Ian Dury – Hit Me! The best of Ian Dury (2LPs, Warner)

On October 16, BMG will release Hit Me! The Best Of Ian Dury is a newly assembled compilation curated in close collaboration with the heirs of Ian Dury. It’s a collection of Dury’s greatest hits and then some, a stunning selection of tracks from Ian’s solo career, Ian Dury & The Blockheads and Kilburn & The High Roads. In August 1977, a 35-year-old Ian Dury released his first solo record, a 7-inch vinyl single whose title Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll became an everyday term and remains an integral part of our vocabulary to this day. Within the next two years, Dury’s debut album New Boots and Panties would spend 89 (!!) weeks in the UK Albums Chart. His third single, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, became number one in the UK in January 1979, selling a whopping 970,000 copies. When Ian Dury lost his life to cancer in 2000 at the age of 57, he left the world as one of the great songwriters of the 20th century, a man struggling with tremendous disability and adversity to be recognized as a national treasure .