Chuck Mangione - 5 Original Albums (5 CD, 2017/FLAC)

 

Throughout the 1970s, Chuck Mangione was a celebrity. His purposely lightweight music was melodic pop that was upbeat, optimistic, and sometimes uplifting. Mangione's records were big sellers yet few of his fans from the era knew that his original goal was to be a bebopper. His father had often taken Chuck and his older brother Gap (a keyboardist) out to see jazz concerts, and Dizzy Gillespie was a family friend. While Chuck studied at the Eastman School, the two Mangiones co-led a bop quintet called the Jazz Brothers who recorded several albums for Jazzland, often with Sal Nistico on tenor. Chuck Mangione played with the big bands of Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson (both in 1965) and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1965-1967). In 1968, now sticking mostly to his soft-toned flügelhorn, Mangione formed a quartet that also featured Gerry Niewood on tenor and soprano. They cut a fine set for Mercury in 1972, but otherwise Mangione's recordings in the '70s generally used large orchestras and vocalists (including Esther Satterfield), putting the emphasis on lightweight melodies such as "Hill Where the Lord Hides," "Land of Make Believe," "Chase the Clouds Away." and the huge 1977 hit (featuring guitarist Grant Geissman) "Feels So Good." After a recorded 1978 Hollywood Bowl concert that summed up his pop years and a 1980 two-LP set that alternated pop and bop (with guest Dizzy Gillespie), Mangione gradually faded out of the music scene. In the '70s, Chuck Mangione recorded for Mercury and A&M; in the '80s he had a couple of very forgettable Columbia albums, and had not been heard from in the '90s until a 1997 comeback tour found him in good form, having a reunion with his "Feels So Good" band. The Feeling's Back followed in 1999. 

CD1 - Chase the Clouds Away (1975) 

CD2 - Main Squeeze (1976) 

CD3 - Feels So Good (1977) 

CD4 - Fun and Games (1980) 

CD5 - 70 Miles Young (1982) 

Benny Goodman - The Real... Benny Goodman (3 CD, 2012/FLAC)

 Benny Goodman, born on May 30, 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, was an American musician. Often referred to as the King of Swing, he is best remembered as one of the greatest clarinetists of all time, reaching the height of his popularity in the 1930s when swing was most popular. Goodman died of heart failure on June 13, 1986 in New York City.

VA - The Blue Note Years [14 CD, 1999]

 

Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues.

Originally dedicated to recording traditional jazz and small group swing, from 1947 the label began to switch its attention to modern jazz. While the original company did not itself record many of the pioneers of bebop, significant exceptions are Thelonious Monk, Fats Navarro and Bud Powell.

Historically, Blue Note has principally been associated with the "hard bop" style of jazz (mixing bebop with other forms of music including soul, blues, rhythm and blues and gospel). Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd and Grant Green were among the label's leading artists.

The label is currently owned by the EMI Group and in 2006 was expanded to fill the role of an umbrella label group bringing together a wide variety of EMI-owned labels and imprints specializing in the growing market segment of music for adults.

Preservation Hall Jazz Band discography [1977-2019]

  

Preservation Hall Jazz Band is the name for numerous groups of Dixieland Jazz and traditional jazz bands at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, Louisiana, and on tours as organized by the Preservation Hall. The purpose of the Hall has been to preserve the heritage of both New Orleans traditional and Dixieland jazz music born in New Orleans and common to the Riverboats plying the Mississippi River, which spread throughout the South until the early 20th century.

Henry Threadgill - The Complete Remastered Recordings on Black Saint & Soul Note (7 CD, 2010/FLAC)

 

Henry Threadgill (born February 15, 1944) is an American composer, saxophonist and flautist. He came to prominence in the 1970s leading ensembles rooted in jazz but with unusual instrumentation and often incorporating other genres of music. He has performed and recorded with several ensembles: Air, Aggregation Orb, Make a Move, the seven-piece Henry Threadgill Sextett, the twenty-piece Society Situation Dance Band, Very Very Circus, X-75, and Zooid. 

VA - Swinging Hamburg - Jazz in Hamburg from A-Z [18 CD, 2011]

 

Hamburg's jazz scene, its diversity and vibrancy, bring many music lovers to the swarm. After the Second World War, hundreds of playful bands gathered together in the town on the Elbe, where countless venues soon emerged. The Cotton Club or Dennis Swing Club who does not know them? For fans of the Hamburg Jazz and all who want to learn more about it, this extensive collection was created. In word, picture and sound, the scene of a unique scene comes to life: from the time when the harbor city was in ruins to the sound of today. They hold a set in hands consisting of 18 CDs. Listen to 389 titles from 102 combos, orchestras, soloists, singers and singers: 24 hours of swinging music pleasure and an acoustic piece of time history! 

Mel Torme - But Beatiful (4 CD Quadromania, 2005/FLAC)

 Mel Tormé was a jazz-oriented pop singer who worked at his craft steadily from the '40s to the '90s, primarily in nightclubs and concert halls. In his 1988 autobiography, It Wasn't All Velvet (its title a reference to his nickname, "The Velvet Fog," bestowed upon him by a disc jockey in the '40s to describe his husky, wide-ranging voice), he mentioned a wish that he had been born ten years earlier, that is, in 1915 rather than 1925. If he had had his wish, Tormé would have been an exact contemporary of Frank Sinatra, and like Sinatra, he might have had a full-fledged career as a big-band singer. In fact, given the breadth of his talents, he might have been a bandleader, since in addition to singing, he was also a drummer good enough to have gotten offers to go on the road as early as his teens, a songwriter responsible for one of the perennial Christmas standards, and an arranger who wrote the charts for much of the music he performed. Amazingly, this is still only a partial list of his accomplishments, which also included acting in more than a dozen feature films and on radio and television; hosting radio and TV shows; and writing television dramas, numerous articles for periodicals including Down Beat and The New York Times, and six published books of fiction, biography, and music criticism. 

Teddy Wilson - Chronogical Classics 1934-1953 [12 CD]

 

Theodore Shaw "Teddy" Wilson (November 24, 1912 – July 31, 1986) was an American jazz pianist. Wilson's sophisticated and elegant style was featured on the records of many of the biggest names in jazz including Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. With Goodman, he was perhaps the first well-known black musician to play publicly in a racially integrated group. In addition to his extensive work as a sideman, Wilson also led his own groups and recording sessions from the late 1920s to the '80s.

Duke Ellington - Original Album Classics (3 CD, 2011/FLAC)

 

CD1 - Such Sweet Thunder (1957) 

CD2 - Far East Suite (1966) 

CD3 - And His Mother Called Him Bill (1967)

Johnny Richards - Mosaic Select 17 (3 CD, 2005/FLAC)

 

This three-CD set reissues arranger Johnny Richards' Capitol and Roulette albums that originally were called Wide Range, Experiments in Sound, The Rites of Diablo, My Fair Lady, and Aqui Se Habla Espanol, the great majority of his recordings as a leader. In addition, Richards' portion of the album Annotations of the Muses plus a few unreleased selections are included. Johnny Richards, who is most famous for his association with Stan Kenton, was an inventive writer who starting in 1957 and had a band of his own. The music on this three-fer includes the adventurous three-part third stream piece "Annotations of the Muses," a set of Richards' adaptations of themes from My Fair Lady, a few Afro-Cuban projects, some relatively straight-ahead but complex jazz, and Richards' hit "Young at Heart." There are many short solos from the top-notch sidemen, but it's Johnny Richards' writing that makes this set quite definitive and memorable.