Amen Corner was a Welsh R&B-tinged pop band of the '60s featuring singer Andy Fairweather Low, organist Blue Weaver, guitarist Neil Jones, bassist Clive Taylor, saxophonists Allen Jones and Mike Smith, and drummer Dennis Bryon. They scored the first of their six British chart hits with "Gin House" in the summer of 1967. "(If Paradise Is) Half as Nice" went to number one in early 1969. By then, Fairweather Low had become a teenage heartthrob and the band had switched management and record companies, but they split up by the end of the year.

Powerful, subtle, beautiful tone, musical intelligence and a few individual tricks that leave other harp players shaking their heads in wonderment. Carey Bell is perhaps most famous for his many stints with Muddy Waters but has also been developing his own career since the 1960s. He may never have had a big label ‘push’ but he's still very much the uncrowned king of Chicago Blues harmonica playing. The material here was recorded under a variety of circumstances and Blues musical settings. Some with his sons, still a band too tough (in every sense) for U.S. labels to mess with and some with truly sympathetic British musicians. Listen out too for Lurrie Bell, Carey's son and an awesomely talented Bluesman in his own right…

Three decades after the fact, people looking at releases like This Time by Basie would tend to dismiss it as pandering, Count Basie doing a "pops"-type outing - the cheesy cover art even emphasized the songs over Basie and his band. Nothing could be further from the truth, however - this release reveals a wonderful body of work, and deserves to be better known. For starters, This Time by Basie swings, smooth and easy but taut, or hot and heavy. From Sonny Payne's understated cymbal intro to "This Could Be the Start of Something Big" to the bluesier notes of "One Mint Julep," Basie and company sound like they're enjoying themselves, whether elegantly stretching out on "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" or "Moon River," or soaring into the air on the hotter numbers - one of the more surprising covers here is "Walk Don't Run," which even works in a big-band arrangement…