... Enrico sets the tenor With the arrival of the millennium we must brace ourselves for a spate of recordings of the century and it is fortuitous that the commercial recording industry spans almost exactly 100 years. Its first great star, and incidentally the first cross-over recording artist, was the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, whose earliest recordings are featured on the magnificent two CD ...

... MILLENNIUM NOTES Meanwhile, back in New York, British-bom Johnny Brandon is something of a cult hit with his revues, one of which is Music for the Millennium,, featuring an outstanding singer named Sarah Cole Paige, who can apparently sing anything. Her range passes cabaret, country music and blues, all the songs being by Brandon himself. It is on Original Cast Records (0C9916) but can ...

... Groundbreaking tunes That much heralded revival in English folk music is put down to Eliza Carthy and Kate Rusby. But it should not be forgotten that Eliza's mum and dad, Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy, are still going strong and have a new album to Drove it. Broken Ground (Topic TSCD 509), on which Eliza makes a guest appearance. Both Norma, with her family group The Watersons, and ...

... Olivia's back and different Gaia--Olivia Newton-John COMPILED BY PETER HEPPLE (D Sharp DSH LCD 7017) The Australian-born singer has had more than her share of emotional and health problems in recent years and it is good to see her back and casting off the disco diva status she had in the seventies. The songs are all serf-written and largely inspired by her native land but they are not ...

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... Baker's Dozen still rising high The Boss Is Home--Kenny Baker's Dozen Big Bear ESSCD 224 It was back in the early years of the Second World War that Kenny Baker's name first came to the notice of British swing enthusi asts and suffered because of confusion with an American singer who was starring in films at the time. Now the singer is forgotten but our Kenny goes marching on, well into his ...

... LEST WE FORGET Students of the American musical will make a beeline for Volume III in Pearl's Broadway Through the Gramophone series, The Musical Stage In the War Years 1914- 1920, a double CD on GEMS 0084. I cannot pretend that it is of much more than academic interest, however, all the tracks being made in medley form by either the Victor or Columbia Light Opera Companies. Though one or two ...

... GREAT SCOT Technically of the highest quality, the recent output by Linn has encompassed both traditional Scottish and jazz material. I seem to have missed the first five volumes of Robert Bums: The Complete Songs, but Volume 6 (CKD 999) is much more ing than some Sassenachs mignt imagine. A varied collection of singers has been gathered to interpret them, from the highly traditional, like ...

... ABM VARIETY From the ever-growing pile of ABM releases, one picks another four which cover the jazz and pop spectrum. For sheer fun and good humour it would be hard to beat Wynonie Harris, heard on ABMMCD 1159 on a collection of R&B tracks with small and large bands led by Lucky Millinder, Johnnie Otis, Illinois Jacquet, Jack McVea and Johnnie Alston, practising in that area where jazz ...

... Just different Bach Goes to Town-- Alec Templeton Flapper PAST CD 7057 Few people can remember, or have even heard of. Alec Templeton, a brilliant blind pianist from south Wales who was discovered by Jack Hylton, given a spot in his big show band, went to the States with him and remained there to become a radio personality before his death in his early fifties. A veritable musical magpie, his ...

... Lehar Operetta--Original Cast Series Pearl GEMM CD 9110 Selections from four of Lehar's operettas which received such acclaim from British audiences between the wars, though The Merry Widow was first seen back in 1907, the three tracks here, featuring artists from the 1923 revival, being actually recorded nearly ten years later. These are a very individual rendering of Maxim's by the Danish ...

... Let's Face the Music-- Bruce Adams/Alan Barnes Quartet Big Bear ESSCD 269 Big Bear have found themselves a winner in this quintet, whose second album this is. In its baldest sense, this is straight-up bebop, of the type played in the fifties, with strong themes, some of them standards, then a suc cession of solos from the musi cians and a recapitulation of the theme at the close. But, as if to ...