Guitar-slinging progeny of the great Chicago bluesman Luther Allison, Bernard Allison has proved that great music runs in the blood with a series of high power urban blues albums. Beginning with the viciously funky title track, Chills & Thrills immediately kicks the party into overdrive, briefly letting up only to get a bit jammy (“So Devine”) or momentarily reflective (“Compromising for Your Needs”).

Billie Holiday's first recordings for Norman Granz' Clef Records present a vocalist truly at the top of her craft, although she would begin a rapid decline soon thereafter. This 1952 recording (originally issued as a 10" LP, Billie Holiday Sings) places Holiday in front of small piano and tenor saxophone-led groups including jazz luminaries such as Oscar Peterson and Charlie Shavers, where her gentle phrasing sets the tone for the sessions, evoking lazy evenings and dreamy afternoons. The alcoholism and heroin use that would be her downfall by the end of this decade seems to be almost unfathomable during these recordings since Holiday is in as fine a voice as her work in the '30s, and the musical environment seems ideal for these slow torch songs. Solitude runs as the common theme throughout these 16 tracks; the idle breathiness of "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)" finds the vocalist casually reminiscing…

By all accounts, the somewhat unexpected 2014 King Crimson tour was a resounding success and Live at the Orpheum is the first offering for those who were unable to attend. The band had been reinvented with a combination of new and returning players and the set list consisted largely of tunes that hadn't been performed live since the '70s, if at all. The main wild card was the three-drummer front line, which easily could have turned into a mess, even without music as challenging as Crimson's. Well, the time the three drummers (Pat Mastelotto, Bill Rieflin, and Gavin Harrison) spent rehearsing before convening the entire group was well worth it, because they play with a single mind throughout. The returning Mel Collins sounds fantastic on all manner of saxophones and flute, and hearing Tony Levin's amazing bass playing on all these old King Crimson tunes is a real treat…

The debut album by one of the most promising double acts of the mid-'80s, complicated somewhat by an overwhelming need to sound like contemporary artists. Neither Graham Gouldman nor Andrew Gold could be said to have built their careers on danceable pop music; nor could their respective audiences have really been dying to hear them try. But they went for it anyway and, aided by a studio stuffed with the latest in techno gadgetry, turned in an album that could certainly hold its own against the majority of what was on the streets at that time. Indeed, "Right Between the Eyes" deserved to be as big a hit as any contemporary smash you can name, and digging deeper into the album, it was clear that even if the duo weren't exactly busting a gut in the songwriting stakes, they did have their finger on the modern pulse.