"I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You" is the 11th studio album by American singer Aretha Franklin. Released on March 10, 1967 by Atlantic Records, It went to #2 on the Billboard album chart and #1 on the magazine's Black Albums chart. It was certified Gold by the RIAA in 1967. It received a #83 ranking on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time and inclusion in both the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2005) and 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die (2008). The album included two top-10 singles: "Respect" was a #1 single on Billboard's Hot 100 Pop singles chart, and "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" peaked at #9.

A reissue of Dimples' album originally released in 1981. Nicknamed because he has two prominent, deep dimples, the late Louisiana-born, Oakland, CA-raised singer sung in an extra low voice that worked with the right material but sounded incredibly weak on mismatches. The material fit like a glove on this release that includes his first smash "She's Got Papers on Me," a fine update of the Penquins' "Earth Angel," and the humorous "I've Got to Learn to Say No" where he laments about all his women and his ability to turn down new desires.

Nearly doubling the amount of tracks and running time of the similarly titled album, this video of one date on Sade's 2001 world tour serves as a handy greatest-hits package as well as documenting one of the classiest and highest-grossing tours of that year. Anyone who thinks Sade's music is too ethereal or plush to make an impact on a concert stage instead of the bedroom needs only to watch this to understand how the creative lights, imaginative set, rear projection films, and her impeccable band combine to create a performance every bit as exciting as Madonna's and far less ostentatious…

Going back and listening again to Tony Joe White's prodigious output from his early years, one is amazed at the depth of his talent as a guitarist, a singer and as a songwriter. After a series of albums that explored his love of deep Southern Blues, TJW took a warmer, more acoustic turn with Home Made Icecream. A lot of this is the back porch music he clearly loves - and here he is surrounded by fine session men who, if I recall from my old vinyl copy, include a drummer who wouldn't play until he'd read the lyrics…which as Tony Joe noted: "Is all right by me." The album flows beautifully, kicking off with a little rocker - Saturday Night in Oak Grove Louisiana (Tony Joe always had a thing about vehicles - little details like fender skirts - and here its the fibreglass mufflers on his pickup truck) and featuring among other things a gorgeous, lightly picked acoustic guitar and harp instrumental: the title track of the album. There's a ballad - Ol Mother Earth - but the standout is the last track which blows in like a cold breeze off a lake. "Did Somebody Make a Fool Out of You" is among his best ever examples of songwriting, singing and guitar playing.

After years of refusing to sing anything but gospel, Green decided the time had finally come to fuse the godly and the secular elements of his soul. Love Is Reality made an overt play for the mainstream R&B market. Unfortunately, Christian dance-pop producer Tim Miner works from formulas, while Green runs on inspiration. Green sounded great, but the final result paled in comparison to the rest of his catalog.

Another pair of awesome albums by the great Al Green. He simply dominated the ranks of '70s male soul vocalists. He could be lyrical, mournful, enticing, or defiant, and no one used falsetto more dramatically, not even the "sweet" types. While the sound quality on many Motown two-in-one CDs is very uneven, that's beside the point when the albums are this wonderful.

Johnnie Taylor set the tone for his recording career at Stax with Wanted: One Soul Singer, a consistently gritty collection of blues and raw, hard-hitting Memphis soul. In addition to his appealing medium-sized hits "Just the One I've Been Lookin' For" and "I Had a Dream," Wanted boasts pleasant surprises ranging from the addictive "Toe-Hold" to gutsy versions of Merle Travis' "Sixteen Tons" and the standard "Blues in the Night." Adding lyrics to Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man," Taylor removes the song's jazz elements and turns it into pure Southern R&B. When Wanted was released, Taylor (who has occasionally been confused with bluesman Little Johnny Taylor) had yet to become the soul-radio fixture that "Who's Making Love" would make him, but these solid performances show that he was definitely on the right track.

Instant Vintage is the 2002 debut solo album from longtime Tony! Toni! Toné! singer and bassist Raphael Saadiq. He was already doing solo material at this point but the release of Instant Vintage let everyone know he was more than ready to do things on his own. The CD features two hidden tracks, each have been separated into their own MP3 files here. This was released by Universal.

This is a fine CD of Blues Brothers material, featuring the original Blues Brothers Band and frontman Larry Thurston, performing at Montreux Jazz Festival on July 12, 1989. From the late '80s through the early 90's, the Blues Brothers Band was a popular touring act throughout Europe, with Mr. Thurston doing a fine job on lead vocals. None of the other 90's Blues Brothers frontmen (Dan Ackroyd, John Goodman, Jim Belushi) appear on this CD or in this Line-Up. Not exactly "essential", but a good performance of the tour band during this period of the band's history.

Mike Mattison is a roots singer and songwriter best-known for his work in the Derek Trucks Band, Scrapomatic, and the Tedeschi Trucks Band. With both DTB and TTB he won a Grammy for Best Blues Album. The TTB has also won five Blues Music Awards from the Blues Music Foundation and two Canadian Maple Blues Awards.

Always a beautifully measured and understated performer, the power in her voice still comes when she’s at her rawest and most vulnerable. Taking inspiration from her recent discovery of the wistful 70s Brazilian music of Milton Nascimento together with the sci-fi girl group harmonies and empowerment of Destiny’s Child, her current sound is both delicate and powerful. Lianne La Havas is an award ceremony regular, nominated for the Grammies, the Mercury Music Prize, the Ivor Novello, Brits and MOBOs. An artist known for two albums of the most finely-wrought jazz-influenced neo soul this side of Sade. But now, eight years and two albums after first appearing onto the music scene, La Havas wants us to know the real her.

DJ-Kicks is a 1999 "mixtape" compilation released by Thievery Corporation as part of !K7 Records' DJ-Kicks series. This was released on !K7's label Studio !K7.

An EP containing the tracks "Drowning in My Own Tears," "Granma's Hands, " "Lady Godiva's Room, " and "Love for Sale."

Jerry Williams’—aka Swamp Dogg—first love was country music, listening to it as a Navy family kid growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia. “My granddaddy, he just bought country records out the asshole,” Swamp remembers. “Every Friday when he came home from the Navy yard he’d stop off and get his records, like ‘Mule Train’ by Frankie Laine, or ‘Riders in the Sky’ by Vaughn Monroe.” His first time performing on stage, in fact, was a country song at a talent show when he was six years old: “I did Red Foley’s version of ‘Peace in the Valley.’”

BBE Music continues its long and fertile partnership with vibraphone legend and godfather of neo-soul, Roy Ayers, with the first ever reissue of his 1983 album Silver Vibrations.