Joe Marchese

2 weeks ago | theseconddisc.com | Joe Marchese

If you don't know the name of Roger Nichols, you know the man's songs. His compositions have been sung by Carpenters, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Petula Clark, Jackie DeShannon, Bobby Darin, Paul Anka, The Monkees, and Nichols' most frequent lyrical collaborator, Paul Williams - just to name a few.

2 weeks ago | theseconddisc.com | Joe Marchese

The music of Johnny Mathis has been a constant here at Second Disc HQ. Our very first Second Disc Records release in conjunction with Real Gone Music was Johnny's Life Is a Song Worth Singing: The Complete Thom Bell Sessions back in 2015, which inaugurated a series encompassing nearly two dozen Mathis albums and compilations to date including a multi-disc Christmas music collection and the standalone CD premieres of two "lost" albums, I Love My Lady and The Island.

3 weeks ago | theseconddisc.com | Joe Marchese

Rob Davis, Les Gray, Dave Mount, and Ray Stiles formed Mud in 1966 and released their first single, "Flower Power," the very next year on CBS Records. But the band wasn't destined to make their name with psychedelic pop; instead, they persevered until breaking through in 1973 on Mickie Most's Rak label. By that time, they'd morphed into glam rockers with a fifties revivalist sensibility.

3 weeks ago | theseconddisc.com | Joe Marchese

Back in May 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stage Door Records brought some much-needed sunshine with an Original Album Series volume for Broadway baritone John Raitt (1917-2005). The 2CD volume collected Raitt's four LPs originally released between 1955 and 1960 on the Capitol and Warner Bros. labels; now, Stage Door has turned the clock back to 1947 for a first-time-on-CD expanded edition of his 1947 Decca EP Songs of the Open Road.

3 weeks ago | theseconddisc.com | Joe Marchese

A poet, a comic, and a musician walk into a room... The Scaffold was hardly an ordinary band. In fact, it wasn't a band at all. Yet Roger McGough, John Gorman, and Mike McGear (a.k.a. McCartney, a.k.a. Paul's younger brother) of Liverpool released singles on Parlophone produced by Sir George Martin, had a chart-topping hit, and sold out such esteemed venues as the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. Their thirteen-year time together outlasted The Beatles.