VARIOUS ARTISTS Phil Spector Presents the Philles Album Collection [Phil Spector Records/Legacy] Phil Spector was never about albums. Monaural 7-inch 45s ruled his world, and with them he elevated the pop single to an art form. Give Spector three minutes and he—with the help of his handpicked, world-class songwriters, engineers, vocalists and musicians—could tell a story for the ages. Nonetheless, Spector did release albums on his own Philles... 

VARIOUS ARTISTS Motown Gold From the Ed Sullivan Show [UMe/Sofa] Consider this, if you will: Ed Sullivan belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Although hunched, puffy and decidedly unhip, he did more than any other to bring a generation’s worth of pop, rock and soul into America’s living rooms through his weekly Sunday-night TV variety program—most obviously Elvis and the Beatles, of course, but also a wealth of African-American performers...