"A fine record with a few programming problems, Mike Murley is once again impressive on his 1992 release Time & Tide. "

The centenary of his birth (15.2.2005) has passed unnoticed by many music lovers. It is Harold Arlen's fate that he is credited as composer for more jazz standards of the Great American Songbook than any other writer, but nevertheless remains unknown to a great deal of his audience.

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known simply as Elvis, was an American singer, musician and actor. He is regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century and is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll".

The Love Is Gonna Rain album is a highly sought-after funk & soul album from American vocalist Billy Jones and features the Dutch Stars backing-group. This 50th anniversary edition is the first ever official reissue, since 1970,and contains Archie Bell's written 'Love Is Gonna Rain',the poignant 'Message From A Black Man ' written by Norman Whitfield, Barbara Mason's 'Yes I'm Ready' and many more now considered classics songs.

1995 collection from the Rock icon, his first 'best of' collection.

Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz double bassist, pianist, composer and bandleader. A major proponent of collective improvisation, he is considered to be one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in history, with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz legends such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dannie Richmond, and Herbie Hancock.

Although Chuck Rainey was among New York's most ubiquitous and in-demand R&B and pop session players of the 1960s and '70s, he didn't record very many albums on his own. The Chuck Rainey Coalition gives us a glimpse of the electric bassist in the driver's seat. Rainey doesn't do that much stretching, and most of the time, this collection of instrumental jazz/R&B simmers without really igniting. Nonetheless, there are a few cuts that stand out. Rainey really digs into a funky interpretation of the "Theme from Peter Gunn," and his soul-minded arrangement of "Harlem Nocturne" is fairly imaginative.

A masterful songwriter whose touching blues ballad "Please Send Me Someone to Love," a multi-layered universal lament, was a number one R&B hit in 1950, Percy Mayfield had the world by the tail until a horrific 1952 auto wreck left him facially disfigured. That didn't stop the poet laureate of the blues from writing in a prolific fashion, though. As Ray Charles' favorite scribe during the '60s, he handed the Genius such gems as "Hit the Road Jack" and "At the Club."

Jimmy Cliff is a 1969 album by Jimmy Cliff. It was retitled Wonderful World, Beautiful People after the track of that name was released as a single in the U.S. Richard Polak, who is credited with the sleeves of a number of Island Records artists in the early 1970s, is credited with photography.

His plaintive baritone equally conversant with R&B and country phrasing, Joe Simon married the two genres with startling success during the late '60s, adapting Nashville material to the soul sound and repeatedly coming up a winner. Simon began recording in the Bay Area, but a switch in recording sites (first to Muscle Shoals for Vee-Jay and then to Nashville, upon signing with disc jockey John Richbourg's Sound Stage 7 label in 1966) heightened his national appeal. With easy access to prime country-oriented material, Simon soon found his true calling, scoring major hits with "Nine Pound Steel," "(You Keep Me) Hangin' On," and the number one R&B smash "The Chokin' Kind," penned by Music Row tunesmith Harlan Howard.

O.C. Smith at Home was the finest showcase for the singer's warm, baritone vocals. Produced by Jerry Fuller, the LP's songs revolved around home and heart. The LP cover featured the singer walking with a little boy. The second single, the rousing, dynamic "Daddy's Little Man," hit Billboard's charts in fall 1969. Its flip side was the driving, horn-accented soap opera-themed "If I Leave You Now." The lushly orchestrated "The Learning Tree" was the opening title theme of the family drama movie directed by Gordon Parks. "Friend, Lover, Woman, Wife" cracked the R&B Top 25. All of this musical magic was wrapped up in the great arrangements of H.B. Barnum. Some of the LP tracks appeared on his O.C. Smith's Greatest Hits.

The Mongo Santamaria/Columbia formula of Top 40 tunes retrofitted with an Afro-Cuban boogaloo beat gets another hyperactive workout here. The title tune, "Spinning Wheel," "Proud Mary," "My Cherie Amour" and "Get Back" are among the choices here, with Sonny Fortune occasionally scorching the earth on alto sax (and probably on flute), Joe Farrell turning up on tenor, and ever-versatile Bernard "Pretty" Purdie stoking the fires alongside Mongo. Yet the band is finally beginning to show some audible weariness with the whole operation for which one cannot blame them.

The unbelievably prolific Haruomi Hosono is one of the major architects of modern Japanese pop music. With his encyclopedic knowledge of music and boundless curiosity for new sounds, Hosono is the auteur of his own idiosyncratic musical world, putting his unmistakable stamp on hundreds of recordings as an artist, session player, songwriter and producer. Born and raised in central Tokyo, his adolescent obsession with American pop culture informed his early forays into country music, which he would revisit later in his career.

Though it's hard to pick a winner among the estimable Black Jazz catalog, this 1972 release from bassist Henry 'The Skipper' Franklin would have to be near the top of the list. Franklin got his start woodshedding with Latin maverick Willie Bobo in the mid-'60s and went on to play with The Three Sounds, but probably his most notable gig prior to this debut album was his stint in Hugh Masekela's band (that's Franklin playing bass with Masekela at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival).