The studio and live recording sessions that Thelonious Monk cut during his six-year stay at the Riverside label are compiled over the 15 discs in the Complete Riverside Recordings. This middle era -- between his early sides for Prestige and the final ones for Columbia -- is generally considered Monk's most ingenious and creative period. The sessions are presented in chronological order, accurately charting the progression and diversions of one of the most genuinely enigmatic figures in popular music. The Complete Riverside Recordings explores Monk's genius with a certain degree of real-time analysis that simply listening to each of the individual albums from this era lacks. This is due in part to the 14 additional performances exclusive to this collection...

This blues artist is the best. Vance Kelly might be America's most underrated artist. He is clearly one of Chicago's finest blues players. I have seen him many times from his shows at Chicago's Checkerboard Lounge to gigs at Kingston Mines and Lee's Unleaded. I have had him perform for me live at a private function for friends and co-workers. Vance and his band just does not have a bad night. Vance has managed to capture the magic of their live shows on this CD -- from his signature song "Candylicker" to "Foxy Lady"; from "Momma's Apple Pie" to "You are Mine and I am Yours" -- this CD has an energy and a passion that usually only comes of by seeing an artist live.

J.B. Hutto -- along with Hound Dog Taylor -- was one of the last great slide guitar disciples of Elmore James to make it into the modern age. Hutto's huge voice, largely incomprehensible diction, and slash-and-burn playing was Chicago blues with a fierce, raw edge all its own. He entered the world of music back home in Augusta, GA, singing in the family-oriented group the Golden Crowns Gospel Singers. He came north to Chicago in the mid-'40s, teaching himself guitar and eventually landing his first paying job as a member of Johnny Ferguson & His Twisters.

Taken from two nights of performances at a club in Zugabe, Vienna, this is a typical set from Chicago's favorite down-home combo. John Primer handles the vocals on the opener, "Big Fat Woman," and Bonnie Lee comes up to belt out her signature tune, "I'm Good," but by and large it's Magic Slim's show -- a set full of greasy small-club blues played by a master. Decent sound quality for this type of affair, too.

Eddie Shaw (born March 20, 1937, Stringtown, Mississippi, United States) is an African American, Chicago blues tenor saxophonist. In his teenage years, Shaw played tenor saxophone with local blues musicians such as Little Milton and Willie Love. At the age of 14, he was involved in a jam session in Greenville, Mississippi with Ike Turner's band. At a gig in Itta Bena, Mississippi, when the then 20-year-old Shaw performed, Muddy Waters invited him to join his Chicago based band.

McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1915 – April 30, 1983), known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered "the Father of blues". Blues musicians Big Bill Morganfield and Larry "Mud Morganfield" Williams are his sons. A major inspiration for the British blues explosion in the 1960s, Muddy was ranked #17 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

When it comes to blues, Chicago's strictly a guitar and harmonica town. Saxophonists who make a living leading a blues band in the Windy City are scarce as hen's teeth. But Eddie Shaw has done precisely that ever since his longtime boss, Howlin' Wolf, died in 1976.

The overall effect of Hands Off! is that of an exceptional club set.... Vance Kelly, with his authoritative vocals and do-it-all-guitar, is the star of the show. He is one of the handful of important blues artists to emerge during the '90s....

This is a fine example of Chicago Blues from the well known sax of Eddie Shaw to Martin Lane's harmonica and the two Taylor family members on drums. But Edward is the centerpiece and is sweet on both vocals and guitar in this fine tribute to his father. This album is very inspired to listen to. Listen alongside his father's album "I feel so bad" on Hightone and you can hear that Edward got it from Eddie.

Listen to the music: when he sings, Willie Kent’s voice blazes out from the heart of the blues. Below the singing, you hear his bass guitar, flawless and rich. Between these two runs the music, a deep, honest blues that flowed from rural Mississippi to urban Chicago and remembers everything it learned along the way.

The son of bluesman L.V. Banks, the singer/guitarist known simply as Tre carried on the traditions of his father's music, recapturing the sound and feeling of '50s-era Chicago blues with accuracy and real affection. Born in Grenada, Mississippi, he was raised on Chicago's South Side, initially playing rock and R&B; his musical allegiance moved to the blues while backing Banks between 1981 and 1987, during which time he honed a fluid, shimmering guitar style. Tre's solo debut, Delivered for Glory -- Reclaiming the Blues, appeared in 1996; the follow-up, Blues Knock'n Baby -- recorded with backing band the Blueknights -- was released a year later.

Mississippi-born L.V. Banks grew up singing Muddy Waters' songs while picking cotton and later played house parties in Indianola for his idol B.B. King. In 1965, Banks made the inevitable journey to Chicago, where he has remained one of the South Side's most prominent journeymen. It was King who encouraged the young Banks to take up the guitar to complement his fine voice, and his influence on Banks' use of both instruments is evident in the emphatic falsetto phrases and the snap of the single string solos.

After getting everything right on the previous year's Hail to England, Manowar rushed back into the studio to record 1985's Sign of the Hammer — and it shows. Despite the return of Hail producer Jack Richardson, the album sounds noticeably flat when compared to its predecessor, seriously dulling the impact of promising cuts like "Thor (The Powerhead)" and "The Oath." Uneven songwriting is also to blame, as becomes painfully obvious on the pair of epics contained here: the Vietnam tale "Mountains" and the Jonestown bio "Guyana (Cult of the Damned)," both of which alternate moments of brilliance and pointless excess. And there's little to write home about in terms of the uninspired title track, the dull, uneventful bass solo "Thunderpick," or the downright lousy "Animals."...

On their anthemic mission statement "Kings of Metal" Manowar once again proclaim their metal superiority thusly: "Other bands play, Manowar kills." The twin sentiments of the group's metal mastery and the majesty of medieval heroism in battle are repeated on their sixth full-length release, Kings of Metal. There aren't too many surprises on the disc, with the possible exception of bassist Joey DeMaio's blinding 64th-note bass playing on a reworking of Russian classicist Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" entitled "Sting of the Bumblebee." Considered by some fans to be a classic of its own, the 1988 release has quite a few ballads, though speedier tracks like "Wheels of Fire" demonstrate the groups talents best. Besides their refreshingly totalistic loyalty to form, Manowar's most admirable trait is their prodigious metal musicianship.

Welcome to the Bear Trap is (you guessed it) yet another collection of early Motörhead classics, if a rather strangely named one at that. In fact, it's a slightly less satisfactory version of the band's ultimate best-of set, the seminal No Remorse. That's the one to own.