The Everly Brothers
Down In The Bottom: The Country Rock Sessions 1966-1968
(RPM)
★★★

BETWEEN 1957 and 1965 the Everly Brothers had more than 20 chart entries in the US and this country but underwent a lean period following the 1960s “British invasion” across the pond.

This box set of three Warner Brothers albums, including rarities and demos, sees Don and Phil searching for a new musical direction but with their Appalachian harmonies intact.

The Hit Sound Of recording from 1967 features Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Hank Snow and Don Gibson covers while the Sing album has their last 1960s hit, Bowling Green, alongside covers of Cannonball Adderley’s Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, the Spencer Davis hit Somebody Help Me and Procul Harum’s Whiter Shade Of Pale.

Homage to Merle Haggard, George Jones, Jimmy Rogers and Glenn Campbell feature on the Roots album, juxtaposed with snippets of their radio show from 1952, making it something of a country-rock and Americana landmark recording.

Tony Allen and Hugh Masekela
Rejoice
(World Circuit)
★★★★★

BORN in 1940 in Lagos, drummer Tony Allen was the engine room in Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat groups, who fused West African rhythms with US funk and jazz.

Masekela hailed from Johannesburg and was encouraged to learn the trumpet by anti-apartheid activist Trevor Huddleston. He moved to London and New York, settling in California where he cut the 1968 hit Grazing In The Grass.

Allen and Masekela first met in the 1970s but it took until 2010 before World Circuit’s Nick Gold got them into a studio. The tapes remained in the can until Allen and Gold finished them in 2019, following Masekela's death the year before.

On the recordings, Masekela’s flugelhorn and Allen’s drumming are superb. As Tony Allen says, the eight tracks are “a kind of South African-Nigerian, swing-jazz stew with its roots firmly in Afrobeat.”

Glorious stuff.

Ibrahim Ferrer
Buenos Hermanos: Special Edition
(World Circuit)
★★★★

IN 1996, Ibrahim Ferrer had been retired from music for 40 years but was nevertheless approached by Afro-Cuban All Stars’ band-leader Juan de Marcos Gonzalez to sing on sessions being produced by Ry Cooder for the Buena Vista Social Club album.

With sales of eight million copies, that recording brought Ferrer — resplendent in a dapper flat cap on the album’s cover — Rueben Gonzalez, Omara Portuondo and others international fame and put Cuba on the world-music map.

Buenos Hermanos was cut in 2003 and followed Ferrer’s 1999 solo outing Buena Vista Social Club Presents Ibrahim Ferrer.

For this edition of the Grammy winning set, Cooder has remixed the original tapes, added four unheard sides and resequenced the tracks, making Ferrer’s famed ballads and boleros sound more polished and brand new than ever.