News & Updates — Twisted Cover Versions

  Part 2: The first section of this article (found here) named the favorite albums around the P&R office(s). This time we check out singles, punk & noise, cover tunes, live shows and other fun stuff. Thanks for your support and for helping us make 2017 a great year. The following singles were selected by Andujar, Bongohead and Studebaker Hawk. Please support the bands and DIY labels direct!   Fave single of 2018, in no particular order:   -Bosq - Can't Seem To Hide 12" (Ubiquity) The golden touch of Bosq delivers a floor-burner of a poppy disco tune on...

By comparison to some of his other fellow Chicagoan jazz brothers and sisters, the music of Von Freeman is fairly traditional sounding--that is to say blues, ballads, bossa, bop and a touch of soul-jazz, although his phrasing and mentoring was influential to a rising avant-garde in the city. He may have been less well-known than his funky guitarist brother George and son Chico (there was a less-well-known drummer brother Bruz as well), but he continued with his creative outlet until the end. He was born in Chicago, the son of a cop. Louis Armstrong was a good friend of the...

Much respect to the well-loved Donny Hathaway, the great gospel-inspired singer and songwriter, as well as pianist, producer and arranger. His music covered soul, gospel, pop, blues, jazz, Christmas songs, ballads, funk and even Latin, in a nice mix of both originals and covers. Born in Chicago to a gospel-singing family, he grew up in St. Louis. He started singing in church at age 3 and was playing piano young as well. He studied music at Howard University, where he also played in a jazz trio with Ric Powell and rolled with Roberta Flack and Leroy Hutson. He started working as...

Happy birthday to the lovable soul-blues icon B.B. King! A huge influence on so many electric blues guitarists & singers, soul artists as well as the rock generation, his style was immediately identifiable and his hit songs rank among the most loved in twentieth century music. From a sharecropping family in Indianola MS, he sang gospel in church and at 12 was given a guitar by his cousin Bukka White. He started his career locally in '43 and three years later moved to Memphis with White. He worked as a radio DJ and playing in clubs and recorded his early...

Happy birthday to the alto sax icon Marion Brown! He made so many great records, from the ESP Disks to the records with Gunter Hampel, the awesome early '70s trilogy (Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, Geechee Recollections and Sweet Earth Flying), some records for Freedom and Baystate and on and on. Plus he started his Sweet Earth label out of Western Massachusetts. He played with John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Stanley Cowell, Harold Budd and others and was an educator and a fine artist (drawing, painting). I was fortunate enough to meet him in the '90s. His son Djinji was in...