The History Of Rhythm And Blues 1925-1942
Various Artists - 4 CD box set with 32 page booklet and comprehensive track by track analysis
Various Artists

CD PRICE: £18.99

Disc One – The Blues From The Delta To The City
Disc Two – The Rhythm
Disc Three – Up River To Chicago
Disc Four – Jazzin’ The Blues

Country Blues And Spirituals, Jug Bands And Hokum, Piano Boogie-Woogie, Ragtime And Jazz
Urban Blues And Gospel, After Hours, Swing Boogie And Jive

A paperback-sized 4CD box set complete with 32 page booklet including comprehensive track by track analysis of all 97 songs.

"It’s rare to come across a record that is so perfect, and so perfectly insane, that it encapsulates everything you need to know about music fandom in one package, but such is this. The description ‘labour of love doesn’t begin to do justice to the effort involved in ferreting out such a finely chosen set of tracks and presenting them so ideally".

"Even the most fanatical r&b fan will find something, probably many things, both new and enjoyable here - and everyone else can simply wallow in some of the greatest music ever recorded. Never mind what appears in the remainder of 2008, this is the reissue of the year by a country mile. Buy it and help Volume 2 along".
Jeremy Searle - RocknReel

The History Of Rhythm And Blues 1942-1952
Various Artists - 4 CD box set with 64 page booklet and comprehensive track by track analysis
Various Artists

CD PRICE: £20.99

The History of Rhythm & Blues series of CDs is a cross-label project that attempts to chronicle the rise of R&B from a historical perspective. Its aim is to demonstrate the breadth of new forms which arose from the fusion of the various styles and to showcase the most influential records while highlighting many of the more obscure discs, whose importance to the story is less well-known.

Rhythm & Blues was one of the most identifiable musical art forms of the 20th Century, with an enormous influence on the development of both the sound and attitude of modern music. The History of Rhythm and Blues series investigates the accidental synthesis of jazz, gospel, blues, ragtime, country, pop and latin music into a definable form of black music, which in turn would influence pretty well all popular music from the 1950s to the present.

Volume Two - the Pre-Rocknroll Years 1942-1952 investigates the transition from the race music of the 1940s through to the classic Rhythm & Blues of the 1950s, taking in the growing importance of radio, the rise of the independent record labels, the 45rpm record and the jukebox. It also attempts to clarify the distinctions between the different rhythms behind the blues from shuffle and jump through rhumba to rocknroll.

"There’s so little on this box set that I wouldn’t be overjoyed to play you… an absolutely essential purchase… as good as any (other sets) and probably better than all…indispensable music… thoroughly, thoroughly recommended."
Mark Lamarr - BBC Radio 2, God’s Jukebox Featured Record of the Week June 6th 2009

Lovin' Time Blues - Great Jump & R&B Duets
Various Artists

CD PRICE: £9.99

The boy/girl r&b duet reached its commercial zenith in the mid to late 1950s when acts such as Gene & Eunice, Shirley & Lee and Billy & Lillie enjoyed national chart hits, but the way had been paved by the earlier success of the likes of Esther & Mel with Johnny Otis' band and Little Willie & Little Lora. This CD explores those pioneering recordings which, with little likelihood of a national crossover hit, would often deal with the same subjects as their rock 'n' roll counterparts but in a much more gritty and honest way.

Fine Gals, Fast Women & Wailin' Daddies
The First Of Leiber & Stoller
Various Artists

CD PRICE: £11.99

The Jump Blues recording artists of the 1940s mainly wrote - or at least adapted from older sources - their own material, but at the dawn of the 1950s a new entity emerged; that of the professional R&B songwriter. Many of the first wave of this new phenomenon were African-Americans with a background in performing or A&R work in black music, but over in Los Angeles a couple of white, middle-class, teenage boys had hooked up to write their own, remarkably authentic slant on the R&B music they loved. By the mid 1950s, they had become award-winning writers, producers, publishers and shrewd record company executives, but before that, between 1950 and 1953, they were merely a couple of kids learning the ropes. This double CD traces that early career of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Rock With It - Rockin' With The Rhythm And Blues Vol.2
Various Artists

CD PRICE: £9.99

Due to popular demand, following the release of our debut release; “Rockin’ With The R&B” a few years ago. El Toro Records now presents a second helping of jumping R&B from the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, all of which exhort the listener to “Rock! Rock! Rock!” or, in a few instances, to “Roll Roll! Roll!” long before the official birth of Rock and Roll in 1954. From an obscurity like the misterious Manhattan Paul to the internationally renowned Sammy Davis Jr. taking in famous songwriters and session musicians alike. They can all lay claim to be rockers before uncle Bill and daddy Elvis...

I Love To Hear My Baby Call My Name
...The Ego Song. 1945-52
Various Artists

CD PRICE: £9.99

One of the most egocentric of the musical genres, it seems that most of the purveyors of jump blues and early R&B were eager for immortality by personalizing their songs and record titles. Between 1945 and 1955 it appeared that every band, singer and instrumentalist had their own named blues or boogie, so here we offer a CD full of the very best! Artists Include: Bill Gaither & His Madcaps, Smokey Joe Whitfield, Roy Brown, Johnny Ace, Smiley Lewis, King Perry, Sonny Thompson, Muddy Waters & More! 29 Tracks in all!

Wellcome Back To Town
Live R&B And Jump Blues
Various Artists

CD PRICE: £9.99

Considered a disposable fad - and thus unworthy of expensive recording resources - by the concert promoters and radio executives of the day, live R&B, and its immediate predecessor jump blues, was only occasionally captured for posterity and only then, usually, because of its accidental inclusion in a larger program of "more laudable music" such as jazz. Which makes the enclosed two dozen rarities all the more welcome; whether taken from a live concert performance or a radio transcription, there is something magical and exciting about these little slices of musical time-travel. Fasten your safety belts!

Too Late To Be Good!
Vocal Harmony Vanguard 1937-1952
Various Artists

CD PRICE: £9.99

Vocal group harmony enjoyed its golden years from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s when groups such as The Platters, The Drifters and The 4 Seasons regularly topped the national Billboard Pop and R&B Charts, but the tradition goes back much further than that, right back to the dawn of recorded sound and beyond in fact. This CD, however, concentrates on the post-war rise of the vocal ensemble in a variety of different settings - quartets, quintets, ensemble jive and jazz groups, acapella harmony units and big band vocal groups - but all architects of the modern style that would come to be known, for better or worse, as Doo Wop.