In December 1938 three pianists, Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis sat onstage at New York's Carnegie Hall and dispensed an intriguing and exciting line in Boogie Woogie. What they played is now considered to be a major influence on R&B and rock and roll. Almost overnight, eight-to-a-bar became part of America's Swing Scene, as virtually every big band dashed to the recording studio to cut a piano boogie-led hit. Enjoy!

Ultimate Sixties – The Classics brings together 100 of the most iconic tracks from the Swinging Sixties. From Petula Clark to The Stooges, and from Hawkwind to Engelbert Humperdinck, this album presents an eclectic mix of absolute classics from the decade that changed everything.

More than anything else, Lena Horne was a nightclub entertainer, and having completed her film commitments to MGM in 1956, she was free to turn her attention to performing full-time. Starting on New Year's Eve, she spent eight weeks at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and at the end of the run RCA Victor Records brought in recording equipment. The result is an excellent representation of Horne in her natural environment. Backed by Nat Brandwynne's Orchestra as conducted by her husband, Lennie Hayton, Horne essays a series of vintage standards that go back to 1929's "Honeysuckle Rose," which she sang in the 1943 film Thousands Cheer.

Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons felt a need to be modern and go psychedelic for the hippies and that's what they did in 1968 with The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. The album was a huge flop but it was a way to show how a once popular group had to struggle for success and relevancy. This is taken from the 1996 remaster reissued by Rhino Records.

From the opening track, "Champagne Charlie," to the dazzling finale, "T.B. Blues," Leon Redbone presents an introspective collection of blues and big band melodies in timeless fashion, a rare feat because of its release date in 1978. The record was highly acclaimed and regarded as the purest of jazz and classic blues by a remarkable legend and icon in this musical form. Most of the record, like the amiable "Sweet Sue (Just You)" and memorable "Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)," is filled with the best that blues and ragtime has to offer. The music itself is quite light and jolly during the more uplifting moments, with others such as "I Hate a Man Like You" very depressing and sorrowful. The band backing up Redbone is delightful, filled with jubilant horns, oboes, and trumpets. "T.B. Blues" closes out this record as a charming look back into the world of blues via pioneer Jimmie Rodgers. Two melodies written and composed by giant Jelly Roll Morton are featured here, with fresh and stunning new arrangements by Leon Redbone and company, "If Someone Would Only Love Me" and "I Hate a Man Like You".

Leon Redbone followed up his debut long-player On the Track (1975) with Double Time (1977), an equally enchanting, if not somewhat eclectic blend, of jazz, folk, blues and pop standards – all in Redbone's undeniably distinct throaty baritone. While the tunes may be familiar, these renderings are steeped in the artist's unique sensibilities. The results are uniformly ingenious and commence with a New Orleans ragtime flavored interpretation of Blind Boy Blake's dirty "Diddy Wa Diddie" blues. Augmenting Redbone's acoustic guitar is an extended cast of session stalwarts and a host of other musical notables – such as Milt Hinton (bass), Jonathan Dorn (tuba), Vic Dickenson (trombone) and Jo Jones (drums). Don McLean (banjo) sits in, supplying his criminally underutilized instrumental versatility on the endearing revamp of Jimmie Rodgers' "Mississippi Delta Blues." The decidedly demented reading of "Sheik of Araby" is nothing short of inspired insanity. Redbone incorporates a Screamin' Jay Hawkins-esque persona belting out a variety of hoots, snorts, howls and hob-gobbles set behind a hot-steppin' fret board flurry à la Django Reinhardt.

In 1970, A&M Records, the label for which Liza Minnelli (who turned 24 years old on March 12) recorded, had an unusual problem with her. Clearly, she was a fast-rising star, but she couldn't sell any records. Nightclubs and concert halls were eager for her appearances; she was an Oscar-nominated movie actress with her pick of roles; and she already had won a Tony Award, though she was now too big for Broadway. Yet, A&M had failed to chart either of her albums or any of her singles for the label, just as Capitol Records before it had charted only with her 1964 debut album Liza! Liza! The problem, of course, was rock.

