Ann Hampton Callaway - Slow

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 59:45
Size: 136.8 MB
Styles: Vocal jazz
Year: 2005
Art: Front

[5:10] 1. Slow
[4:27] 2. You Belong To Me
[6:51] 3. Will You Love Me Tomorrow
[3:41] 4. Tonight You're All Mine (With Carole King)
[5:50] 5. Someone To Light Up My Life
[5:06] 6. I've Dreamed Of You
[5:13] 7. Lullaby In Blue
[3:59] 8. Moondance (With Liz Callaway)
[4:17] 9. Never Really Mine To Lose
[5:58] 10. Love Dance
[4:28] 11. Never Let Me Go
[4:39] 12. My Answered Prayer

The sultry, sweet-molasses voiced veteran singer/songwriter has an impressive pedigree as an entertainment Renaissance woman, with a Tony nomination for Swing!, the theme song to TV's The Nanny, and some 40 CDs as a soloist and guest artist to her credit. Best of all, she lives up to her promises, most notably, the vibe she hints at in the album title. Her goal was to make a dreamy "make out" album and she succeeds, creating a lush, moody, sparsely arranged atmosphere-rich collection of sweet originals played at very slow tempos. Those arrangements are geared towards allowing her voice to stand out and ultimately caress the listener, but the drawback is that there's not a great deal of variety in rhythm and movement from track to track. Those who love the original version of Carole King's "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" may be maddened by its languid pace (despite its shimmering beauty), but King loved it so much that she wrote the following track, the much more engaging, AC radio-accessible "Tonight You're All Mine," with Callaway co-producing and singing backup on the track. Callaway also picks up the pace to joyous effect, singing beautifully with her sister Liz (with whom she performs cabaret shows) on a lightly swinging version of "Moondance." Other familiar tracks include a thoughtful reading of Ivan Lins' "Love Dance," and "I've Dreamed of You" (Callaway's song which Barbra Streisand sang at her wedding to James Brolin and later included on three albums.) ~Jonathan Widran

Slow

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Carole King - Pearls: Songs Of Goffin & King

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 33:06
Size: 75.8 MB
Styles: Soft rock
Year: 1980/2012
Art: Front

[3:28] 1. Dancin' With Tears In My Eyes
[2:30] 2. The Loco-Motion
[2:29] 3. One Fine Day
[3:40] 4. Hey Girl
[4:25] 5. Snow Queen
[2:54] 6. Chains
[3:00] 7. Oh No, Not My Baby
[3:34] 8. Hi-De-Ho (That Old Sweet Roll)
[3:15] 9. Wasn't Born To Follow
[3:46] 10. Goin' Back

Make no doubt about it, this is possibly Carole King's most important work since Tapestry, and why a similar album didn't follow Tapestry or its follow-up, Music, was a marketing blunder and a mystery. Missing here is Lou Adler's production, though King and her co-producer Mark Hallman are hardly inefficient. It's just that some songs get more attention than others. "Dancin' With Tears in My Eyes" opens the collection, a pleasant new addition to their repertoire, but next to "Locomotion," "One Fine Day," "Chains," and "Snow Queen," its purpose is more to bring the album full circle than to try to compete with these classics. "One Fine Day," the song the Chiffons brought Top Five, was the hit, going Top 15 from this set 17 years later. The reworking of the Freddie Scott/Bobby Vee/Donny Osmond hit "Hey Girl" is breathtaking. Here King is backed by lush production and a bluesy vocal that surpasses anything else on this record, as well as much of what was on the charts at this time. Pearls: Songs of Goffin and King is the set the artist's longtime fans craved when Tapestry made her more than a household name. This album deserves its place right next to Tapestry. ~Joe Viglione

Pearls: Songs Of Goffin & King

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Carole King, James Taylor - Live At The Troubadour

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 63:53
Size: 146.2 MB
Styles: Soft rock, Adult Contemporary
Year: 2010
Art: Front

