Pearl was Janis Joplin's valedictory. It was also her masterpiece.
Originally released posthumously in 1971, Pearl encapsulates Janis’s greatness. The first female superstar of the modern rock era, Janis was not only a powerhouse performer of rock and blues but also showed an innate affinity for soul, country-inflected folk and even the Great American Songbook.
This new, two-disc edition of Pearl includes nine previously unreleased selections. Disc One’s bonus tracks include the touching tribute "Pearl" composed by Full Tilt Boogie, while Disc Two chronicles Janis’s 1970 trans-Canada Festival Express tour, and is sequenced to recreate one of the spellbinding shows from that summer…

Recorded on an off night during a European tour in 1991, this is a warts and all, no overdubs, unplugged session that captures the father and son duo at their most uninhibited. Basically, Carey and Lurrie Bell sat down in a studio in Kouvola, Finland, let the tapes roll for three hours, and this is the result. Why the finished product languished for 14 years in tour manager/co-producer Chip Covington's closet is unclear, but Alligator's long delayed yet welcome 2004 release shows the timeless quality of this deep Delta blues. The songs are sung by both guitarist son Lurrie and harpist dad Carey, and range from well-worn standards such as "Rock Me" (featuring a stunning acoustic guitar solo), "Key to the Highway," and "Five Long Years," to originals that follow established blues patterns. It's a relatively low-key performance, but the twosome show a natural affinity for each other…

The Hep series of Teddy Wilson recordings has been largely superseded by the more complete Classics program. This release has 16 titles from Wilson's first four recording sessions as a leader of all-star bands (skipping his solo piano records). Since Billie Holiday has vocals on 14 of the 16 songs (every one except "Sweet Lorraine" and "Sugar Plum"); this material has been reissued numerous times, but the performances do contain their fair share of classics.

The end of the 60s was an important period in jazz, as well as rock music, in Poland and the rest of the world, with the development of many styles and trends in popular music. In 1970 the jazz rock fusion band, Laboratorium was formed in Kraków. Their music soon developed in jazz rock fusion, and so were pioneers in this music in Poland. In their first years, Laboratorium's music was acoustic, cleverly avoiding any limiting definitions. At the beginning of the 70's there was very limited access to Western recordings but this did not prove an obstacle for the band, because of the musicians searching and experimenting in the field. On the contrary and because of their relative isolation, Laboratorium developed an unique sound which was often noted in various critical reviews…

If the afterworld includes a red-light district, Erotic Rhythms from Earth would qualify as its soundtrack. The third recording from Austin, Texas programmer/multi-instrumentalist Shane O'Madden beckons you into an off-focus world of amorphous boundaries, one that hovers somewhere between eternity and soft-core carnality. Offering an assortment of quirky temptations too intriguing to resist, O'Madden blurs Middle Eastern textures (principally generated via violin) and ambient electronic wayfaring with sultry, unhurried trip-hop textures, subtle female cooing, and understated rhythms. It all combines to exude a beguiling mood of faint danger and fashionable decadence, where the final destination is a bazaar of hidden, delicious pleasures. If the disc's arresting cover image speaks to you, so, too, will this exotic, oddly accessible slice of imaginative trip-hop…