Eddie Harris - Artist's Choice: The Eddie Harris Anthology (2 CD, 1993/FLAC)

 Eddie Harris' tenure at Atlantic in the 1960s and '70s was his most productive, but previously it was represented only by a pair of single-album collections. Now a fine two-disc anthology containing selections chosen by Harris and his comments fully covers his Atlantic years. The discs include his huge singles "Exodus" and "Love Theme From the Sandpiper (Shadow of Your Smile)," plus soul-jazz numbers like "Get on Down," "Funkaroma," and "1974 Blues"; his most famous single composition, "Freedom Jazz Dance"; and his remakes of "Giant Steps" and "Love for Sale." Harris has creatively utilized the varitone attachment on his saxophone and the reed trumpet while constructing and playing his blues, soul, and funk solos with zest and a minimum of gimmickry. 

VA - Modern Jazz - The Complete Dial Recordings (10 CD, 1995/FLAC)

 

Each Mosaic project falls into at least one of three categories. Some sets we know will be significant because of the demand for a hard-to-find jazz artist or the unique scope of a Mosaic box. Some sets we bring out because, popular or not, the music must be heard. And sometimes… we just love it. Want it. Have to have it. Which brings us to The Complete Dial Masters. As the saying goes, check all the boxes.

As most jazz fans know, among the most important records to hear in your life are Charlie Parker's Dial Sessions, recorded between 1946 and 1947. They are classics with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Howard McGee, Wardell Gray, J. J. Johnson, Duke Jordan, Teddy Edwards, Teddy Wilson, Errol Garner, Tommy Potter, Max Roach and others.

But Dial was way more than Parker. It was a microcosm of the explosive changes happening at a moment in time.

Nina Simone discography [1957-1993]

 

Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. Simone aspired to become a classical pianist while working in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop. 

Jimmy Giuffre - The Complete Remastered Recordings On Black Saint & Soul Note (4 CD, 2012/FLAC)

 The closely affiliated Black Saint and Soul Note labels were established in the 1970s by Italian jazz lover Giacomo Pellicciotti, and together they released some of the most forward-thinking jazz recordings on the market during their four decades of independent existence (both labels were acquired by another company in 2008). In 2011, the labels' new owner began releasing a series of budget-priced box sets documenting the complete output of particular artists, each individual disc housed in an LP-style cardboard sleeve. This one features four albums by reedman and noted avant-cool composer Jimmy Giuffre. 

The box offers three albums (Dragonfly, Quasar, and Liquid Dancers) by the Jimmy Giuffre 4, which included keyboardist Pete Levin, bassist Bob Nieske, and drummer Randy Kaye. The fourth disc (Conversations with a Goose) is a trio date on which Giuffre is joined by pianist Paul Bley and electric bassist Steve Swallow. On the three quartet albums, all of them released between 1981 and 1991, Giuffre's style is clearly influenced by the electric fusion sounds of the 1970s and 1980s: Levin's keyboards range over a huge spectrum of electronic timbres and effects, and while the rhythms always gravitate back to an easy swing, they wander off into some interesting areas from time to time as well. Conversations with a Goose is a very different album: here Giuffre sticks to clarinet and soprano saxophone, and the pieces are quieter, more intimate, and almost contemplative. The free expressionism that has always been a hallmark of Giuffre's mature style is well in evidence, and the interplay between the three players is consistently compelling. 

George Duke - Original Album Series (5 CD, 2010/FLAC)

 

CD1 - Snapshot (1992)

CD2 - Illusions (1995)

CD3 - Is Love Enough? (1997)

CD4 - After Hours (1998)

CD5 - Cool (2000)

Bill Evans - Everybody Still Digs Bill Evans [5 CD, 2021]

 The first-ever career-spanning collection of music from pioneering jazz pianist Bill Evans. 

The five- disc deluxe edition features over 60 tracks that spotlight Evans' Riverside, Milestone, Fantasy, Verve, Warner Bros., and Elektra/Musician catalogs, plus a previously unreleased Bill Evans Trio live concert from 1975. 

Features over 60 tracks that spotlight Evans’ exceptional work as a leader and co-leader, spanning his Riverside, Milestone, Fantasy, Verve, Warner Bros., and Elektra/Musician catalogs.

Charlie Haden - The Complete Remastered Recordings on Black Saint and Soul Note (5 CD, 2010/FLAC)

 

THE COMPLETE REMASTERED RECORDINGS ON BLACK SAINT & SOUL NOTE is a monographic box-set collection aimed at recounting the most beautiful chapters that revolutionised the history of jazz.

This new series was launched in March 2010 with the simultaneous release of four box-sets, including albums by some of the artists who participated in the success of the outstanding labels. A philological work, beginning with the original recordings on multi-track master tapes, patiently integrally remastered paying strict attention to the sound quality.

The two albums by the ex-Ornette Coleman alumni-group Old and New Dreams are justly celebrated, but they're entirely outshone in this superb five-disc box-set by three relative obscurities: Silence, a fabulous 1989 quartet with Chet Baker (one of his many last recordings); First Song, a trio of the following year with Billy Higgins and Enrico Pieranunzi; and another trio, Etudes, with Geri Allen and Paul Motian, from 1988. Baker's playing on Haden's famous tune "Silence" represents total jazz heaven.

