A handful of releases this week that I’ll be looking for at The Record Exchange… just after a bourbon next door at Neurolux.

Michael Chapman
Pleasures of the Street Live
Mooncrest Records
Folk
Recorded Live over 2 nights at Onkel Pö’s, Carnegie Hall, Hamburg August 1975 Featuring: Achim Reichel, Keef Hartley, Steffi Stefan. Michael Chapman (vocals & guitar) solo tracks 1,2 & 3 Michael Chapman (vocals & guitar) Achim Reichel (guitar) Steffi Stephen (bass) Keef Hartley (drums) Paul ‘Prof’ Sutton (solo guitar on track 6)

McCoy Tyner
Tender Moments
Blue Note Records
Jazz
On Tender Moments, pianist/composer McCoy Tyner explored the colors and textures available, with an all-star cast: Lee Morgan (trumpet), Julian Priester (trombone), Bennie Maupin (tenor sax), James Spaulding (alto sax/flute), Bob Northern (French horn), Howard Johnson (tuba), Herbie Lewis (bass). Highlights include dedications to Coltrane and Monk, plus the stunning ballad “All My Yesterdays.” Blue Note Tone Poet Series features all-analog, remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging.

Kyle Nix
Lightning On The Mountain & Other Short Stories
Self-released
Country
Somewhere between fellow Okies Roy Clark and Hoyt Axton, over by the swaying pines where country music gets a dusty insert of grit, over there with a bottle of bourbon, there sits a dude named Kyle Nix who’s gonna get your attention. Nix has been the fiddle player for the Turnpike Troubadours for a long while. You wanna hear his self-released album.

Lee Fields
Let’s Get A Groove On
Daptone Records
Funk and Soul
Freshly unleashed from the vaults of Desco Records and remastered for the first time since its 1998 release, this Lee Fields‘ classic drops on clear vinyl and green splatter. As Fields will tell you on the album, he’s gonna remind some of you and teach some of you… what funk is.

Townes Van Zandt
Somebody Had To Write It
Chicken Ranch Records
Country
Live cuts from Townes Van Zandt… not sure what else needs to be said. I know it’s been done before but did I mention it’s Townes Van Zandt? Many a live show were “flavored” with Townes affinity for the bottle and it seems at time there was some of this here. A missed lyric, a messy chord, tempo challenges… it’s all there but that is part of who Townes was. The sound is amazing throughout the recording!