Red Hot + Blue
| Red Hot + Blue | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compilation album by various artists | ||||
| Released | September 25, 1990 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 77:03 | |||
| Label | Chrysalis | |||
| Producer | ||||
| Red Hot Benefit series chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Alternative cover | ||||
2006 CD/DVD re-issue | ||||
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic | |
| Calgary Herald | A |
| NME | 5/10 |
| Orlando Sentinel | |
| Record Mirror | |
| The Vancouver Sun | |
Red Hot + Blue is the first compilation album from the Red Hot Organization in the Red Hot Benefit Series. It features contemporary pop performers reinterpreting several songs by Cole Porter, with the album title based on Porter's musical Red, Hot and Blue.
Released in September 1990, the album sold over a million copies worldwide, raised nearly $1m for the activist group ACT UP, and was heralded as one of the first major AIDS benefits in the music business. The accompanying ABC television special featured music videos for the songs. Each performer contributes their own unique interpretation to their selection, expanding the premise popularized by Ella Fitzgerald in her 1956 Cole Porter tribute album.
Red Hot + Blue was reissued as a two-disc set in 2006, including the original CD remastered, and a DVD of the video collection. Bloomsbury Publishing released a 2024 memoir by John S. Garrison that blends together the history of the album with his personal experience of listening to Red Hot + Blue as part of the publisher's 33⅓ book series.