In 1993 Van Morrison met her at a Jerry Lee convention in South Wales, and having been a fan, proposed some casual gigs and studio time together. Years later, with little rehearsal or overdubs, Morrison released those sessions. You Win Again made it possible to discover, or rediscover, a strong, spirited vocalist that can still play boogie woogie piano with the best of ‘em.

While Together was included in Bear Family’s massive 8 CD Jerry Lee Lewis boxset The Locust Years, fans await and look to labels like Collector’s Choice, Shout Factory, Rev-Ola or Collectables for a twofer of Together and Two Sides of Linda Gail Lewis. Much like Jerry Lee, and Van Morrison for that matter, Linda Gail can tackle rock, country, blues or gospel sung with the same Ferriday Louisiana magnitude of her older brother. Check out her version of “Rockin My Life Away.”

Starting out as Factory Records wunderkinds, the Railway Children had little in common with the sound of their labelmates New Order and Happy Mondays when they signed to the iconic label soon after forming in 1984. Fronted by singer/songwriter and matinée-idol looker Gary Newby, the band were less Madchester ravers and more Smiths-influenced indie kids with a bit of a New Romantic flair that was often obscured by an inclination toward thoughtful, melancholic anthems.

Combining melodic guitar-based indie-pop with a bit of blue-eyed soul, their 1987 debut Reunion Wilderness and the 1988 Virgin Records sophomore effort Recurrence fit comfortably next to the work of such like-minded contemporaries as the influential Scottish ensemble Orange Juice, as well as more theatrical outfits like Haircut 100 and ABC. However, it was just such comparisons — combined with the misconception that Newby was nothing more than a lightweight teenbeat idol — that dogged the band throughout their career, and they never quite gained the respect they deserved.

In a kind of bittersweet twist, the band’s 1990 effort Native Place brought them not only their biggest hit with the dance-oriented “Every Beat of the Heart,” but also increasing label pressure to go for a more commercial sound. Ironically, a corporate takeover of Virgin by EMI in the early ’90s left the band without a label and, facing the oncoming tsunami of grunge, Newby simply decided it was time to take a break.

Although Newby did release the 1997 album Dream Arcade under the Railway Children moniker, he eventually moved to Japan and began focusing on production work.

Unfortunately, barring several compilations and a 2002 U.K. bonus track edition of Reunion Wilderness, the Railway Children catalog is out-of-print.

Visit Gary Newby’s website.

Check out the Railway Children’s gentle pop sound:

“The First Notebook” (Reunion Wilderness)
“Brighter” (Reunion Wilderness)
“A Gentle Sound” (Reunion Wilderness)
“Somewhere South” (Listen On: The Best of the Railway Children)
“Monica’s Light” (Listen On: The Best of the Railway Children)
“In the Meantime” (Listen On: The Best of the Railway Children)
“Every Beat of the Heart” (Native Place)

Jump to the late ’90s: The late producer Joel Dorn had become a label entrepreneur near the beginning of the CD era; he acquired the rights to the Muse Records imprint and in 1999 released a double-disc package called The Funkiest Band You Never Heard that contained all four albums and their entire range from vanguard, spiritual soul jazz to funk and fusion. 32 Jazz eventually mutated into another label and the Muse releases all fell out of print. This one has been off the shelves for nearly a decade — the last copy we saw at auction went for over $200. Here is a copy of the original CD review and track samples from the package.

Ain’t It The Truth
East
Mail Order
A Country Song
Fifty Second Street Boogie Down
The Demon, Pt. 1
Uzuri
Ife Ife
Got to Be There

The Bats - Daddy’s Highway
The Bats, headed by Robert Scott of NZ heroes the Clean, played the cleanest, purest pop of any band anywhere. They are the definition of jangle pop but they also brought a very pleasing chug to their sound (chug pop?) that was indicative of much of the Flying Nun stable of bands. They released a ton of records (and are still very much a going concern with the release of a very good album, At the National Grid, in 2005) but the pinnacle of their sound is Daddy’s Highway. Warm, peaceful and full of pastoral soul, the album is simply magical.

The Bats - “Round & Down”
The Bats - “Block of Wood”

The Chills - Kaleidoscope World
The Chills had the jangle and chug too. They also added an extra layer of cotton candy fuzz and some wonderfully rollicking organ to their sound. Martin Phillips was a crack hand at churning out memorable and sometime breathtakingly hooky tunes. Like the Bats, the band made a bit of headway in ’80s and almost broke through in the early ’90s with some slick but still great albums. Their best album though is Kaleidoscope World, a collection of singles and stray tracks from the early-to-mid ’80s that stands as an essential document of NZ pop.

