clandy44

As a teen jazz enthusiast some many years ago, I bought 2 Columbia lp box sets: The Sound of Harlem and The Sound of Chicago. Does anyone know if there were more of these kinds of lp boxes issued by Columbia?

I don't think I ever heard a bad Benny Carter album-the man had consummate good judgment about what he recorded, and you can hear it starting on his earliest leader dates (Classics 1929-1933). I owned the Shearing-Wilson lp years ago. This was young Nancy at her most popular stage, and Shearing is a master at working with others-very enjoyable.

My favorite female (the NKC box is numero uno) Mosaic vocal set. And that is saying something, since my affection for music of the 1930s should prompt me to pick the Mildred box. I also bought the O'Day Proper box to get a solid slug of her sound from the early 40s. She was definitely in her prime in the Verve years, and a few of the albums are stupendous. Guess you could call me a fan.

Anyone been listening to these? How is the sound? Recommend any particular volumes?

Thanks for the feedback. If GOM is right, then the overlap comes mostly on Vol 2. For those who have all 4 volumes, do you prefer one volume over the others?

Does anyone have all or a part of the 12 cd Sunbeam recordings of Bix? What is the quality of the sound, etc? And, is there much if any overlap with the Mosaic Bix?

The Proper box is filled with goodies from the 1940s and priced right. But, buy the Mosaic when you can-it really showcases her when her voice was its most vibrant.

Stuff's sudden disappearance resembles Ventura/Phillips' also sudden deoarture last year or the year before. Guess we can't procrastinate.

I have found them, with the generous help of a fellow board member.

I'm a fan too. Picked up all the Dream Band stuff and then began to buy some of his other work. But then, I'm a West Coast fan.

Thanks to EKE BBB, I'm on a Fats hunt. Looking for 2 Bluebird sets: Fractious Fingering-The Early Years Part 3 and A Good Man is Hard to Find-The Middle Years Part 2. Thanks for any help.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Bought Goo Gone and, by golly, it works! For those of you who have pets or kids, however, beware: it has a cloying citrus smell which is more appropriate (in a less concentrated form) to food products.

I know this has been covered before, but lately I have been buying some used cds with what seem to be the Mother of All Labels, which when finally peeled off leave a gross residue. Any suggested home remedies? Thanks.

I have all three. Just on the music, my preferences; 1. Kento Presents-by a mile over the other two. But then I groove on the West Coast thing. 2. Gerald Wilson-in my view, a genius is Gerald as an arranger and leader...but too many renditions of pop 60s songs makes me carefully choose which discs of the set I listen to. Yes, I'm a confirmed hater of California Dreamin'. 3. Ellington Reprise-one very good album in there with some OK (by the Duke's lofty standards) other work. Can't really miss with any of them, though.

EKE BBB-Thanks for this thread. I just discovered it (where have I been?). Love stride...can't get enough of James P or Fats. Gonna buy some Luckey and go for the Joe Turner Solo. Strongly recommend Ralph Sutton's work-literally all of it. You might try Alligator Crawl or Swings St Louis (beautifully recorded on the obscure label Gaslight). His work with Ruby Braff also quite nice as are the two Live at Sunnie's discs.

I didn't pay much attention to the comments made about Basie not being able to explain his music-I can almost picture Basie, in a kindly but mischievous way, deciding to stonewall this dude, whose overly earnest manner probably brought bad karma into the room. But, what Page, Jones, Green and Basie did with the rhythm section does make for some thoughtful comparisons to other artistic and industrial developments in the 1930s.

