Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' (2001)

Whereas Bob Dylan's previous albums, 'Bob Dylan' and 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan', combined original material and cover songs, 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' was the first to feature only original compositions. It consists mostly of stark, sparsely arranged ballads concerning issues such as racism, poverty, and social change, and the title track is one of Dylan's most famous, with many feeling that it captures the spirit of social and political upheaval that characterized the 1960's. Some critics and fans were not quite as taken with the album as a whole, citing its lack of humour or musical diversity, but it still peaked at No. 20 on the US chart, eventually going gold, and belatedly reaching No. 4 in the UK in 1965. Work had begun on 6 August 1963, at Columbia's Studio A, with Tom Wilson once again as producer for the entire album, and the session yielded a usable take of 'North Country Blues'. Another session at Studio A was held the following day, this time providing master takes of four songs: 'Ballad Of Hollis Brown', 'With God On Our Side', 'Only A Pawn In Their Game', and 'Boots Of Spanish Leather', after which sessions did not resume for more than two months. During the interim, Dylan toured briefly with Joan Baez, performing a number of key concerts that raised his profile in the media, and when he returned to Studio A on 23 October he had six more original compositions ready for recording. Master takes for 'The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll' and 'When The Ship Comes In' came from this date, and on 24 October final takes of 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' and 'One Too Many Mornings' were recorded. The final session took place on 31 October, and the entire session focused on one song — 'Restless Farewell'— whose melody is taken from an Irish-Scots folk song, 'The Parting Glass', and it produced a master take that ultimately closed the album. Almost as soon as the album appeared in February 1964, Peter, Paul and Mary covered 'When The Ship Comes In', and by the following year Manfred Mann had charted with their version of 'With God On Our Side', while The Seekers had recorded the title track and Nina Simone covered 'Ballad Of Hollis Brown'. Most of these versions are from the couple of years following the release of the album, but it took until 1988 before someone tackled 'Only A Pawn In Their Game', and 2001 for a cover of 'Restless Farewell' to follow Joan Baez's version in 1968, so here they all are on this tribute to a classic Dylan album.  

Track listing

01 The Times They Are A-Changin' (The Seekers 1965)
02 Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Nazareth 1973)
03 With God On Our Side (Manfred Mann 1965)
04 One Too Many Mornings (The Beau Brummels 1966)
05 North Country Blues (Joan Baez 1968)
06 Only A Pawn In Their Game (The Lenny Nelson Project 1988)
07 Boots Of Spanish Leather (The Silkie 1965)
08 When The Ship Comes In (Peter, Paul And Mary 1964)
09 The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (Phranc 1985)
10 Restless Farewell (Norman Blake & Peter Ostroushko 2001)

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Joni Mitchell (2014)

Roberta Joan Anderson on 7 November 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, and moved with her family to Saskatoon, which she considers her hometown, at age 11. She wanted to play the guitar, but as her mother associated the instrument with country music and disapproved of its hillbilly associations, she initially settled for the ukulele, although she eventually taught herself guitar from a Pete Seeger songbook. She started singing with her friends at bonfires around Waskesiu Lake, northwest of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and after dropping out of school after a year at age 20, she started to play gigs as a folk musician on weekends at her college and at a local hotel. In 1964, at the age of 20, she told her mother that she intended to be a folk singer in Toronto, and wrote her first song 'Day After Day' on the three-day train ride east to Ontario. In February 1965 she was playing gigs again around Yorkville, often with a friend, Vicky Taylor, and was beginning to sing original material for the first time, written with her unique open tunings. In March and April she found work at the Penny Farthing, a folk club in Toronto, where she met New York City-born American folk singer Charles Scott "Chuck" Mitchell, from Michigan. Chuck was immediately attracted to her and impressed by her performance, and he told her that he could get her steady work in the coffeehouses he knew in the United States. She left Canada for the first time in late April 1965, travelling with Mitchell to the US, where they began playing music together, and they later married, with Joni taking his surname, although the marriage and partnership ended with their divorce in early 1967. Following this, she moved to New York City to follow her musical path as a solo artist, and while she was playing one night in 1967 in the Gaslight South, a club in Coconut Grove, Florida, David Crosby walked in and was immediately struck by her ability and her appeal as an artist. She accompanied him back to Los Angeles, where he set about introducing her and her music to his friends, and soon she was signed to the Warners-affiliated Reprise label by talent scout Andy Wickham. 

