Aaron Neville Nature Boy

Originally released 1969 on Verve this is a truly lost jewel, released for the first time on CD. Joe Beck, one of the most famous jazz guitar players, recorded this album with fellow Donald McDonald on drums and among guest musicians is Danny Whitten, guitar player of Crazy Horse before they worked together with Neil Young. On this album Beck, influenced by Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, created a song-oriented psychedelic rock style with slightly jazz influences showing his remarkable guitar skills, including some fine Wah-Wah treatments. Really great stuff. CD comes with informative booklet.

Aaron Neville's Soulful Christmas is at once familiar yet progressive, traditional, prayerful, heartfelt, fun, and sexy. Neville lends his angelic voice to timeless holiday standards, resulting in one of the more compelling American holiday albums of the 1990s. Neville's treatment of classics such as "O Holy Night," "Silent Night," and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" is absolutely stirring, and he infuses these lullabies with so much warmth and sincerity that they can even touch the hardest, most cynical audiences….

Aaron Neville is an unlikely example of a '60s soul hero who managed to reinvent himself as a '90s pop star without compromising his integrity. Drawing on pop as well as the type of New Orleans soul that put him on the map, Neville proved that he could once again be quite marketable. Like Warm Your Heart, The Tattooed Heart isn't on a par with Neville's early efforts, but nonetheless has a lot going for it.