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United Archives seems to be located in the UK France, their website is offline as I write this.

I got me their George Shearing Quintet box, as this is the only way to get all of Shearing's Quintet tracks with Cal Tjader.

Positive thing is, you get all the quintet tracks from the first sides with Marjorie Hyams for Discovery (later on Savoy) and all of the MGM sides, including those with vocalists (Billy Eckstine, Teddi King, The Ray Charles Singers), but the handful of solo piano tracks recorded for MGM are missing, as are the sides with Shearing on accordion .... that's the negative point, along with a discographical error they would not have made had they consulted the MGM discography by Ruppli & Novitsky, and not just Lord. That take of Caravan with Toots Thielemans on harmonica is not from 1954 but was recorded at the September 2, 1953 session (there was some confusion with attributing master numbers).

Universal so far released only single disc compilations focussing on the quintet with Hyams - of the 24 tracks with Tjader only two were on those, and a Thielemans harmonica feature on his Universal compilation.

Sound is okay - I compared the two Tjader tracks Universal reissued with those on the box, and they sound identical, and like the others. United Archives must have had good sources - one of my MGM LPs has one track skipping, while it plays smoothly from the box .... I can live with this, especially when I consider that Universal probably never would have done a complete Shearing MGM box.

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Edited by mikeweil
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A complete list can be found on the website of harmonia munid UK, who distribute United Archives.

They release classical stuff as well.

The other item a bit tempting for me is the 7 CD Dizzy Gillespie box with all the big band studio sides from 1946 to 1960 - I have almost all of this, but not the Capitol sides and the Verves not included in the Verve twofer ....

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Have no need for the Dizzy or Shearing boxes, that's not my style, but the Miles broadcast box is bootlegging done mostly right. The Prestige St. Louis material, Columbia Dameron set, and if you want to quibble, the stuff that BN released on Birdland 1951 or whatever it was & the expanded BOTC , should all be on the shelf on the street where you live in addition to them being here, but the rest of it is just one big bootleg that compiles a bunch of other bootlegs (many of them of Boris Rose-label origin, and some of which I had never heard of before) very effectively, so yeah, get it as cheap as you can (Berkshire!) and make beaucoup copies to hand out to the hip kids at Halloween.

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United Archives is a French label.

They seem to have problems fixing up a regular website of their own.

But they keep coming out with several boxes each year.

I have a number of those (Shearing, Miles, Duke, Dizzy...) which are available here at very reasonable prizes.

I like their sets!

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  • 2 months later...

The other item a bit tempting for me is the 7 CD Dizzy Gillespie box with all the big band studio sides from 1946 to 1960 - I have almost all of this, but not the Capitol sides and the Verves not included in the Verve twofer ....

41IeGs9fHDL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Yes, I recently noticed this release too. I have the vast majority of its contents already, but it also includes some mid-50s Norgran/Verve tracks that are impossible to find elsewhere, for example the remaining tracks on Jazz Recital (the small group tracks are already on the Mosaic). It will now be possible to burn a complete version of that album. Also noticed the Shearing box you mention, which I will probably get too.

Edited by Swinging Swede
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