Art Pepper - Unreleased Art, Vol 1: The Complete Abashiri Concert - November 22, 1981 (2 CD, 2006/FLAC)

 

Despite his precarious health, wrecked by decades of doping, Art Pepper was performing and recording at a furious pace during his last seven years, trying to make up for lost time. There is a tremendous amount of material already issued from those years -- and since this initial release from Laurie Pepper's label Widow's Taste is designated Vol. 1, there must be much more on the shelf. Hopefully the rest of the booty is as good as this one, a souvenir of Pepper's last tour of Japan, where he had become the country's number one jazz alto sax star even before he returned to performing.

Herbie Hancock - Mwandishi The Complete Warner Bros.Recordings (2 CD, 1994/FLAC)

This release includes Herbie Hancock's music from 1969-1971 for the Warner Brothers label, released originally as three albums, one of Herbie Hancock's most creative periods. The earliest album, Fat Albert Rotunda, features a fine sextet highlighted by tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, like Hancock a master at maintaining strong rhythmic grooves while stretching outward. The later music, with a regularly working band, becomes increasingly expansive and exploratory. Like Miles Davis on Bitches Brew, Hancock was increasingly interested in layering rhythms and textures, emphasizing percussion, electric keyboards, and potent soloists, and broadening his palette of sounds to eventually include synthesizers. There are significant contributions from the inspiring drummer Billy Hart and some potent, if neglected, soloists in multireed player Bennie Maupin (also on Bitches Brew) and trombonist Julian Priester (a Sun Ra associate), who also provided the extended compositions "Water Torture" and "Wandering Spirit Song," respectively. This is a sometimes overlooked period in Hancock's music, bracketed by the quality of his earlier acoustic music, both with Davis and as a leader on Blue Note, and his later commercial success, but it's some of his most innovative work.

Count Basie – The Big Band Leader (10 CD, 2000/FLAC)

 Count Basie was a bandleader and pianist who was at the forefront of American big band music in the mid-twentieth century.

This compilation  represent the Basie band's golden era from 1939 through 1950

Wes Montgomery - In The Beginning: Early Recordings from 1949-1958 (2 CD, 2014/FLAC)

 Rare Wes Montgomery material is hard to come by. Not counting Willow Weep for Me, the posthumous LP Verve issued in 1968 not long after the guitarist's passing, there was Resonance's 2012 set Echoes of Indiana Avenue, which contained largely live performances from 1957 and 1958. In the Beginning, released three years after Echoes, draws from a similar well of unreleased recordings, offering a heavy dose of live material along with five sides produced by Quincy Jones at Columbia Studios in 1955, plus three tracks a session at Spire Records in Fresno, California in 1949.

Sequenced in rough reverse chronological order – two live performances from November 1958 open the second disc, but the first is entirely devoted to recordings made at the Turf Club in Indianapolis in 1956, when Wes was supported by his brother Buddy on piano, Monk Montgomery on bass, Alonzo "Pookie" Johnson on tenor sax, and drummer Sonny Johnson – the end result has Montgomery turning into a slightly straighter player as the collection rolls on, but that by no means means he sounds stiff. The 1949 cuts that wrap this up veer closer to big band than to bop, and there's a slight touch of politeness to the Jones-produced cuts. That said, it's possible to hear traces of Montgomery's fluidity here, but it's the live cuts from 1956 and 1958 that truly command attention. Here, there's a palpable hunger and playfulness to the performances that give the hard bop a kinetic kick, which means this isn't merely a worthy release from a historic standpoint, it's flat-out fun to boot.

The Miles Davis Quintet ‎– The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions (4 CD, 2006)

 The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions is a four compact disc box set of recordings by the Miles Davis Quintet released in 2006 by the Concord Music Group. It collates on three discs the entire set of recordings that made up the Prestige Records albums released from 1956 through 1961.

The track "'Round Midnight" was released on the album Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants. The fourth disc contains live material from a television broadcast and in jazz club settings. It peaked at #15 on the Billboard jazz album chart, and was reissued on December 2, 2016, in a smaller compact disc brick packaging.

• Miles Davis — trumpet
• John Coltrane — tenor saxophone
• Red Garland — piano
• Bill Evans — piano on disc four tracks 7-10
• Paul Chambers — bass
• Philly Joe Jones — drums

John Scofield discography [1977-2020]

One of the "big three" of late 20th and early 21st century jazz guitarists (along with Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell), John Scofield's influence grew in the '90s and continued into the 21st century. Possessor of a very distinctive rock-oriented sound that is often a bit distorted, Scofield  (born December 26, 1951 in Dayton, Ohio) is a masterful jazz improviser whose music generally falls somewhere between post-bop, fusion, and soul-jazz. He started on guitar while at high school in Connecticut, and from 1970-1973, he studied at Berklee and played in the Boston area. After recording with Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker at Carnegie Hall, Scofield was a member of the Billy Cobham-George Duke band for two years. In 1977 he recorded with Charles Mingus, and later joined the Gary Burton quartet and Dave Liebman's quintet. His own early sessions as a leader were funk-oriented. Between 1982 and 1985, Scofield toured the world and recorded with Miles Davis. Since that time he has led his own groups, played with Bass Desires, and recorded frequently as a leader for Verve, Emarcy, Gramavision, and Blue Note, using such major players as Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Joe Lovano, Eddie Harris, and a host of others.

Gerry Mulligan - Mosaic Select 21 (3 CD, 2007/FLAC)

 

Gerry Mulligan was certainly busy in December 1957. During a two-week period, the baritonist recorded a reunion album with trumpeter Chet Baker, documented a set of his songs with an octet that featured five top saxophonists, recorded a very obscure set with a sextet that included four strings, and cut most of an album in which his quartet teamed up with singer Annie Ross. This limited-edition three-CD set contains all of the music plus alternate takes and the last part of the Ross album, which was recorded nine months later with trumpeter Art Farmer in Baker's spot.

Hank Crawford - Heart And Soul (The Hank Crawford Anthology) (2 CD, 1994/FLAC)

 

Altoist Hank Crawford, was one of the most soulful stylists to emerge during the 1960s. HEART AND SOUL contains 31 tracks on 2 discs spanning Crawfords's 35-plus years in jazz. 

VA - Groovy Jazz Organ (3 CD, 2014/FLAC)

 

The Organ can often take a back seat in the pecking order of great Jazz instruments but under appreciate it at your peril. The likes of Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Booker T and Ray Charles, to name but a few, made the instrument their own while crafting Jazz cuts of dazzling brilliance.

Art Farmer - The Complete Albums Collection 1958-1961 (4 CD, 2016/FLAC)

 

Renowned for his uniquely melodic, deeply emotional and characteristically reserved soloing style, the music of Art Farmer has remained deceptively difficult to define. Rising to fame as a trumpeter before moving on to the softer tone of the flugelhorn during the early 1960s, Farmer rejected the typical bright and penetrating sounds utilised by many players at this time, in preference of a more restrained style, also favoured by the likes of Kenny Dorham and even Miles Davis in his earlier work.