During the 1970s, left-field American jazz recording was at an ebb, and European companies like ECM and these two Italian labels stepped into the breach. This remastered 5-CD set, which flags up an extensive re-issue programme, captures the sonorous bassist in his full-bodied prime. Two albums present him with the sympathetic ex-Ornette Coleman sidemen of the New and Old Dreams Quintet spiky trumpeter Don Cherry a puckish lead and three are impressionist piano trios with Chet Baker adding wistful trumpet on one, Silences.

Art Pepper - Unreleased Art, Vol.3: The Croydon Concert May 14, 1981 (2 CD, 2008/FLAC)

 

In Unreleased Art, Vol. 3 of the Unreleased Art series, Laurie Pepper unearths yet another unreleased tape of a late-period Art Pepper performance -- this time courtesy of an obsessive fan who had access to prime-sounding material. This double-CD set takes in a full concert from Pepper's working band of 1981, caught while on an exhausting tour of Europe and the U.K. -- 18 dates in 21 days. By this time, after two years on the road, the team of Pepper, pianist Milcho Leviev -- who from the testimony of Laurie Pepper's notes evidently had a tempestuous working relationship with the alto saxophonist -- bassist Bob Magnusson and drummer Carl Burnett had the mutual ESP going good and hard.

VA - Soul Tenors: Milestones of Jazz Legends (10 CD, 2020/FLAC)

 

The tenor sax was to Rhythm & Blues-hits of the 40s and 50s, what the guitar went on to become to RocknRoll. Put on an R&B-single from that era and you will most likely hear a tenor sax break or solo. Eventually, the tenor players stepped out to make records under their own name. These Soul Tenors were expressing themselves by honkin, shoutin, riffin, riding high on a single note or barking out a guttural howl, as Ted Gioia described it in The History of Jazz, all the while, carrying the moan in their tone, according to Cannonball Adderley. These masters, whose own instrumentals were hits in the jukeboxes from Harlem to South Central and all across the South, played Soul Jazz of the highest order melodic, expressive, straight from the heart. On into the 60s and 70s, when it came to emotions that simply couldnt be expressed with words, artists from Ray Charles via Aretha to John Lennon called on tenor sax players like David Fathead Newman or King Curtis. This unique 10-box-set presents some of the greatest original LPs of the genre. They are milestones by the above mentioned legends of the genre, plus Gene Ammons, Teddy Edwards, Illinois Jacquet, Budd Johnson, Jimmy Forrest, Oliver Nelson, Stanley Turrentine, Arnett Cobb, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Willis Jackson, Roland Kirk and Sam "The Man" Taylor. The album titles already tell a good part of the story, from Country Soul via Swings The Thing on to Hip Soul or simply Funky.

CD01 - King Curtis - The New Scene of King Curtis / Country Soul 

CD02 - Ray Charles - Presents David 'Fathead' Newman / Teddy Edwards Quartet - Good Gravy!

CD03 - Illinois Jacquet - Swing's the Thing / Budd Johnson Quintet - Let's Swing! 

CD04 - Oliver Nelson, King Curtis, Jimmy Forrest - Soul Battle / Jimmy Forrest - Forrest Fire 

CD05 - Gene Ammons - Funky / Boss Tenor 

CD06 - Shirley Scott (with Stanley Turrentine) - Hip Soul / Hip Twist

CD07 - Arnett Cobb - Movin' Right Along / Arnett Cobb & Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis - Blow Arnett Blow 

CD08 - Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis Quintet with Shirley Scott - Jaws in Orbit / Willis Jackson - Please Mr. Jackson 

CD09 - Roland Kirk with Jack McDuff - Kirk's Work / Jack McDuff (with Jimmy Forrest) - Tough Duff 

CD10 - Sam 'The Man' Taylor - Plays The Bad and the Beautiful / David Newman - Fathead Comes On 

Charlie Parker - Retrospective 1940-1953 (3 CD, 2005/FLAC)

 In 2005, Saga Jazz released a 62-track anthology of Charlie Parker recordings under the title Retrospective 1940-1953. It's a good strong shot of vintage bop, but like so many compilations it suffers slightly from chronologic scrambling. 

 The oldest material, which happens to be the earliest known recording of Charlie Parker, shows up on track 24; "Honeysuckle Rose/Body & Soul" was recorded in Kansas City, KS on May 11, 1940. Placing this chestnut more than one-third of the way into an almost chronological collection is incongruous and will not assist anyone who is trying to savor the man's artistic development over a stated span of thirteen years. That, after all, is what chronologies (and historic jazz collections) are for. The next-to-oldest recordings appear closer to where one would expect them to be -- at the very beginning of the collection. "Swingmatism" and the "Hootie Blues" were recorded for the Decca label in Dallas, TX on April 30, 1941 by Jay McShann & His Orchestra. Something like a chronological progression does manage to materialize, more or less, and when Bird isn't leading his own groups he is heard sitting in with bands led by Red Norvo, Slim Gaillard, and Dizzy Gillespie. While it's very nice to know that these great recordings continue to circulate, it's a damned shame they didn't place the titles in chronological sequence, for Charlie Parker's progress occurred swiftly and very dramatically and there's nothing quite like hearing him evolve, session by session and note by note.