Bee Gees’ lost classic; Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue at 50; power pop from Blue Ash & the Replacements

Disco made the Bee Gees superstars, but it tended to obscure the band’s previous run of pop song craft, such as this ambitious 1969 double-album. Odessa, the group’s fourth effort, blended acoustic folk (“Marley Purt Drive”) with lushly orchestrated ballads (“Odessa (City on the Black Sea)”) and represented a major creative leap for Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb.

BEE GEES Odessa: Deluxe Edition (Reprise)

Disco made the Bee Gees superstars, but it tended to obscure the band’s previous run of pop song craft, such as this ambitious 1969 double-album. Odessa, the group’s fourth effort, blended acoustic folk (“Marley Purt Drive”) with lushly orchestrated ballads (“Odessa (City on the Black Sea)”) and represented a major creative leap for Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb.

Considering the Bee Gees are best known for a song associated with John Travolta’s macho swagger in “Saturday Night Fever,” it’s striking to hear them sing about such subjects as shipwrecks, square dances and Thomas Edison and performing material that recalls the Beatles, the Kinks and the Beach Boys.

The album was a commercial flop in its day but has aged well. This three-disc version, enclosed in a velvet-covered clamshell box, includes stereo and mono mixes as well as a disc’s worth of demos, outtakes and alternate versions.

 MILES DAVIS Kind of Blue: Legacy Edition (Columbia/Legacy)

What else is there to say about one of the most important and best-selling jazz albums of all time? Over the past 50 years, Miles Davis’ seminal Kind of Blue has sold more than 4 million copies.  The trumpet player’s first great quintet featured Cannonball Adderly on alto saxophone, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Bill Evans or Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. The sound they created together would influence every jazz artist to follow.

The two-disc Legacy Edition presents the original album plus false starts and alternate takes from the 1958-59 sessions, a live 17-minute version of “So What” and several tracks recorded with the same lineup (“Stella by Starlight,” “Love for Sale”) that have appeared on various albums over the years. This set follows the Collector’s Edition that came out last year that included CD and LP vinyl versions of the album, a 60-page book—and a much heftier price tag.

BLUE ASH No More, No Less (Collectors’ Choice)
Power pop—rock ’n’ roll that blends the melodic smarts of the Beatles with the power chord crunch of the Kinks—probably has produced more should-have-been-stars acts than hit makers. Blue Ash falls into the former category. The Youngstown, Ohio quartet’s 1973 debut for Mercury Records earned rave reviews but not enough sales to keep the band from getting dropped.

No More, No Less makes its CD debut after being out of print for 30 years, completing the picture for fans who heard “Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her)” as part of Rhino’s 1997 Poptopia! compilation series. While that upbeat single could have landed the band a place in the Top 40, the album shows a remarkable diversity for a group just getting started.

Along with hook-filled gems (“Plain to See,” “Here We Go Again”) are flourishes of Byrds-inspired country pop (“Just Another Game,” “I Remember a Time”) and psychedelic hard rock (“Smash My Guitar”). A version of the Beatles “Anytime at All” wraps the song in a wash of jangly guitars, and a take of Bob Dylan’s “Dusty Old Fairgrounds” sounds like it was arranged by the Who. That makes No More, No Less just about right.

THE REPLACEMENTS Tim/Pleased to Meet Me/Don’t Tell a Soul/All Shook Down (Rhino)

Indie rock heroes the Replacements never took off commercially but remain one of the most influential bands of the ’80s. Rhino concludes the revamping of the band’s catalog with its last four albums, all expanded with demos, alternate takes and other rarities.

Tim, from 1985, was supposed to be the band’s big moment: its first major label disc after signing a deal with Sire. Producer by Ramones drummer Tommy “Ramone” Erdelyi, the disc showed the band continuing to refine its rough-edged attack on tossed-off rockers (“I’ll Buy”) mid-tempo romance (“Kiss Me on the Bus”) and even wry acoustic folk (“Waitress in the Sky”). Bonus tracks include three songs produced by Alex Chilton, the Big Star guitarist and Replacements hero who would get a song named after him on the band’s next release.

Tim would be the last album recorded with founding guitarist Bob Stinson. The Replacements would record three more albums and rack up some great highlights along the way (“Alex Chilton” from Pleased to Meet Me, the radio and MTV hit “I’ll Be You” from Don’t Tell a Soul), but ultimately have to consign themselves with cult status. By the time the band recorded its 1990 swansong, All Shook Down, the Replacements were augmenting their sound with various session players and sounding a bit slicker, a foreshadowing of Westerberg’s solo career.

But the consistently compelling disc also showed how much the band had grown. The guys who were infamous for drunken carousing now had the maturity to pull off something as subtle and intricate as the ballad “Sadly Beautiful.” All Shook Down indeed.