG BOY' CRUDUP - A Music Man Like No One Ever Saw (Bear Family) CD box set Crudup is best remembered for waxing the original versions of "That's All Right Mama," "My Baby Left Me" and "So Glad Your Mine" that Elvis Presley redrafted early in his career. Indeed, this collection's subtitle is from a statement the Rock .11' Roll King saying that if he could achieve Crudup's feel then he would become "a mu-sic man like nobody ever saw" While it is certainly difficult to pinpoint which stylistic ele-ments the Memphis Flash ap-propriated, this 5-disc, 124-song collection provides insights on why the bluesman was held in such high esteem

Press Archive - Little Richard, The Explosive Little Richard, 2-LP - ugly things #43
LITTLE RICHARD – The Explosive Little Richard (Bear Family) 2LP The Explosive Little Richard has been around the reissue block a few times, most recently a now out-of-print expanded Legacy CD in 2004. This edition features the original 1967 OKeh LP and all of the initially unreleased CD bonus tracks on a sec-ond album. Granted, the Georgia Peach was getting desperate at this point, one of many attempts to revive his post-Specialty career, dabbling in contemporary soul covers such as "Land of a Thousand Dances" and "Function at the Junction" that were good but hardly revelatory. In more familiar rockin' territory, however, he could still deliver on the driving

Press Archive - The Ronettes feat. Veronica, Presenting the fabulous... 1964 - ugly things #43
THE RONETTES - The Ronettes featuring Veronica (Colpix Album) (Bear Family) LP "Boom. Boom-boom. BAM! Boom. Boom-boom. BAM!" The very molecular structure of the uni-verse changed the minute Hal Blaine struck that beat inside Gold Star Studio's hallowed echo chamber, and the rest of the Wrecking Crew joined in, on three or four pianos/ guitars/organs/glockenspiels/casta-nets/anything, all swirling within that converted meat locker and the magical properties of the metal plate suspended within.

Press - Press - George Jones - Birth Of A Legend - The Truly Complete Starday And Mercury Recordings -http://www.tennessean.com/
German record label Bear Family has assembled a new George Jones box set that compiles the recordings Jones made early in his career for Starday and Mercury Records.

Press - Arthur Q. Smith - The Trouble With The Truth - The Audiophile Man
Well, he was new to me but Smith (or ‘Q’, as he was known to his friends) produced and sold hundreds of country songs in his time and many of them became hit songs. For who? How does Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, Ricky Skaggs, Mickey Gilley, Carl Smith, Bill Monroe, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton grab you? And that’s not all of them!

Press - The Knoxville Sessions 1929 - 1930, Knox Country Stomp (4-CD Deluxe Box Set)- Johnson City Press
What do Rihanna, Justin Bieber and a professor from East Tennessee State University have in common?

They’ve all been nominated for a Grammy award this year. In different categories, of course. Ted Olson, a professor in the ETSU Appalachian Studies Department, and Tony Russell, a music historian from London, recently received a Grammy nomination for the album notes they wrote for a box set about the Knoxville sessions: "The Knoxville Sessions 1929-1930, Knox County Stomp."

Press - Press - George Jones - Birth Of A Legend - The Truly Complete Starday And Mercury Recordings -RollingStone.com Dec.2016
Six-disc 'Birth of a Legend - The Truly Complete Starday and Mercury Recordings 1954-1961' arrives in February

In the 40 years that acclaimed German record label Bear Family has been reissuing classic, career-spanning CD boxed sets, one of the artists whose early work has been on customers' wish lists is country legend George Jones. Christmas has come early for Jones fans as the label announces the February release of a sprawling six-disc collection encompassing all of Jones' early recordings from the Starday and Mercury labels.

All of George Jones' classic early recordings, including Why Baby Why, White Lightning, Treasure Of Love, Window Up Above, Tender Years, and twenty more charted hits! • More than 20 previously unissued takes and songs!

