CDs | Pop | Classical | Jazz + Other  | Times Arts guide
| Sunday Times Record of the Week, 2000

  Paul Connolly's CD choice for Christmas
    The Best of Miles Davis
   by Miles Davis (Sony)		     Bullitt
  by Lalo Schifrin (Aleph)
    The music of Davis has been in a state of flux, but there is a pleasing symmetry to this new retrospective. Standout tracks include Bill Laswell’s remix of In a Silent Way...
     The combination of Mission: Impossible and that Steve McQueen car commercial have helped put Lalo Schifrin back on the map...
            
    Chanchullo
  by Ruben Gonzalez (World Circuit)		     Bright Shiny Morning
  by Norma Waterson (Topic)
    From the opening descarga (the title track) — with all its curious echoes of Santana’s Oye Como Va — this entire record entreats you to dance and won’t take no for an answer...

 		    Norma Waterson’s last two albums saw Britain’s finest singer of traditional song flirting with material by the likes of Elvis Costello and Billy Bragg...
         
     The Best Of Broadside
   by Various Artists (Smithsonian
   Folkways)		     Password
  by Geoff Muldaur (Hightone)
    An influential magazine in the Sixties American Civil Rights movement, Broadside printed protest songs for activists to sing on marches with Dr Martin Luther King...     For a man whose first solo album came out in 1963, Muldaur is wearing well. Indeed, this album and its immediate predecessor, The Secret Handshake, are probably among his best work...
         
     My Heart's In Memphis
   by Irma Thomas (Rounder)		     Back In The Day
  by Courtney Pine (Blue Thumb/Universal)
    Think of things that go together — fish and chips, pride and joy, Dome and disaster...    

British saxophonist Courtney Pine has always attempted to take jazz into the mainstream by fusing...
           
    Mose Alive
   by Mose Allison (Warner Jazz)		    
    Mose Allison’s off-centre piano playing and his quirky view of the human condition ("I don’t have no trouble livin’/It’s just the dyin’ that bothers me") has turned him into a grand old man...