The Chills - “Pink Frost”
The Chills - “I Love My Leather Jacket”

The Verlaines - Juvenilia
Verlaines’ head honcho Graeme Downes was trained in classical music and his band had a definite baroque feel. Their songs twist and turn like wild birds, swooping into unexpected changes that leave you giddy and then flooring you with drop-dead choruses. The group’s first first three albums (Hallelujah All the Way Home, Bird Dog and Some Disenchanted Evening) are pretty genius and should be made widely available again, but where you should start is with Juvenilia. This collection of singles and EP tracks is stunning and contains possibly the best song to ever emanate from the fair island in question: “Death and the Maiden.” Like the Bats, the Verlaines are back together and making records again, and that is cause for celebration.

The Verlaines - “Death and the Maiden”
The Verlaines - “Joe’d Out”

Musically, each side is divided into four sections. Side one deals with the warnings themselves. Axelrod’s musical begins by celebrating the earth’s lorry and then indicting humans for messing it up. With gorgeous tings of flute and guitar, he underlines his upfront horn section with a shimmering grace. Side two are the warnings themselves, and Philip Glass’ chorus lines in his opera were influenced by Axelrod’s, I swear. The half-step dissonances between pitches, the long lines, the glimmer of consonance as the music enters the front of the mix with Ernie Watts blowing like crazy. In all, though, for as dark as it was reputed to be at the time, this is a blissed-out album musically. Gorgeous, lush, and full of gentleness, if it weren’t so strange, so completely out of sync with everything that came before and after it, there might be a context in which to give it a higher rating. Bottom line, though, is that he was never this consistent again.

• “The Warning Talk, Pt. 1″
• “The Warning Talk, Pt. 2″
• “The Warning Talk, Pt. 3″
• “The Warning Talk, Pt. 4″
• “The Sign, Pt. 1″
• “The Sign, Pt. 2″
• “The Sign, Pt. 3″
• “The Sign, Pt. 4″

One year after the release of Hard Line, the Blasters broke up after spats between band members, mainly brothers Phil (the vocalist) and Dave Alvin (the songwriter), became unbearable. Dave joined X and co-founded the Knitters, as Phil Alvin released his first solo LP Unsung Stories on Slash in 1986.

While the Blasters had incorporated rockabilly, R&B, blues, New Orleans R&B, country, and boogie woogie, Unsung Stories allowed Alvin to pay homage to swing-era jazz, work with horn charts, and direct larger ensembles. To achieve that delicate balance between tradition and revitalization he called on the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Sun Ra Arkestra. Both conjure up the unique perseverance it takes in maintaining and handing down that particular style of American music.

As a young man in the early ’70s, Phil Alvin hung out in bars, soaking up the live music by those he initially heard on old 78s and 45s. Alvin received hands-on training in music and the music business from would-be friends like Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, Lee Allen, and Sonny Terry. Somewhere along the way he also encountered Sun Ra. Not only did Ra and Alvin share a deep passion of swing-era music, but an interest in semantics/mathematics; Alvin earned his PhD from UCLA, while Ra incorporated it into his myth omniverse.

During the recording of what would become Unsung Stories — according to Arkestra saxophonist, tour/business manager, and percussionist Danny Thompson — the band went to the studio immediately after a gig at Sweet Basil, arriving around 7 a.m., (the date didn’t “officially” begin until 8:30 a.m.), and went on till 1:30 a.m. the next morning. Thompson also noted that Ra left the piano only three times during the session. Ra wrote out the entire arrangements of three tunes associated with Cab Calloway, based on indications provided by Alvin: “Ballad of Smokey Joe,” “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?,” and “Old Man of the Mountain.”

Following the release of the album, Sun Ra and Phil Alvin planned to bring college musicians and their elders together in order to keep the expansion of this pioneering art form active. Unfortunately Sun Ra passed away before they could begin in earnest to officially implement that program.

The appearance of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band from New Orleans continued in the same spirit with their punchy horn arrangement on “Someone Stole Gabriel’s Horn.” The band also went on to help Alvin with his second solo CD County Fair 2000 in 1994 on Hightone, which thankfully is still in print.

Adding to the album’s diverse nature, Alvin performed solo with guitar on “Next Week Sometime,” “Titanic Blues,” and “Gangster’s Blues.” Violinist Richard Greene is added on “Collins Cave,” the Jubilee Train Singers help on the gospel “Death in the Morning,” and a quartet featuring original Blasters pianist Gene Taylor and Alvin Brothers’ childhood friend Gary Masi on guitar is featured on a rocking “Daddy Rolling Stone.” Upon release, Unsung Stories seemed like the farthest thing from what the Blasters had done. In reality it was the exact same thing, just a different way of presenting it. It IS American music.

For the time being, legal reasons and disagreements between Slash and Alvin make this set almost impossible for release on CD; vinyl copies are still floating around on the web at decent prices. Hopefully, someday, Unsung Stories will get a second wind on CD, or whatever the next format is, allowing the evolution of this American music to continue.