"camel lights" - The Second Disc (2025)

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Otis Redding may have written the song, but Aretha Franklin owned it. The singer was only in her mid-20s when she left Columbia Records after five years and seven albums but she wasted no time in making music history when she signed with Atlantic Records in December 1966. By the middle of 1967, she'd had long-sought-after hits with "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" and "Respect" and was proclaimed The Queen of Soul by a Chicago disk jockey. Some reports indicate the

Late last year, Stage Door Records reissued the London Studio Cast Recording of David Heneker's musical Jorrocks, originally released on the Saga Records label. Now, Stage Door is returning to the Saga vaults with another CD premiere, this time of the label's 1967 recording of the classic operetta The Desert Song.The Desert Song has endured since its Broadway debut in November 1926. The production began its life under the title Lady Fair for tryouts in Wilmington and Boston before making

Periodically this month, we'll be looking at titles released in the latter part of 2020 that we either didn't cover, or only covered briefly, the first time around! We hope you enjoy this look at "some nice things we've missed."Scottish singer-songwriter Al Stewart released his first album in 1967 but didn't break into the lucrative American market until 1974's Past, Present, and Future (released 1973 in the U.K.). While that LP only peaked within the second half of the Billboard 200, the

The ongoing series of budget-priced 3-CD Gold compilations from Demon Music Group's Crimson Productions continues with a pair of releases from artists for whom "legendary" is no understatement: Johnny Mathis and the late George Jones.Curating a representative sampling of Johnny Mathis' singular career in under 50 tracks is no small task, and this set is indeed decades-spanning from his first commercially released single (1956's pairing of "Wonderful! Wonderful!" and "When Sunny Gets Blue")

Stage Door Records is turning back the clock - 60 years, to be precise - with the latest volume in its Lost Broadway series. Lost Broadway 1960, out now in the U.K. and this Friday, April 3, in the U.S., once again spotlights the lesser-known shows that played the Great White Way that year (in both the 1959-1960 and 1960-1961 seasons). So while there's no mention of Bye Bye Birdie, Camelot, or Oliver!, you will hear tracks from Wildcat, Do Re Mi, and Christine. (The Unsinkable Molly Brown is

Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up!Def Leppard, The Early Years 1979-1981 (Bludgeon Riffola)Box Set (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)On Through the Night:CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon CanadaLP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon CanadaHigh N' Dry:CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon CanadaLP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon CanadaDef Leppard revisits their first years with a new box set covering the group's first three years

Omnivore Recordings' celebration of '80s indie band Game Theory continues on March 20 with Across The Barrier of Sound: Postscript. The critically acclaimed group gained legions of fans over the years with '60s and '70s pop influences and a post-punk edge. Their classic 1982-1988 albums have already been given the Omnivore treatment, and now the label is turning the spotlight toward a clutch of sessions recorded in 1989-90 by a revamped Game Theory lineup.For that short time, bandleader

Tomorrow, May 25, Numero Group is conjuring up a world of tikis, palm trees, and colorful drinks - in other words, a Technicolor Paradise. After years of successfully excavating the rarest soul, jazz, R&B, New Age, and more, the label has turned its attention to the realm of exotica. The genre's blend of lounge, jazz, pop and all sounds beyond inspired a number of artists who didn't receive the same attention as, say, Martin Denny, Yma Sumac, Arthur Lyman, and Esquivel. An alternate

"You'll cry out for mercy, but still there'll be more..." So proclaimed English prog rockers Procol Harum on their fourth album, 1970's Home. Three years before, the group burst onto the scene with the baroque-inspired "A Whiter Shade of Pale," an international hit that topped the British charts and reached No. 5 in America. And the group presses on, having released their 12th album, Novum, in April - a month shy of 50 years since "Pale" first landed in U.K. shops.To celebrate this

Even though summer has just begun, Real Gone Music is already looking toward the end of the season with itsSeptember releases. As per the label'snorm, the artists represented span a wide range of styles and genres.We've already told you about the Second Disc Records/Real Gone release of TheIsley Brothers' lost Groove With You...Live! album. Joe has also written the liner notes for another of Real Gone's September offerings: Robert Goulet's 2-CD The Definitive Collection. Joe put

A new 4-CD box set from Legacy Recordings and Columbia Records can be best summed up by the title of its very first track: "Wonderful! Wonderful!" Johnny Mathis' simply-titled The Singles doesn't bring together every track released by the legendary artist on 45 RPM; such an endeavor would take far more than four discs. Instead, it features the tracks originally released by Mathis on Columbia in the singles format - in other words, non-LP sides - between the years of 1956 and 1981, in their

By anyone's estimation, Julie Andrews was one of Columbia Records' leading lights by 1962. Her Tony-nominated performances onstage in My Fair Lady and Camelot had both led to chart-topping, record-breaking original cast recordings on the Columbia label; in fact, it was under the leadership of president Goddard Lieberson that the record label underwrote the original Broadway production cost of My Fair Lady - an investment that, needless to say, paid off many times over! So it was unsurprising

Here's something that'll hit your doorstep like a giant animated foot: Virgin is releasing a CD and vinyl box set of albums by the iconic comedy troupe Monty Python.The classic BBC comedy sketch series, which ran from 1969 to 1974 and made stars of John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, has had an immeasurable influence on pop culture ever since, from films (Monty Python and The Holy Grail, Monty Python's Life of Brian, Monty Python's The Meaning

Curtain up! Tomorrow, Sony'sMasterworks Broadway division will release Broadway in a Box: The Essential Broadway Musicals Collection, a 25-disc collection formatted similarly to the “Complete Albums” box sets arriving from sister label Legacy Recordings. This impressive collection brings together the original cast recordings for 25 musicals recorded for Columbia Records, Arista Records and RCA Victor between 1949 (South Pacific) and 1987 (Into the Woods and a revival of Anything

What are you doing New Year's Eve?As we count down tothat big celebration, we've been holed up at Second Disc HQ readying another year's Gold Bonus Disc Awards for you! We consider our annual awards a companion piece to Mike's round-up over at Popdose(essential reading, I might add!)and we endeavor to recognize as many of the year's most amazing reissues as possible as well as to celebrate those labels, producers and artists who have raised the bar for great music throughout 2011. These

Long before David Letterman called the former Hammerstein’s Theatre on 50th Street and Broadway in New York City home, the theatre was the showplace of the world, thanks to one Mr. Ed Sullivan. The former gossip columnist on the Broadway beat might have been an unlikely visitor to American homes each Sunday night between 1949 and 1971, but it was thanks to Sullivan that viewers got their first or most significant taste of such performers across the entire spectrum of entertainment. On the

Two decades after The Beatles ushered in the first British Invasion, the Brits were back. This time, they had their sights set on Broadway, traditionally home to one of America’s great indigenous art forms, the musical. The British Invasion of the 1980s saw the work of American musical theatre legends like Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Cy Coleman and John Kander and Fred Ebb take a seeming back seat to lavish spectaculars imported from London, often with iconic logos and some kind of special