Bailey's Bundles

The Led Zeppelin Papers: Presence, Deluxe Edition

by C. Michael Bailey
August 15, 2026

By 1976, the monolithic machinery of Led Zeppelin was running entirely on fumes, adrenaline, and fractured bones. Recorded in a frantic eighteen-day blitz while Robert Plant was confined to a wheelchair, Presence is often chronicled as Jimmy Page's last stand of pure guitar orchestration. Yet, when considering the wider oeuvre of Led Zeppelin, two entirely separate bands fall out of the discussion, making Presence a fascinating historical collision point. The first iteration was the British blues ...

The Golden Era of Art Pepper on Contemporary Records (1957-1960)

by C. Michael Bailey
August 10, 2026

The arc of alto saxophonist Art Pepper's early career is one of the most dramatic narratives in jazz history--a relentless tug-of-war between transcendent musical genius and the devastating grip of heroin addiction. Between 1957 and 1960, Pepper recorded a sequence of five albums for Lester Koenig's Contemporary Records that redefined the jazz capabilities of the alto saxophone and the genre “West Coast Jazz." Operating within the sunny confines of Los Angeles, Pepper was fighting a dark, private war against narcotics, ...

With Time No Longer an Issue: The Rolling Stones' Hackney Diamonds and Foreign Tongues

by C. Michael Bailey
July 31, 2026

The standard critical frameworks used to evaluate late-career popular music--nostalgia, institutional legacy, and the search for one last masterpiece--have become increasingly inadequate for understanding the Rolling Stones' most recent work. Such approaches inevitably turn new recordings into epilogues to a completed career. The remarkable fact is not that musicians in their eighties remain productive. It is that Hackney Diamonds (Polydor/Geffen, 2023) and Foreign Tongues reveal the emergence of a genuinely new creative period in the band's history. That ...

Alma Mićić's Balkan Soul in the Brave New World

by C. Michael Bailey
April 8, 2026

After having released four recordings between 2004 and 2017, the Serbian-American vocalist Alma Mićić (pronounced “Mee-cheech") took the COVID-19 pandemic off in the studio, returning in 2024 contributing vocals for “Evergreen" on tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander's release Timing Is Everything (Cellar Live/La Reserve Records). Mićić's collaboration with Alexander jumpstarted the singer's return to the studio, which resulted in two new recordings, both on Venus Records: You're My Thrill (2024) and Lilac Wine--Tribute to Helen Merrill (2025). This is the definition ...

C. Michael Bailey's Holiday Bundle 2025

by C. Michael Bailey
December 1, 2025

Holiday music in the twenty-first century embraces both the old and new with equal creative consideration. Without a new recording of Handel's Messiah, we must rely on the inevitable evolution of the Christmas Canon. Cincinnati Contemporary Jazz Orchestra The Nutcracker Remix Self Produced 2025 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker has been a holiday staple since 1892. The ballet has a long history of jazz adaptations, beginning with Les Brown and His Band of ...

The Blues According To Rory Block

by C. Michael Bailey
October 20, 2024

Being a household name depends as much on the household as it does the name. Not all reading this will know who Rory Block is, but in the households with fans of the rural blues, slide guitar and innovative women in music, to not know would be criminal. Born in Princeton, New Jersey, Block grew up in Manhattan where her father had Allan Block's Sandal Shop on Positively 4th Street in Greenwich Village. Block grew up hanging out ...

Five Views From The Piano Bench

by C. Michael Bailey
July 16, 2024

The piano is a versatile instrument that provides different trajectories for those who play it. The view from the piano bench can vary as dramatically as the artist playing it. Yuja Wang The Vienna Recital Deutsche Grammophon 2024 From the biggest of stages... In 2009, Chinese wunderkind pianist Yuja Wang released her debut recording, Sonatas & Etudes (Deutsche Grammophon), and for the past 15 years has proven herself the ...

The Allman Brothers Band In Five Covers

by C. Michael Bailey
May 15, 2024

The original Allman Brothers Band, the pre-October 29, 1971 version, was the brainchild of Duane Allman. The aural record of the band from this period has been augmented substantially since the advent of compact discs and streaming. A review of this music reveals that Allman intentionally kept the band's setlist limited, ostensibly so the band could perfect their sound and musical approach. The early band can be characterized by five song covers that were included in the majority of sets ...

Late-Period Art Pepper Box Sets

by C. Michael Bailey
March 15, 2024

In his essay, “Endgame," which opens the liner notes to Art Pepper: The Complete Galaxy Recordings (Galaxy, 1989), music critic Gary Giddens said of Art Pepper's professional comeback: “Pepper's sudden reappearance in 1975 was something of a second coming in musical circles. For the next seven years, his frequent recordings and tours, and the publication in 1979 of the autobiography he and his wife Laurie wrote, Straight Life, transformed him from a gifted altoist who had made ...

An Embarrassment of Riches From Hamburg: Recent Releases From Nagel-Heyer

by C. Michael Bailey
February 22, 2024

This article was first published at All About Jazz in February 2001. While Nagel-Heyer Records is breaking ground with contemporary jazz releases with their Nagel-Heyer 2000 Series, showcasing music by Terell Stafford, Wycliffe Gordon, Byron Stripling, and many others, the Hamburg-centered label's catalog continues to populate itself with the fine traditional jazz recitals that have long been their forte. I recently had the good fortune of receiving a glut of these recordings for my consideration and decided to ...