crisp

I'm halfway through the Kenneth Williams book -- highly recommended. Never realised before the extent to which his career difficulties were largely of his own making: he turned down so many great opportunities through low self-esteem and insecurity. Stevens writes very nicely and has done his research. It's going cheap in the remainder shops at the moment.

Word to the wise on that Feldman bio: Robert Ross is a terrible writer, unless you like "awesome stunning" hyperbole in place of solid research and sentences that go on forever with about a million clauses. I'd wait until somebody better, such as Graham McCann or Christopher Stevens, tackles it. Sorry.

More jazz and jazz-oriented sets coming on 9 January 2012: Harry Connick Jr Weather Report Preservation Hall Jazz Band

The Second Disc has a bit of info here. The writers thinks they are legit, although I don't know if he's just speculating when he says: "Based on the time periods, it seems that a great deal of licensing has been done by Universal to create these all-encompassing packages." He also says "Alas, complete and verified track listings have not yet been released," but of course we know two of them have.

I can recommend this CD set of jazz numbers from classic Warner-owned movies, recently reissued. Track listing here.

It's in the reissues forum and not in the boxed set forum? Might be why Jazzsphere thought there wasn't a thread

Well, the Concord Euro boxes are clearly the old Fantasy masterings. I've always assumed that Concord makes the product, Universal simply distributes it to stores. What I'm suggesting is that these could be made by a PD company like Proper and that Universal simply distributes them with no hand in the manufacturing. I must stress that I'm guessing, but even Mosaic doesn't mix and match labels in this way: if you go to the original rights holders, you tend to stick to one. The only way to find out I suppose is to wait until they are released and check the packaging to see who made them.

The Concord arrangement was what I was thinking of. That these new sets are cross-label makes me suspect they are PD sets being distributed by Universal, but made by another company.

In cases like this I buy the box, sell the older duplicates and both make some money back and free up some space. Par for the course for long-time jazz collectors!

Amazon Germany has rather well-hidden track listings for the Billie Holiday and the Charlie Parker. I don't know what to make of these sets. They appear to be European and all contain music more than 50 years old, so could be another PD release. Yet it's definitely Universal, although not exclusively Universal-owned material. So is Universal now doing PD stuff, or are they handling distribution for a PD company? I suspect the latter.

I care! So thanks. As I expected, a mixture of CDs I own, CDs I don't own and CDs I don't want to own. If the sound is significantly better, the packaging is especially attractive and I can get a good discount, I might get this, but that's a lot of ifs. Any pack shots yet?

Thanks for the info, Rosco.

Are the ones HMV.com sends out sealed? Often the UK editions of CDs aren't and I'm painfully fussy!

Amazon UK's preorder price for this is pretty good: £173.30 here. That's about £1.20 per disc.

And Hank Mobley. From Bob Blumenthal's liner notes to the Mobley Mosaic: "On his uncle's advice, he listened initially to Lester Young and then to Don Byas, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt. 'Anyone who can swing and get a message across,' as Mobley explained his influences to Leonard Feather in 1956."

Mosaic should do the complete Sonny Stitt on Verve -- long overdue IMHO.

Thread here.

Jacqueline Du Pre: The Complete EMI Recordings (17 discs): £17.64 at Amazon UK.

Got my set last night -- what a great package. I've a question about the tempo changes. Whenever I've listened to the Plugged Nickel recordings I've imagined Miles directing these on the stage, since the tempo changes radically within tunes (rather than from tune to tune) and isn't dictated by the way the piece is written -- on the Sweden gig, for example, the ballad I Fall in Love Too Easily begins at a crawl, then become incredibly fast; Agitation and Footprints start out quickly then slow right down for the piano solos. Yet the DVD shows that Miles was off stage when he wasn't playing. So were the tempo changes planned or improvised, and if the latter, who made the decision and how was it signaled?

It's legit. Discussed here.

Details from The Second Disc. Its 19 discs open with 1955’s Brubeck Time and conclude with 1966’s Plays Cole Porter – Anything Goes. As the title attests, this box does not include everything recorded by Brubeck at Columbia during his long association with the label, presenting only the studio albums of the Quartet. (Live albums and solo albums have naturally been excluded.) This box not only restores a number of out-of-print titles back to catalogue but also introduces a number of the Quartet’s albums to American CD. Also on the way: Billie Holiday, Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933-1944 (Repackaging of previous set) Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Complete Columbia Albums Collection Weather Report, The Jaco Years: The Complete Columbia Albums Collection

Embryonic.

Now up again to £67.24, sadly. I shan't post any more changes unless it gets very low. One to keep an eye on I think.

Now £51.70 at Amazon UK. How low will it go I wonder.

This set is a fairly reasonable 39.99 euros at Amazon France.