Crosby convinced Reprise to let Mitchell record a solo acoustic album without the folk-rock overdubs in vogue at that time, and 'Song To Seagull' was released in March 1968. She toured steadily to promote the album, creating eager anticipation for her second LP, 'Clouds', which was released in April 1969. This contained her own versions of some of her songs already recorded and performed by other artists, such as 'Chelsea Morning', 'Both Sides, Now', and 'Tin Angel', and the covers of both albums were designed and painted by Mitchell herself.  In April 1970 Reprise released her third album, 'Ladies Of The Canyon', and her sound was already beginning to expand beyond the confines of acoustic folk music and toward pop and rock, with more overdubs, percussion, and backing vocals, and for the first time, many songs composed on piano, which became a hallmark of Mitchell's style in her most popular era. 'Ladies Of The Canyon' was an instant smash on FM radio and sold briskly, eventually becoming Mitchell's first gold album, but she made a decision to stop touring for a year and just write and paint. The songs she wrote during the months she took off for travel and life experience appeared on her next album, 'Blue', released in June 1971, which was an almost instant critical and commercial success, peaking in the top 20 of the Billboard albums chart in September and also hitting the British Top 3. The lushly produced 'Carey' was the single at the time, but musically, other parts of 'Blue' departed further from the sounds of 'Ladies Of The Canyon', with simpler, rhythmic acoustic parts allowed a focus on Mitchell's voice and emotions, while others such as 'Blue', 'River' and 'The Last Time I Saw Richard' were sung to her rolling piano accompaniment. With the music now so much more than just folk songs, they were soon picked up and recorded by a variety of artists in other fields, such as soul rendition of 'All I Want' by The Supremes, or the hard rock of 'This Flight Tonight' by Nazareth. The songs from 'Blue' have continued to be covered ever since, with Linda Ronstadt tackling 'River' in 2000, and Wilson Phillips taking on 'California' in 2004. 'Blue' is often cited as one of the best albums of all time, being rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and so here is a unique interpretation of it by a variety of artists who appreciate the quality of her song-writing.   

Track listing

01 All I Want (The Supremes 1972)  
02 My Old Man (Sandbloom 2011) 
03 Little Green (Blue Tapestry 2002) 
04 Carey (Goldie Hawn 1972)  
05 Blue (Sarah McLachlan 1994)  
06 California (Wilson Phillips 2004) 
07 This Flight Tonight (Nazareth 1973) 
08 River (Linda Ronstadt 2000)  
09 A Case Of You (Phoebe Snow 1998)  
10 The Last Time I Saw Richard (Clare Maguire 2014)

Nazareth - Storm Warning (1977)

I've always had a soft spot for Nazareth, as they were pretty much my introduction to heavy rock in the early 70's. They had one of the great rock singers in Dan McCafferty, and their music was heavy, but with enough pop nous to get them into the singles chart on a regular basis. I didn't buy many of their singles, as nearly all of the songs were available on the albums, so I may have missed out on the odd exclusive b-side at the time, but the band actually did do a lot of recycling, with many of the b-sides of their singles in 1973 and 1974 being songs from their first two album from 1971 and 1972. However, they did release a few songs as b-sides which never made it to album, as well as a couple of stand-alone singles, and so I've gathered them all together, along with a couple of previously unreleased songs from the same period which appeared on the excellent Naz Box album, to make up an approximation of a new Nazareth album from somewhere between 1975 and 1977.  

Track Listing

01 If You See My Baby (debut single 1973)
02 Hard Living (b-side of 'If You See My Baby')
03 Spinning Top (b-side of 'Morning Dew')
04 Friends (b-side of 'Dear John')
05 Down (b-side of 'Love Hurts')
06 Holy Roller (single 1975)
07 Railroad Boy (b-side of 'Holy Roller')
08 My White Bicycle (single 1975)
09 Greens (b-side of 'Gone Dead Train')
10 Snaefell (Previously unreleased)
11 Desolation Road (b-side of 'Gone Dead Train')
12 Paper Sun (Previously unreleased)
13 Storm Warning (Previously unreleased)