In the late 1960s, conventional wisdom in the record industry held that traditional pop singers should turn from the showtunes of the interwar era they had been focusing on since Frank Sinatra's concept albums of the '50s and accommodate the rock revolution to the extent of covering soft rock songs written by the more sophisticated of the contemporary rock & roll songwriters, starting with John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles, and including such others as Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

Incredible value. These Acrobat CD's are amazing. Great sound and quality. Looking forward to more of the same from other years as well as Britain's Hit Parade series covering the 1960's.

Popular throughout the 1960s and '70s, Marie Laforêt is a French pop singer who garnered fame initially as a film actress during the early to mid-'60s. Born Maïténa Doumenach to parents of Armenian heritage on October 5, 1939, in Soulac-sur-Mer, Aquitaine, France, she made her film debut in 1960 in the René Clément drama Plein Soleil, a big-screen adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. Plein Soleil not only launched the acting career of Laforêt; it also made a cinema star of actor Alain Delon. In the wake of her showbiz breakthrough, Laforêt was offered one role after another, notably beginning with Saint Tropez Blues (1961) and La Fille aux Yeux d'Or (1961).

Sophie Milman exudes confidence on her second solo effort, though she draws material from a much wider range of music styles for this session. The singer is still a fine interpreter of standards and show tunes, offering a flirtatious "People Will Say We're in Love" as a solid opener and an imaginative setting of "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" that showcases harmonica player Gregoire Maret and pianist Paul Shrofel. The addition of a droning opening vamp in "Fever" updates Peggy Lee's hit while keeping its hypnotic flavor intact. Arranger Cameron Wallis is added on tenor sax for Milman's torchy interpretation of "Make Someone Happy," while he wrote the bossa nova "Reste (Stay)" in which she negotiates the multilingual lyrics flawlessly.

This new greatest hits collection features all of his best-loved and biggest hit songs! Billy was closely associated with The Beatles, having hits with seven Lennon & McCartney songs, including “Bad To Me,” "I’ll Be On My Way,” “I’ll Keep You Satisfied,” “I Call Your Name,” “Do You Want To Know A Secret,” and “From A Window;” several of which The Beatles never recorded themselves.

The Sandie Shaw Supplement was a television show hosted by the British singer Sandie Shaw in 1968; and also the name of her fourth original album released in November of that year by Pye Records, and re-issued shortly afterwards on the Marble Arch label. The TV show included Shaw singing the songs from the album. Most of the shows have since been erased by the BBC, after Shaw asked for them to put the film on videotape. Only two episodes (episodes 2 & 3) have survived, after being returned to the BBC from overseas in the early 1990s. Episode 2 was shown on BBC2 shortly after being recovered. The audio tracks to some episodes have survived and pirate versions can sometimes be found on the internet but are generally hard to find.

Love Me, Please Love Me is the third original album or LP by 1960s British singer Sandie Shaw. It was issued by Pye Records in November 1967, several months after Shaw's triumph in that year's Eurovision Song Contest. The album mainly contains cover versions of songs made popular by other artists, like Michel Polnareff's "Love Me, Please Love Me", though two songs are written by Chris Andrews, who was Shaw's personal songwriter for much of the 1960s.

Dream Street captures Peggy Lee at her most intimate and melancholy – a song cycle exploring love and loss in uncompromisingly frank terms, it strips away the saccharine and schmaltz so common among the singer's Decca sessions to effectively create the first truly adult music of her career. Lee occupies the same harrowing emotional territory staked out by Frank Sinatra via the landmark In the Wee Small Hours, investing the material with the kind of heartbreak and longing that belies the whole "easy listening" tag – this is music shorn of pretense and artifice, as intense as a primal scream yet beautiful in the way only art of this magnitude can be.