[3:09] 1. Blossom
[4:42] 2. So Far Away
[2:59] 3. Machine Gun Kelly
[4:17] 4. Carolina In My Mind
[4:59] 5. It's Too Late
[5:25] 6. Smackwater Jack
[4:04] 7. Something In The Way She Moves
[4:13] 8. Will You Love Me Tomorrow
[3:49] 9. Country Road
[5:45] 10. Fire And Rain
[3:35] 11. Sweet Baby James
[4:05] 12. I Feel The Earth Move
[5:52] 13. You've Got A Friend
[4:09] 14. Up On The Roof
[2:44] 15. You Can Close Your Eyes

Carole King and James Taylor reuniting isn’t quite a monumental reunion -- they never were an official performing entity, so they never had a falling out, appearing on-stage and on record from time to time since their ‘70s heyday -- but it is a notable one, particularly when they choose to perform at the Troubadour, the L.A. venue so crucial at the start of their stardom, backed by such fellow veterans of the SoCal singer/songwriter scene as guitarist Danny Kortchmar, bassist Leland Sklar, and drummer Russell Kunkel, musicians who supported them the last time they co-headlined the club back in 1971. All this made their series of shared shows in November 2007 an event, albeit a low-key one. King and Taylor embrace their classics -- it seems that there’s not a hit missed between the two of them -- and there’s genuine warmth to the whole show that’s quite appealing. Perhaps there are no surprises here, but any shock would have run counter to the whole spirit of the evening: this is about basking in both nostalgia and friendship, and if you’re on the same wave as the musicians, Live at the Troubadour is enjoyable. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Live At The Troubadour

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Carole King - The Legendary Demos

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 39:06
Size: 89.5 MB
Styles: Soft rock
Year: 2012
Art: Front

[2:24] 1. Pleasant Valley Sunday
[2:51] 2. So Goes Love
[2:17] 3. Take Good Care of My Baby
[2:51] 4. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
[3:12] 5. Like Little Children
[2:21] 6. Beautiful
[1:48] 7. Crying in the Rain
[3:23] 8. Way Over Yonder
[3:15] 9. Yours Until Tomorrow
[3:28] 10. It's Too Late
[2:59] 11. Tapestry
[4:01] 12. Just Once in My Life
[4:09] 13. You've Got a Friend

Carole King's influence as a songwriter and as a monolithic force in the history of American pop music is far-reaching and inarguable. In the minds of many, King's story begins with Tapestry, her 1971 solo breakthrough album that went on to sell over 25 million copies worldwide and spawned a stream of FM radio classics for generations to come. What some people don't know about is her tireless work as a songwriter leading up to her own incredible solo work, penning songs that would become huge hits for everyone from the Monkees to James Taylor to the Turtles. The Legendary Demos gathers together for the first time ever the working demonstrational tapes King made of her compositions, the same tapes that these bands would reference when learning and recording their versions of the songs, as well as personal rough drafts of songs that would later appear on Tapestry. Recorded hastily and stored for decades on tiny plastic reels, there's a rawness and urgency to these recordings. Often put to tape in the course of an afternoon, directly after conception with the help of various session musicians, these demos are crackling with a triumphant sense of carefree spontaneity. The intimacy of these tracks is what makes them truly special. Tracks from the Tapestry era like "It's Too Late," "Beautiful," and "You've Got a Friend" capture all the breezy lushness of their studio versions with more Spartan arrangements of piano and vocals way up front. Their softly powerful delivery gives the feeling of an incredibly gifted friend casually practicing in the next room. Earlier demos cut when King was in her teens working as a staff songwriter at Brill Building contemporary Aldon Music give up a haunting rendition of "Crying in the Rain," a spare and focused "Take Good Care of My Baby," and a downright majestic piano and vocal version of "Just Once in My Life," all huge hits for the Everly Brothers, Bobby Vee, and the Righteous Brothers, respectively. The songs are already familiar staples, but King's lilting, almost instinctively brilliant performances shed light on the true spirit of her songs. Her soulful vocals on "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" resound with more verve and yearning than her later Tapestry version and arguably more immediacy and reaching than even Aretha Franklin's legendary version. The Legendary Demos is a fantastic example of a collection of unreleased material that really works rather than some lackluster hodgepodge of archived filler. Even the occasionally marred or crunchy fidelity of some of these songs doesn't detract from their potency. If anything, it adds to the fly-on-the-wall feeling of listening in on a true genius at different phases of her genre-shaping development. ~ Fred Thomas

The Legendary Demos

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