NICK DERISO: Asleep at the Wheel has ensured that Texas swing music is no museum piece. In fact, they can be downright postmodern — recording, on occasion, with the likes of Manhattan Transfer and the Squirrel Nut Zippers, while paying tribute to Lone Star musical legend Bob Wills. A nifty mix of this hipster, if archaic, regional music and a [...]

NICK DERISO: Featuring the classic arrangements of seminal Davis mentor Gil Evans, “Montreux” includes long-awaited live runthroughs of key selections from their collaborations — including “Boplicity” from “Birth of the Cool” as well as several cuts from “Miles Ahead,” “Porgy and Bess” and “Sketches of Spain.” On “Miles and Quincy,” we find a bright, sometimes rip-roaring backing band conducted by [...]

So, you’re Andy Griggs, a sugar-sweet pop-country singer from West Monroe, La. And you’re standing in the lonely bull’s eye of center stage, guitar in hand. There are hundreds and hundreds of pairs of eyes looking back. “The adrenaline!” you say, whispering. “There’s a difference between 1,000 people and 15,000. There really is.” OK, so you’re nervous. But you sing [...]

by Nick DeRiso: Composed in the spring of 1992, and based on the classic David Bowie collaboration with Brian Eno from 1977, Philip Glass’ orchestral interpretation is that oddity that makes sense. Originally an experimental recording of startling depth and complexity, it follows that “Low” would transfer well into the next iteration. Glass — a three-time Academy Award-nominated classical-music composer [...]

To take the old-school harmonic brilliance of Duke Ellington into the realm of John Coltane — soon to establish himself as the picture of avant garde, stimulatingly free, out there in such a way as to legitimately draw comparisons with the spiritual — was, you imagine, a challenge of equal measure for both. Coltrane’s core band is joined by Ellington [...]

NICK DERISO: Brazilian legend Milton Nascimento achieved a timeless genre-blending classic here, deftly mixing a bevy of jazz greats, some pop music and these wondrous, title-worthy angelic textures from another land. A heightened realism traveled throughout the recording. Its lyrics, translated to English, were brilliant, nearly blinding lights — beacons of imagery and distraction along the lines of the genius [...]

NICK DERISO: You see the name “Sonnier,” you think Cajun. And you’re almost right. Sure, Jon Yudkin played fiddle on Kip Sonnier’s “Truth or a Lie.” Steve Duhon was on accordian. And, yeah, Sonnier is a Louisiana native. Even so, Bobby Terry could be found on pedal steel. And that gave this fun release on the independent Belkin Records label [...]

NICK DERISO: You’ll the find the best of this underappreciated, high-style Mississippi blues pianist on 1950s-era Trumpet Records reissues put out beginning in 1989 by Chicago’s Alligator Records. Run out of a Jackson, Miss., record store, Lillian Shedd McMurry’s locally legendary Trumpet label caught several blues greats just before their moment — including Sonny Boy Williamson II. Love is the [...]

NICK DERISO: Pianist Les McCann is something like a lesser Horace Silver — somebody with a soulful, bluesy delivery who often strayed a step too far into pop. This release showed why: Despite its many joys, a fat electric bass gave the CD an unwanted fusion-y feel — in particular, on the otherwise pleasant “Shambala” and the unfortunately named “New [...]

NICK DERISO: Paul McCartney, still stung by the loss of his wife, was feeling nostalgic in 1999. But instead of rehashing the obvious successes he’d had with the Beatles or Wings, he traveled further back – all the way to the music that first sparked something inside the hearts of a young John Lennon and Paul McCartney: The records of [...]