Jimmy's groundbreaking album on Trojan Records The news of Jimmy Cliff’s death on Monday, November 24th, 2025 buried me in a veritable blizzard of emotions, memories, and long-forgotten scenarios, in all of which his music had been the soundtrack.   My first job at Island Records in 1965, looking through the racks of 45s down in the basement at 108 Cambridge Road, and noting the titles by him, ‘Hurricane Hatty’, ‘Miss Jamaica’, ‘Since Lately’, ‘One Eyed Jacks’, ‘King of Kings

by Opal Louis Nations and Bob Bell A short note here: As Opal writes below, the first installment of this piece ran in Blues and Rhythm...

Good sounding Califone in excellent working order. Plays 16, 33, 45 and 78rpm records. Comes with 12" speaker, with ability to connect a...

A fine Califone classroom / community center record player cum PA system, that will play all speeds of records (16, 33, 45 and 78) with...

A nice matching pair of Califone 12" speakers for use with a Califone Record player / PA system. They clip together to make a simple and...

From the early 1950s, this is one of the best record players out there for playing vintage 78s, 45s and LPs. It has a tube amp, that has...

Made in 1954, this little beauty has a Styron plastic case, a mighty one-tube amplifier and, contrary to its name, Tri-O-Speed, boasts...

The short story of my Austin Champ, licensed in the UK as MYA 713E, and ruminations upon both the joy and the despair of owning it. When,...

Letters, I used to get tons of them. Nowadays it’s emails, texts, messages and a zillion electronic missives. Emails I dig, they being...

A MODERN 78RPM READER THE LUST FOR SHELLAC: Confessions of an addict, Part 2. My good friend Josh Rosenthal who heads Tompkins Square...

A MODERN 78 RPM READER THE LUST FOR SHELLAC: Confessions of an addict, Part 1. My good friend Josh Rosenthal who heads Tompkins Square...

Rhode Island guitarist and singer Duke Robillard, a musician steeped in the blues, has teamed up with Rhode Island’s Soulshot, a band steeped in Jamaican music, to make one of the year’s most interesting, listenable and danceable records, ‘Two Guitars - One Sound’, a mainly instrumental album featuring Andy Bassford and Mark Berney.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuIscCrlrCo Rusty Zinn is one of those musicians, whether singing or playing the guitar, who has perfect...

A living archive of post-war music of America, from blues to San Francisco psychedelia, and a whole bunch of entertaining tales along the...

nts. A very nice 3-speed Dual 1218 turntable. All three speeds work beautifully. The unit has a Stanton 500 Mark II cartridge fitted with...

AS WITNESSED BY BRITT HALLQUIST. Gothenburg, Sweden,  Monday, May 15, 2023 A few days after arriving in Sweden I had an appointment at...

Photo: Britt Hallquist Sometimes you hear a sound that changes things for you forever. You had no idea it was coming, and when you heard...

After the show at The Bottom Line, NYC, April 5, 1981 L-R Jimmy Wimpfheimer, Doug James, Al Copley, Ronnie Earl, Danny Motta, John Rossi,...

The first volume of ‘The Island Book of Records - 1959-1968’ filled 390 pages and covered the first ten years of Island Records. Volume 2...

I find it hard to believe that it was 50 years ago that John Broven, the indefatigable English blues scholar, first published his...