Press - Perez Prado Mambo Mania - Havanna 3 A.M.- dec 2016 issue of New York City Jazz Record
Perez Prado
BY MARILYN LESTER
Although his fame was fleeting in mainstream America, Darnaso Perez Prado, aka "The Mambo King", was for more than four decades a popular and successful pianist, arranger and composer in the world of Latin music. During the mambo craze of the late '40s-early '50s he achieved a status as one of the most influential pop orchestra leaders of the time. Prado was born one hundred years ago this month on Dec. 11th into a middle class family in Mantanzas, Cuba. He studied classical piano at an early age and first worked professionally as an organ player and pianist at local cinemas and clubs. In 1942 he moved to Havana where he began arranging and composing, working with some of the most famous Cuban bands of the day. At this time, Prado began to develop his concept of the mambo, which he did not invent, but certainly furthered. In 1947 he was compelled to leave Cuba after being denounced by Fidel Castro for debasing Cuban music. Prado made a tour of South America, finally settling in Mexico City where, by 1948, he became a regular and popular performer at Club 1-2-3, earning the nickname "Glenn Miller of Mexico" (during his first U.S. tour in the early '50s he was also called the "Stan Kenton of Mexico"). Savvy listeners in New York and Southern California first heard Prado's mambo music on Latin radio stations and rejoiced when the tunes crossed over to mainstream pop broadcasts.

Press - Roy Acuff & The Smoky Mountain Boys The King Of Country Music - Swedish MagazinAmerikas Calle Jularbo var kung
MUSIK. Om man kliver ur bilen någonstans i USA, söder om Mason-Dixon-linjen, och lägger örat mot marken, så hör man ROY ACUFF. Hans fiol. Hans röst.

Press - The Knoxville Sessions 1929 - 1930, Knox Country Stomp (4-CD Deluxe Box Set)- Amazon
By Lee Knight on December 8, 2016
Format: Audio CD Verified Purchase
The Knoxville Sessions continue the fine production of the previously released "The Bristol Sessions" and "The Johnson City Sessions."

Press - The Knoxville Sessions 1929 - 1930, Knox Country Stomp Grammy Nomination MVD
BEAR FAMILY'S 'The Knoxville Sessions 1929-1930: Knox County Stomp' (Various Artists), a 4-CD Deluxe Box Set released earlier this year, has been nominated for a 2017 Grammy award in the "Best Album Notes" category. The album is the third compendium of early country music talent in Appalachia, along with 'The Bristol Sessions' and 'The Johnson City Sessions'.

Press - The Knoxville Sessions 1929 - 1930, Knox Country Stomp Grammy Nomination
We knew it was a big deal, back in May, when the German reissue label Bear Family released the four-CD box set Knox County Stomp: The Knoxville Sessions, 1929-1930. The exhaustive set collects more than 100 tracks recorded at the St. James Hotel and other locations in downtown Knoxville during the tail end of the first great era of commercial sound recording.

Press -Reissue I-News October 2016
The Explosive Little Richard!was produced by Larry Williams for Okeh Records. They had both recorded for Specialty Records in the Fifties and weren’t strangers. Taking soul on rather than the music of the previous decade propelled the Okeh singles “The Commandments of Love", “Poor Dog" and their parent album into the charts. Richard and Williams made an infectious, powerhouse album which took the up-front, gospel-derived approach of Stax,

Press - mojo november 2016
Gene Vincent Bluejean Bop! (10inch LP)
Gene Vincent And His Blue Caps Bluejean Bop! BEAR FAMILY. LP Blue vinyl facsimile of a rare 1956 Aussie 10-inch mixes whooping rock'n'rollers (Who Slapped John) with creditable standards (Jezebel, Up A Lazy River). Two bonus cuts muddy the concept, but sound fab. 1H

Press - mojo november 2016
By royal Command didn't want these song, was wrong, says Andrew Male. Dan Penn **** Nobody's Fool
GIVEN THEIR deep knowledge of country, rock'n'roll, and blues, and the high quality of their compilations, it's odd that Bear Family Records have only recently entered the vinyl reissue market. This late arrival is partly down to the personal aesthetic of the label's founder, Richard Weise, but with Weise now retired the label lead off its vinyl imprint with an eclectic mix of releases, including The Ronettes' pre-Spector Colpix LP, an augmented 2-LP version of Little Richard's 1967 OKeh comeback album, The Explosive Little Richard, and a set of rare Trinidadian funk and soul 7-inches.

Press - mojo november 2016
Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup **** A Music Man Like Nobody Ever Saw
BEAR FAMILY. CD
A rocking big box of the Big Boy, 1942-62 Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup is probably best known for his jumping 1940s originals of two songs covered by Elvis, That's All Right and My Baby Left Me, but this excellent 5-CD box set comprehensively demon-strates that there was much more to him than that. A pro-lific songwriter whose material went on to be sung by numer-ous top-rank artists across various genres, a gutsy and distinctive vocalist and a pow-erful self-taught guitarist who was one of the first bluesmen to wield an electric, Crudup started his career at relatively sedate tempos, but really

Press - ddicted to noise Australia
“What The Hell Else Do You Need?”

