... Wild women's rhythm and blues Wild!!! (Stateside SSL 6033) Some great compilations arc coming out on the Stateside label, this one being devoted to black women vocalists--except, that is, for Peggy Lee, who donates Fever and Why Don't You Do Right--who first came to prominence in the States around the fifties. The only males on these 18 tracks are Nat King t^oie, uuetting with Nellie ...

... Singin' *n' Swingin' Syd Lawrence Orchestra Philips 9299 284 The eleventh album by Britain's middle-of-the-road phenomenon. Though showing little change in style, there is something of a broadening of repertoire. The tracks were made over a two-year period, which means that the personnel is almost completely different in the later cuts. Not that this makes any change in the quality, for Syd ...

... Coppelia THEATRE NORTHERN BALLET FOR AN all-too-short season in the Opera Theatre of the Royal Northern College of Music as a prelude to a two-months' tour, the Northern Ballet Theatre presented an entirely new production of Coppelia. And no happier choice for a Christmas production could have been made than the delightfully col ourful story of the mad inventor and his doll. Directed by ...

... Das Rheingold ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC AN invitation to witness a performance of Wagner's Das Rheingold by students of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, aroused a great deal of preliminary speculation. now lar wouia young voices oe able to cope with the demand of the Wagnerian idiom, for example? How would the stage facilities of the col lege's Opera Theatre be able to ...

... DISC DATA Introducing Neil Martin (EMI EMC 3235) There are strong chances for this young man, who has theatre ex perience and a high, light voice cur rently to be heard in summer season His is a style particularly appreciated by British audiences, deployed here in a cheerful selection of numbers of the Happy Heart and 1 Write the Songs type. (Producer, Norman Newell). Zaragon John Miles ...

... Sound alike Village Music of Yugoslavia Nonesuch Explorer, 7559-72042-2 Macedonian Wedding Soul Cooking GlobeStyle CDORBO 069 COMPILED BY PETER HEPPLE The tragedy of the former Yugoslavia is that the similarities between the various groups are greater than the differences. This certainly holds true on the musical front, as proved by two recent releases. Village Music of Yugoslavia was ...

... Classic sound of Jelly Roll COMPILED BY PETER HEPPLE One cannot hope to adequately describe or even understand the process by which Artis Wodehouse transferred 75-year-old piano rolls to a nine-foot Yamaha Disklavier automatic piano, giving us the opportunity to hear Jellv Roll Morton olav as he really sounded back in the early twenties, and on what is probably a greatly superior instrument ...

... Moving on to a higher level BRITISH JAZZ British jazz, which was in its infancy when the original recordings in the Topaz series were made, has now moved on to the international level, and in my opinion two CDs recently issued by female singers stand comparison with anything coming from j the States nowadays. I Carol Kidd's That's Me (Unn I AKD 044) is a magnificent set, j mainly of ...

... What a welcome education JAZZ Thanks to the development of the CD, it is much easier nowadays to receive a listener's education in any type of music, more especially jazz, as evidenced by Pavilion Records' excellent Topaz series. This label is dedicated to giving us generous samples of all the great musicians of the twen ties, thirties and early forties, demonstrating all the contexts in ...

... TALENTED FAMILY A Portrait of a Famon (NJF 34) introduces us to a member of a talented family, Robert's niece Nicola, who has been quietly making her way, mostly in the north of England, as a jazz bass player and singer. Both talents are displayed on this CD, which also features three more fine young musicians from the north Ben Martin on tenor sax, Chris Walker (guitar) and Phil Johnson ...

... PANAMANIA Many of us are familiar with the music of Latin America, but that of Panama has hitherto been unexplored. But it has never before been available on disc, which makes Traditional Music of Panama, by Los de Azuero (Nimbus Nl 5579) important in world music terms. Panamanian music is quite distinctive and has, as one might expect, a num ber of influences, the original Amerindian. ...

... BIG BAND BONUS It must be 20 years since I last heard the Willie Garnett Big Band in the flesh and I am delighted to discover that it is still going strong after 44 years of being one of the best-kept secrets in British jazz. Garnett himself is a dashing saxophonist who plays in a distinctly fiery style; the musi cians on Just Listen (MC Jazz I), released by the Music Choice company, are ...