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. 

Ray Charles — Genius+Soul=Jazz / My Kind of Jazz (2 CD, 2010/FLAC)

 

Ray Charles' only all-instrumental LPs on one CD! 

1961's Genius + Soul = Jazz is a big band jazz workout featuring the Count Basie Band and arrangements from Quincy Jones. It includes the Top 10 hit "One Mint Julep." 

The proto-acid jazz of 1970's My Kind Of Jazz contains the funky hit single "Booty-Butt." Digitally remastered for best-ever sound!  

VA - Blue Note Explosion: New York is Our Home (2 CD, 2008/FLAC)

 

2008 UK two CD compilation of Blue Note recordings from 1953-58, filled with plenty of hip and hard core Bop. There are many great periods in Jazz music, and the five years covered on this collection is no exception. New York was a Jazz mecca and this collection features the best of Blue Note's roster creating music that sounded, felt and smelled like New York. 

Freddie Hubbard - The Night Of The Cookers: Live At Club La Marchal, Volume 1 & 2 (2004/FLAC)

 

The Night of the Cookers is a live album by trumpeter Freddie Hubbard recorded at Club La Marchal in April 1965 and released on the Blue Note label, originally as two volumes on LP. It features performances by Hubbard, Lee Morgan, James Spaulding, Harold Mabern, Jr., Larry Ridley, Pete LaRoca and Big Black. It has been called "one of the most compelling documents of a live band in full flight".

Illinois Jacquet - The Complete Illinois Jacquet Sessions 1945-50 (4 CD, 1996/FLAC)


 This four-CD set has all of the recordings made as a leader by tenor-saxophonist Illinois Jacquet during a period when he was at the height of his popularity. After his classic solo made "Flying Home" a major hit for Lionel Hampton in 1942, Jacquet spent time with Cab Calloway's band, was a sensation with Jazz at the Philharmonic, and was featured as a star soloist with Count Basie. In 1946, Jacquet went out on his own and his combo (ranging from six to eight pieces) was extremely popular, featuring its leader's hard-swinging solos which utilized a liberal amount of honks and screams. The first real R&B tenorman, Illinois Jacquet was always a much more well-rounded soloist than the specialists who followed him. The 17 sessions that are included on this essential box draws its material from the Aladdin, Apollo, ARA, Savoy, and Victor catalogues. Some of the music has been readily available in recent years, but this is the best way to acquire the swinging performances. Among Jacquet's most notable sidemen are trumpeters Joe Newman, Emmett Berry (who was actually the leader of one of these dates), Russell Jacquet (who also contributes some bluish vocals), and Fats Navarro (who solos on one song); trombonists Henry Coker, Trummy Young, and J.J. Johnson; baritonist Leo Parker; pianists Sir Charles Thompson, Bill Doggett, and John Lewis; bassist Charles Mingus; drummers Johnny Otis and Shadow Wilson; and (on two songs) singer Wynonie Harris.