“Pretty fly for a white guy,” I summarized Jerry Lee Lewis most of my life—but always at the tail end of my summation of those Rock And Roll Grandaddies. Elvis was Elvis, I would say, and that needed no further explanation. Roy Orbison had the voice. Bo Diddley had the humor. Hank Williams had the desperation. Chuck Berry had the storytelling. And Little Richard, Lord save us, Little Richard sounded like a locomotive getting ready to run us over. And Jerry Lee had something. Just not quite that much something.

This is 18 CDs later, I surrender. This is everything Jerry Lee cut before his original Sun contract ran out in 1963. Listening to the man and company build a song, take by take, examining options and wincing at bloopers, the man egan to take wavery shape over my file cabinet.

I have, in fairness, never listened to 18 CDs from any of the others above. But I surfaced hearing a man with most of Little Richard’s ferocity, a man who sang surer than Williams, wider and deeper than Diddley, much looser than Berry, with an uncanny knack for song to beat Orbison. Elvis? Elvis remains Elvis. But Elvis sung starchy by 1963. Jerry Lee had of course ruined his career; if you’re reading this I bet you know how. But the frightening fullness of humanity, everything a man can be, remains.

Press -Reissue CDs Weekly: Chess Records Soul, Little Richard
The Explosive Little Richard!was produced by Larry Williams for Okeh Records. They had both recorded for Specialty Records in the Fifties and weren’t strangers. Taking soul on rather than the music of the previous decade propelled the Okeh singles “The Commandments of Love", “Poor Dog" and their parent album into the charts. Richard and Williams made an infectious, powerhouse album which took the up-front, gospel-derived approach of Stax,

Press - Mojo Magazine

Various ***** The Knoxville Sessions, 1929-1930: Knox County Stomp

BEAR FAMILY CD Flawlessly curated box set of landmark Brunswick, Vocation recordings from Knoxville, Tennessee. The third in a trilogy of Bear Family sets documenting the Appala-chian music scene at the end of the 1920s, this 4-CD collection, with a superb hardback book by Ted Olson and Tony Russell, show-cases the wide variety of talent captured during two extended sessions at Knoxville's St James Hotel. Hillbilly string band Ridgel's Fountain Citians sang fine barn-shakers like Baby Call Your Dog Off -

Presse - I-News UK

The Explosive Little Richard The Okeh Sessions Bear Family By the mid-1960s Little Richard was, as Bill Dahl points out in his excellent sleevenotes to this vinyl reissue, facing a musical dilemma A R&B star turned rock’n’roller he’d enjoyed huge success in the late Fifties with a string of rock’n’roll classics for the ...

Press - heraldcourier.com - Posted: Sunday, August 28, 2016 2:22 am

BY TOM NETHERLAND SPECIAL TO THE HERALD COURIER

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – Neither the Carter Family nor Howard Armstrong will literally return from the dead anytime soon. Likewise Appalachia circa late 1920s. However, with the recent completion of Bear Family Records’ trio of boxed sets, each elevates in the public eye.

Windows opened to Appalachian times and people long gone by when Germany’s Bear Family zeroed in on the Bristol Sessions. Its complete recordings box set, “The Bristol Sessions: The Big Bang of Country Music 1927-1928,” in 2011 proved revelatory.

Maybelle Carter as best she could returned from the grave. Music arose from a forgotten heap. Culture rebranded as honorable.

East Tennessee State University professor Ted Olson shepherded the Bristol Sessions and subsequent complete recordings sets from the John-son City and Knoxville Sessions in a number of ways. He served as reissue producer, wrote liner notes and researched each of the three monumental collections.

“It was a labor of love,” said Olson over lunch last week at Yee-Haw Brewery. “Bear Family spared no expense.”

Press - Swedish Country Music Magazine
Bear Family fortsätter sin kultur-gärning med att ge ut CD-boxar på hillbillyinspelningar. Tidigare har de gett ut inspelningarna från städerna Bristol resp. Johnson City.

