crisp

Ah, but even in the Swinging Sixties there were plenty of over-forties more inclined towards buying Ken Dodd records than the Beatles, otherwise why was Ken the third-biggest selling artist in Britain during that decade? And today there are over-forties who "are still locked into a concept of physical discs in fancy packaging" -- me for one! I think the record companies are working to a tighter budget than before, but as ever, they know what they are doing -- middle-aged people always have more money than teenagers. I'd prefer it if EMI would put out the OOP Mosaics (Ferguson, Basie, Shearing etc) as budget boxed sets, a bit like the Sony Billie Holiday set that recently came out. Would legal issues prevent that, I wonder (ie does Mosaic own the remastering rights)?

Looks like the old Brubeck Time box is to be reissued in this series. Amazon UK's price must be a mistake.

Sony's relentless repackaging of extant CDs continues apace. I just came across this French boxed set of 25 previously released jazz CDs in replica CD sleeves. I have about half the titles, but it's such a nice package (and cheap), I'm tempted. It gets a UK release on October 4. Le programme: 1. Louis Armstrong : Plays WC Handy 2. Sarah Vaughan : Sarah Vaughan In Hi-Fi 3. Art Blakey : The Jazz Messengers 4. Billie Holiday : Lady In Satin 5. Miles Davis : Kind Of Blue 6. Dave Brubeck : Time Out 7. Duke Ellington - Count Basie : The Count Meets The Duke 8. Helen Merrill : Parole e musica 9. Charles Mingus : Tijuana Moods 10. Chet Baker : Chet Is Back! 11. Thelonious Monk : Monk’s Dream 12. Sonny Rollins : Sonny Meets Hawk! 13. Martial Solal : At Newport '63 14. Paul Desmond - Gerry Mulligan : Two Of A Mind 15. Benny Goodman : Together Again! 16. George Benson : It's Uptown 17. Nina Simone : Sings The Blues 18. Art Tatum : Piano Starts Here 19. Erroll Garner : Concert By The Sea 20. Herbie Hancock : Head Hunters 21. Stan Getz : The Best Of Two Worlds 22. Jaco Pastorius : Jaco Pastorius 23. Weather Report : Heavy Weather 24. Wynton Marsalis : Standard Time Vol. 1 25. Charlie Parker : Bird

Especially that tasteful TV show Big Brother.

I'm all for rockers (and others) singing the GAS if it keeps these songs alive and brings them to new listeners. If Mona Lisa can survive Conway Twitty, then Autumn Leaves can survive Clapton (although I agree with those here who find him boring). And British rockers singing the standards can sometimes be lovely, eg Joe Brown doing I'll See You In My Dreams. We still have the other versions.

The worn LP cover look of these made me wonder if they were a continuation of that series that Sony France did a while ago. In any case, the whole lot are up for preorder on Amazon France, with a release date of September 6. The other titles are: Take Ten by Paul Desmond Cool (aka She Was Too Good To Me) by Chet Baker Conquistador by Maynard Ferguson

Good spot! Thanks!

I don't know about Starbucks around the world, but in the UK practically anywhere is cheaper for coffee -- and better tasting in my opinion. I stopped going partly because I was tired of it and partly because I was spending a fortune there (it must be the only chain not to do loyalty cards as well). Cafe Nero is my favourite chain, but I'm rarely near one. The muffins in Starbucks are very nice, though.

No, that's the similar series from Warner -- Original Album Series, not Original Album Classics from Sony. It's confusing.

I know this series has been discussed before, but I couldn't find a dedicated thread. Anyway, after a lot of pop sets, there are some more jazz-themed releases coming on 29 June, in the new three-CD format. Artists are Ahmad Jamal, Sylvain Luc, Michel Petrucciani, Steve Grossman, Didier Lockwood and Bireli Lagrene. Amazon search string here.

I used to visit the Starbucks in St Katharine's Docks near the Tower of London every day until about a year ago. Jazz was pretty standard background music (except when McCartney's Memory Almost Full was being promoted), and it was all pretty mainstream stuff, albeit good mainstream. One day, though, my ears pricked up at what sounded like an Andrew Hill track amid all the usual stuff -- quite far out by Starbucks standards. I assumed it was a mistake. In any case, no one seemed to notice the difference.

There hasn't been a European edition of the Louis Armstrong set -- also Universal material, so I fear that policy has ended (all those online discounts...?)

