Vanguard Visionaries (2007)

Sandy Bull made four albums for Vanguard, all of which are sadly out of print. Vanguard Visionaries is essentially a re-release of Re-Inventions: The Best of the Vanguard Years, which collected tracks from three of those albums, passing on E Pluribus Unum's two lengthy tracks. Vanguard Visionaries adds a previously unreleased cover of Floyd Cramer's "Last Date," which is something of an anomalous oddity since it's an actual song with vocals (as opposed to Bull's standard instrumental pieces). It's got that great tremolo ... Read More

Sandy Bull made four albums for Vanguard, all of which are sadly out of print. Vanguard Visionaries is essentially a re-release of Re-Inventions: The Best of the Vanguard Years, which collected tracks from three of those albums, passing on E Pluribus Unum's two lengthy tracks. Vanguard Visionaries adds a previously unreleased cover of Floyd Cramer's "Last Date," which is something of an anomalous oddity since it's an actual song with vocals (as opposed to Bull's standard instrumental pieces). It's got that great tremolo sound but the vocals are a bit of a shock if you know Bull's music. But that's not the only difference: the nice liner notes of Re-Inventions: The Best of the Vanguard Years are gone. In fact, there's no discographical or biographical information at all on this collection, which seems a bit odd and certainly frustrating for music geeks. On the plus side, the Vanguard Visionaries series is budget-priced, which is more appealing to some listeners than liner notes. The music is good to be sure; it just would have been nice if they supplied a bit of context to this collection. ~ Sean Westergaard, Rovi Read Less