Press - CREOLE MUSIC OF THE FRENCH WEST INDIES —A DISCOGRAPHY 1900-1959 John Cowley (Editor) Bear Family Publications BFB 10028 (2014); 367 pages; illustrated; ISBN 978-3-89916-7054

Things have come a long, long way since discographies were just lists of records with personnel and recording dates where known. This beautiful-looking tome was originally intended as a list of 78s containing French Caribbean music; this includes recordings made in mainland France, England and the U.S.A. within the specified time constraints, and jazz recordings featuring French-Caribbean musicians (from Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana) with either French or American musicians, or their involvement with Latin or African sessions; popular entertainers such as Henri Salvador receive only partial listings, comprising only those titles that are 'idiomatic repertoire of the French Antilles". It became apparent that the end of the 78 rpm era was difficult to define, so 1959 was picked as the most logical end-date. Standard discographical format is followed in the listing itself, which means of course that the first listed session is of four North American spirituals recorded by Louis Achille in 1934! Releases are given for 78s, microgroove and CD issues, there is a checklist for vinyl and CD releases, a list of names, and a title index, in addition to the main discography itself. That may be the prime purpose of the book, but it is actually less than half of the story.

Press -Alain Boulanger/John Cowley/Marc Monneraye Creole Music Of The French West Indies -A Discography 1900-1959 Bear Family Publications As the sub-title says this is essentially a list of recordings that document the output of musicians from Martinique and Guadeloupe at the turn of the 20th century, and if that may sound a little on the dry side then the results are anything but. For a start the book is a visual feast, with each page dotted with

Press - Creole Music Of The French West Indies A Discography - Brill Online Books
Alain Boulanger, John Cowley & Marc Monneraye, Creole Music of the French West Indies: A Discography 1900–1959. Holste-Oldendorf, Germany: Bear Family Records, 2014. 367 pp. (Cloth US$ 61.18)

This book is a rarity—a discography that dazzles: one part visual treat, one part meticulous scholarly document. Its publisher, known for lavish boxed sets of rereleased popular music of the past (mostly American and European), took its first major plunge into Caribbean music in 2006 with ten CD s of classic Trinidadian recordings from the late 1930s accompanied by a thick, beautifully illustrated book including chapters by several of the world’s leading calypso scholars

Press - theadvocate.com ■ The Advocate music

Buzzin' the Blues
Lavish box set pays tribute to swamp blues artist Slim Harpo
BY JOHN WIRT jwirt@theadvocate.com
Germany's Bear Family Records, probably the world's greatest reissue label, has given swamp blues artist and West Baton Rouge Parish native Slim Harpo the star treatment. James Moore, the singer and harmonica player whose stage name was Slim Harpo, is the subject of the lavish new Bear Family box set, "Buzzin' the Blues: The Complete Slim Harpo." The LP-sized box holds five CDs, 142 tracks and a profusely illustrated 104-page book written by roots music historian Martin Hawkins. Moore died at 45 in 1970. Be- Hawkins fore his death, he wrote and recorded a remarkably consistent catalog that includes the national hits "Rainin' in My Heart" (1961), "Baby, Scratch My Back" (1965) and, the 1957 swamp-blues classic that later was recorded by The Rolling Stones, "I'm a King Bee." "Rainin' in My Heart," Moore's soul-ful ode to love gone wrong, became a south Louisiana anthem that always pulls couples to the dance floor. His in-fectious "Baby, Scratch My Back" is as funky as blues gets. Besides The Rolling Stones, the many music stars who have re-recorded Moore's songs through the decades in-clude Otis Redding, The Grateful Dead, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Joan Osborne, The Who, The Yardbirds, The Kinks, Dave Edmunds, Van Morrison (with Them), Hank Williams Jr., Pink Floyd and the Doors. In Baton Rouge, the annual Slim Harpo Music Awards keeps Moore's name alive while simultaneously honor-ing musicians who've been influenced by him and have spread his music far and wide.

Presse - Chuck Berry Recordings 05.11.2014

Chuck Berry: Rock And Roll Music – Any Old Way You Choose It
Bear Family BCD 17273 PL, 16 CDs, 350 pages in two books

Collectors of our kind of music already know: When Bear Family takes care of one of our favorite artists, you can purchase the result without any doubt, no matter if they cover Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, or as here Chuck Berry. So why write a review then? Because there are collectors who think more than twice when a box comes with a price tag of 300 Euros (or $400). So what do you get for the money?
One thing you will get is simply everything, no less than the total musical works of Chuck Berry. Just turned 88, this pioneer of rock music in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s worked for the labels Chess, Mercury, and Atco. During these times more than 300 studio recordings originated. And all of them are in this box.
The Chess recordings had been reissued in 2008 to 2010 by Hip-O Select, a sub-label of Universal Music. Likewise the Atco recordings are available on CD.

