50th Anniversary Reissue with New Stereo Mix Produced by Bob Clearmountain from Original Four-Track Analog Masters: Lacquers Cut at 45RPM by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering

In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of The Band's landmark 1968 debut album, Music From Big Pink is being reissued as a 180g 2LP-set in a new stereo mix produced by Bob Clearmountain from the original four-track analog master. This new mix achieves a striking clarity and incorporates some previously unreleased chatter from the studio sessions. Chris Bellman cut the lacquers for Music From Big Pink's new stereo mix at 45RPM at Bernie Grundman Mastering, expanding the album's vinyl footprint from one LP to two.

Originally released in July of 1968, Music From Big Pink, seemed to spring from nowhere and everywhere. Drawing from the American roots music panoply of country, blues, R&B, gospel, soul, rockabilly, the honking tenor sax tradition, hymns, funeral dirges, brass band music, folk, and rock ‘n' roll, The Band forged a timeless new style that forever changed the course of popular music. Fifty years later, the mythology surrounding the LP lives on through the evocative storytelling of its songs including "The Weight," "This Wheel's On Fire," "Tears of Rage" and "To Kingdom Come," its enigmatic cover art painted by Bob Dylan, the salmon-colored upstate New York house – ‘Big Pink' – where The Band wrote the songs, and in myriad descendant legends carried forth since the album's arrival.

Issued during a long, turbulent season of war and socio-political unrest, and sandwiched between other culture-shifting 1967-‘68 albums by The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album), Jimi Hendrix (Axis: Bold As Love), and The Rolling Stones (Beggars Banquet), Music from Big Pink astonished critics. Writing for Rolling Stone, journalist Alfred G. Aronowitz proclaimed that Big Pink was "the kind of album that will have to open its own door to a new category." In his San Francisco Chronicle review, Ralph J. Gleason wrote, "The voices are unique and make a sound not available anywhere else in popular music that I know of. It is a rural sound, not on the country & western stations, yet not rural in the sense of lack of sophistication; I think it is hymnal...The songs are going to be American classics..." 

While Music from Big Pink achieved moderate success upon release, peaking at No. 30 on the Billboard 200 chart, it is recognized as one of the most important albums in popular music history.

Features:
• 50th Anniversary 180g 2LP reissue
• New stereo mix produced by Bob Clearmountain from the original four-track analog master
• Vinyl lacquers cut at 45RPM by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, expanding the album's vinyl footprint from one LP to two
• All new audio mixes mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering