Muddy Waters - Hard Again

The real deal - Muddy Waters - Hard Again.  Muddy Waters is on my personal They are No Longer Around, but I Saw Them Play Live list.  He passed away in 1983.  And I saw him on one of his last tours - shortly before this record came out.  I was fortunate to score a ticket to a great performance when I was in college - at ISU, in Normal, IL.  That particular concert was on Thursday, February 21, 1980.  I know that because his tour dates on all listed here:   http://www.muddywaters.com/1980.html  That website also says this about Mud's final years of making records, "In 1977, his long association with Chess at an end, he signed with Blue Sky Records, a label operated by another of his young proteges, the guitarist and singer Johnny Winter, and over the next several years produced four spirited albums under Winter's sympathetic guidance."

Con Funk Shun - Burnin' Love and Spirit of Love

Con Funk Shun...not the most well-know of the funk-style horn bands.  This is not at all meant as a put-down, but to me they are sort of Earth Wind & Fire-lite.  A big, bright horn section carries their songs.  Besides this one (Burning Love), and I also own Spirit of Love - which has a catchy title track. Click on this post's title to sample that song.  And - I read this about their background:  "The band was formed by a pair of high school students in Vallejo, California, drummer Louis A. McCall Sr. and singer/guitarist Michael Cooper. The two got their start as a backup group for the Soul Children under the name Project Soul.  They began working with Stax Records staff songwriters, and while recording at Audio Dimensions, a Memphis, sound studio, producer Ted Sturges both named the group (after an instrumental recording by The Nite-Liters) and produced their first album, called Organized Con Funk Shun.  In 1976, Con Funk Shun signed to Mercury Records, releasing eleven albums in ten years.  The group's 1977 LP, Secrets, was certified gold in the US, as were 1978's Loveshine, 1979's Candy, and 1980's Spirit of Love.  They scored a string of top ten hits on the US Billboard black singles chart, including 1977's "Ffun" (#1), 1978's "Shake and Dance with Me" (#5), 1979's "Chase Me" (#4), 1980s "Got to Be Enough" (#8), and "Too Tight" (#8).  Some tensions from within the group built over the 1980s, and the group's last album, Burning Love, (above) was recorded without songwriter and vocalist Felton Pilate. After leaving Mercury, the band broke up in 1986, but some members of the group reunited alongside touring musicians for concerts in the 1990s."

The Buffalo Springfield - Retrospective

Here it is - The Buffalo Springfield - with For What It's Worth.
Perhaps the most significant rock song of all time...

Survivor - Rebel Girl - EP single on 12 inch vinyl

I can't wait to get this record autographed!  From my research results, I can attest that it is a fairly rare record.  This is the single (on EP 33 and 1/3 RPM) Rebel Girl, by Survivor.  It was played heavily on Chicago's numerous AOR FM stations - back when it came out in the eighties.  But the song was never on an LP length album.  Survivor achieved national success and acclaim for many songs - the most famous of course being Eye of the Tiger.  But it is sort of a shame that that is mainly what they are remembered for.  They had a slew of great songs and modest hits along the way.

Ahmet Ertegun on Buffalo Springfield

Am reading, The Last Sultan, a biography of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, by Robert Greenfield.  Above is a photo I took, and cropped, of the back of a Buffalo Springfield album.  ATCO is a division of Atlantic Records.  Here is a bit more on this label:  "Atco Records was founded in 1955 as a division of Atlantic Records. It was devised as an outlet for productions by one of Atlantic's founders, Herb Abramson, who had returned to the company from military service. It was also intended as a home for acts that did not fit the format of Atlantic, which at the time was only releasing blues, jazz, and R&B/soul. The Atco name is simply an abbreviation of ATlantic COrporation.  Atco's biggest acts during its early years were Bobby Darin and The Coasters.  In the early 1960s Atlantic began to license material from international sources for release on Atco, leading to instrumental hit singles from such acts as Jorgen Ingmann, Acker Bilk and Bent Fabric. Starting in the mid-1960s, Atco became a force on the burgeoning rock scene, with American acts such as Sonny and Cher, Buffalo Springfield and Vanilla Fudge. A relationship with manager Robert Stigwood brought The Bee Gees and Cream to the label.  In 1964 Atco released a single in the United States by The Beatles, "Ain't She Sweet"; (flip side "Nobody's Child," with lead singer Tony Sheridan), which had been recorded inHamburg in 1961. With lead vocals by John Lennon, "Ain't She Sweet" reached #19 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in August 1964. Atco also released an album entitled Ain't She Sweet which featured the other two tracks by Sheridan and the Beatles from the Hamburg session and filled out by eight other songs (Beatles and other British Invasion numbers) covered by The Swallows."