Press - FRANK FROST with THE NIGHT HAWKS - Hey Boss Man!
(Bear Family, Germany) LP It's great to see Bear Family back in the vinyl game with this high quality, 180gm, direct metal mastered repro of this unheralded Blues classic, origi-nally released on Philips International in 1962. Arkansas-born Frank Frost was a singer, guitarist and harp player who got his start in the Tate '50s backing Sonny Boy Williamson.

Press - Duane Eddy
Twangin' From Phoenix To L.A. (5-CD)
Classic Cuts June 2012

Duane Eddy was immensely influential as a musi- cian. His electric guitar instrumentals forged an entire rock guitar cul- ture.As an artist in his own right, he was immensely success- ful totalling fifteen hits in five years from 1958 to 1963 while his Peter Gunn single continues to express an iconic sound that was much covered by many of the early beat groups in the early sixties, as well as more contemporary outfits such as The Art Of Noise (with Eddy guesting on guitar, no-less) and Emerson Lake and Palmer.

Eddy – obviously a frustrated audiophile – talked about the origination of that ‘twang’,“When
I first went into the studio in the fifties, I learned that the bass strings recorded better than the high strings. They were more powerful and more gutsy. So that’s how I came up with the sound. I had to be careful not to overplay. [If you do] It runs together and takes away a lot of the feeling and direction. I had this amp that was more powerful than any on the market at the time. It didn’t actually make it louder but it made the sounds clearer.” This new release from German- based Bear Family (www.bear-family. de) includes all of the tracks recorded for the Jamie label, by Eddy, including Peter Gunn, but also others such as Rebel Rouser, Cannonball and Yep.

Press - AUDIOPHILE VINYL May 2010
Live At The Star Club Hamburg
Bear Family
The first of the rock’n’roll wild
men, Jerry Lee scared the life out of every parent during the late fifties with his ferocious on-stage antics, almost killing the piano he played during each performance.This was a man who lived for the moment and proudly displayed his sexuality to the world while thrilling the youngsters who gazed, mouths agape, at this fiery ball of energy, to steal an image from his great hit, ‘Great Balls Of Fire’.

His life was packed with incident and scandal. He was thrown out
of bible college, thrown into jail, lionised for marrying his thirteen year old cousin, admitted to hospital for alcohol and drug abuse and... well, the films and books reveal all.

Originally released in 1964, this vinyl LP is a welcome reissue of a classic live album. Backed by the Nashville Teens, Lewis rips through his own hits and gives superb renditions of others too. From his own ‘Great Balls Of Fire’ and ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ to covers
of ‘Hound Dog’, ‘Long, Tall Sally’
and ‘Your Cheating Heart’, this is a tour de force performance. In fact,

Press - Recorcl Collector
WHOLE LOTTA SHAKE-1V
You smell that blood on the ivory? The furry folk of the Bear Family have just remastered the poll-topping masterpiece from 1964 - Live At The Star Club, Hamburg - on vinyl and clothed it in a stunning gatefold sleeve designed by Ulf Harten.

Press - JERRY LEE LEWIS
Live At The Star Club Hamburg
Bear Family LP www.bear-family.de Sometimes touted as one of the greatest live rock 'n' roll albums euer, there's no denying that The Killer is truly an the rampage during this show at The Star Club in 1964. Backed by The Nashville Teens, Lewis marauds through a set that includes several of his own classics such as 'Great Balls Of Fire' and 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On', as well as covers of Little Richard, Elvis and Ray Charles songs among others. Although he would neuer fully recover the same lofty status he once enjoyed in the popularity stakes following the furore he caused by marrying his teenaged cousin a few years earlier, it's evident that Lewis is clearly a man back at the top of his game performance wise in this show. This vinyl-only reissue will also appeal to collectors, coming as it does replete with a pop-up, gatefold cover depicting a map of Hamburg's legendary Reeperbahn district, as well as the hell-blazing bonus kack 'Down The Line'.

Press - Om Gene Vincent, med sitt temperament och sin lynnighet, var rock & rollens John McEnroe så var definitivt Eddie Cochran dess motsvarighet till Björn Borg, vars lugn och uthållighet initialt tog sig uttryck i hela dagars slående med bollen mot en garageport - ensam!