Sessions A, C, D and E were all released on Verve Elite Edition CDs in the Nineties*, and as Clunky points out, J was released as a Universal Jazz in Paris CD in 2000. So that leaves just B, F, G, H and I that don't appear to have been on CD before. That's two albums with Thompson as leader and two tracks on which he is a sideman. I understand that completism is not the purpose of Selects, but the strategy here strikes me as very odd. If you have the three VEEs, you don't need the music from those sessions. If you don't have them, surely you would prefer to have the complete albums rather than a few odd tracks. I'll have to consider whether $44 is worth it for about one CD of music I don't already own and wouldn't want in this abridged form if I didn't. * For the record, they were Clark Terry by Clark Terry; The Modern Jazz Society Presents a Concert of Contemporary Music; and Introducing Jimmy Cleveland and his All-Stars.

Just to clarify: the Original Album Series is a new line from Rhino, while the Original Album Classics line, referred to in the last couple of posts, comes from Sony BMG and has been running for some time. Only two titles from the Original Album Series are on Amazon UK: the Ellington and the Charles mentioned in the first post.

Thanks, guys. I was thinking this might be a cheaper (not to mention more extensive) route to the material than the Mosaic, which I don't yet have, but your observations make me think I'll probably get the Mosaic and forego the other material. I already have the first JSP box, all of the Jazz in Paris releases and the RCA Bluebird single. Add the Mosaic and that's probably as much Django as I'll need.

Thanks, Brownie. Minimal in the sense of lacking personnel info? I would imagine that the EMI has better sound, though, since EMI made the original recordings.

This German site has a whole load of them listed for imminent release -- just do a search on "Original Album Series" (it won't let me link to a search string). The other titles are mostly rock and pop.

Has anyone here bought this set yet? If so, how is the packaging? Mini LPs? Digipaks? Jewell Cases? Just trying to get an idea of how compact/unwieldy it is before I order. Thanks in advance.

I think Granz was not so much conservative as unimaginative. He had to have it demonstrated to him which were the good jazz artists by their longevity, reputation or sales. It's been pointed out that his approach to albums was dull: a ballad medley, a blues, one or two well-worn standards... plus a boring "X meets Y" title. No attempt at a concept or shape to the disc at all -- that suggests he lacked imagination, as do the rabble-rousing cutting contests at JATP. In his defence, though, if he hadn't been around, would anyone have recorded the older swing musicians as extensively and as sympathetically as he did? It seems to me that recording new or vanguard artists is the norm (no pun intended) in jazz, not the exception (and I think your list or producers who did this bears me out). And Granz certainly made Ella's reputation. At Decca she mostly sang throwaway tunes of the day and those sides are now forgotten, as she might be if that policy had continued. Granz gave Ella quality songs by the likes of Porter and Gershwin and put her with decent musicians. That was probably his one visionary career act.

Yes.

Also: Art Blakey - Drum Suite Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto - The Best of Two Worlds Ahmad Jamal - Okeh & Epic Recordings (recently reissued in Europe) Horace Silver - Silver's Blue I recall reading that the copy protection on these discs affected the sound quality, but can't say for certain as I never heard them. As for the copy protected European EMI discs, they sound fine and I've personally never had a problem copying any of them to iTunes. In any case, they have all but disappeared from stores.

I'm not really that interested in either of those singers, and their work has been pretty well represented on cd. If Mosaic could find a large chunk of their music not on cd yet, yeah, that's a good project. Possibly sell. Would raise a lot of eyebrows of non-vocal jazz Mosaic buyers though, as this Crosby set does. I'm just trying to think of singers that would be "jazzy" enough for Mosaic to consider. It's true that UK EMI's 2-on-1 series has taken care of Julie London's output for Liberty, but Nancy Wilson's Capitol recordings are all over the place, spread across myriad compilations, and a complete box would be very handy. It's much the same scenario as Nat King Cole before those two Bear Family boxes.

Dietz is an amazing lyricist. "Some great Shakespearean scene / Where a ghost and a prince meet / And everyone ends in mincemeat." Beautiful. The best lyricists in my view are Dietz, Dorothy Fields, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Johnny Burke, Carolyn Leigh, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Not an exhaustive list, but I would deliberately exclude some of the sloppier ones, such as Lorenz Hart, Ira Gershwin, Otto Harbach and Sammy Cahn, much as I love their work in spite of that.

Thanks, but that would bust a little thing we have in the UK called the customs limit

Maybe in the US, but here in London, HMV Oxford Circus has piles of them in the jazz department.