This review from today's WSJ makes an interesting point about the relationship of Basie's music in the 30s to the other arts. As anyone who has this box will confirm, it is over the top in sound and quality. The Streamliner Swing of Count Basie By JOHN MCDONOUGH In his recent book, "Jazz Modernism," Alfred Appel, professor emeritus at Northwestern University, broke rare new ground in jazz writing by linking Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and other jazz players to Matisse, Joyce and other icons of the modern high-art canon. He argued without a speck of condescension that jazz, painting, literature and other arts actually did talk to each other, even if subliminally, through the medium of modernism. Upon spending several lively hours with "Count Basie and His Orchestra: The Columbia Years -- America's #1 Band!" a new four-CD collection from Columbia/Legacy covering the band's formative years from 1936 to 1951, I find myself persuaded that Mr. Appel is on to something and that to view Basie's music only within the constraints of jazz is to miss the range of his reach. His name not only belongs alongside the likes of Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, as you would expect, but also the pioneers who interpreted the technology of the machine into visual arts and design in the 1930s -- men such as Henry Dreyfuss, Norman Bel Geddes and Frank Lloyd Wright. If economics answers to an all-pervading "invisible hand," surely the arts must have a similar force channeling the buzz from music, art, industrial design, architecture, etc. into some cohesive and unified stream. Call it common sensibility if you like, or zeitgeist, or the spirit of the times. Only in the perspective of time does it ultimately become clear. COUNT BASIE AND HIS ORCHESTRA: THE COLUMBIA YEARS -- AMERICA'S #1 BAND! Columbia/Legacy $44.98 There are 90 selections in the Basie package, 22 of them from live radio broadcasts. Thirty are by Basie small groups; the rest by the full orchestra. Nearly all remind us that in the 1930s Basie, his band, piano, and particularly his rhythm section rewrote the most fundamental laws of motion in jazz. And therein lies the link, because few things dominated the spirit of the late '30s more than the larger wonders of motion, speed and the new aerodynamic shapes that became expressions of a futuristic and optimistic modernism. Count Basie materialized, as if by some invisible hand, at almost precisely the moment when streamlining reached a critical mass in breakthrough designs and public fascination. In one brief 18-month period from 1934 to 1936, America saw its first diesel streamliners, Raymond Loewy's Hupmobile, the Chrysler Airflow, the smooth metallic shrouds that transformed traditional steam engines into futuristic projectiles on wheels, the first production DC-3s, "Flash Gordon," and the statuesque curves of Jean Harlow sheathed in white and silver satin. In the midst of all this, popular music also took a sudden turn as well -- from a frumpy two-beat angularity lingering from the '20s toward the unbroken propulsion and rhythmic flow of swing. Basie's music was a musical mirror image of the same spirit of modernity that found beauty in sleek designs inspired by the physics of velocity, designs that merged all sub-forms into a continuum of smooth, rounded, transitional lines. Toward the end of disc four there is a remarkable Basie version of "I Got Rhythm" that perfectly illustrates this. As the band retires after a chorus, tenor saxophonist Lester Young, the most streamlined and gifted of Basie's great soloists, glides in skimming like a stone across a sustained F for over four measures, capping the sprint with an exclamatory B-flat. It's more striking for its sheer aerodynamic contour than any content -- that, and the fact that a decade earlier Louis Armstrong might have ridden that F by hammering out a string of staccato quarter notes while bumping along on a two-cylinder rhythm section. Jazz lurched into the '30s as a boxy jalopy. It exited, largely under Basie's leadership, as a streamliner. Another Basie soloist worth noting is Dickie Wells. Using the trombone's sliding intonations, he found ingenious ways to disobey the formalities of tempo with oblique swerves and eccentric phrasings. Outside the Basie context, they could sound awkward. But they make perfect sense here. On one small band tune, "Dickie's Dream" on disc one, Wells drifts leisurely in on top of Young, in a flowing, almost imperceptible transition of overlapping C's across four measures. The transition is as seamless as a soap bubble, all disjunction between the two camouflaged in the gentle, curved lines of a Saarinen or Eames silhouette set to music. If anyone personified and objectified the subtle sweep of Basie's understated swing, it was Jo Jones, drummer on all but a handful of these performances (and sometimes so understated as to be barely audible). It was Jones who forged his mastery of the high-hat cymbal into a fragile but steely force that breathed with the natural elegance of a gull's wings. It was said that he "played like the wind," a perfect metaphor for the ideals of streamlining, which derived in part from such organic models as birds in flight. Basie never saw his music in this way, of course. I doubt if he'd ever heard of Raymond Loewy or contemplated the interconnectedness of the arts. It wasn't that he resisted intellectualizing his music. He was simply incapable of it. About 30 years ago, I interviewed him. I took the occasion very seriously, intent on digging into the roots of his innovations and getting insights from the man himself on his creative logic. What I got instead were looks of confusion, a lot of hemming and hawing, and a strong sense that he'd rather be wasting his money at the race track than his time with me. He didn't understand what I was after because he couldn't see it in his own work. Ten years later, a 400-page autobiography written with Albert Murray contained no more insight than my interview. I finally understood that Basie's most original music, much of which is included in the Columbia/Legacy set, was a completely natural and unpremeditated reaction to unique circumstances and opportunity. That is the only way, perhaps, in which the "invisible hand" of sensibility can manifest itself free of the distortions of unnecessary knowledge -- something best left to those of us who imbibe our arts from the galleries with intent to commit criticism.

Tod-DD is legit if slow. they ship from a small town in Illinois and I have had no problems with them. And, their prices are good. The German overdub ends on track 7 of disc 1, which has 28 tracks. A little male German voicing on track 1 of disc 2, but it seems (I haven't finished this disc) like uninterrupted music.

No chance to really read the book, but there is significant text as well as pictures, many of them professional promo shots. Did see the bibliography, which is longer than the one in my senior thesis...hmmm, guess that's not that impressive. I put disc 1 in and started listening. One warning: there is a woman, speaking German, who does a voiceover over on tracks one and three which mostly obscures the music. On track four, she explains it's Eddie Cantor singing, which comes on at the end of the track, then she comes on track five again at the beginning. But, I jumped to tracks 10 and 11 and she is not there. So, beware if you don't like foreign language overdubs.

Just got my box today after Deep Discount had forgotten about my order for a month and I had not bothered them because they are notoriously slow. When I called the error to their attention, they had it to me in a couple of days. I paid $48 for this 2-cd set. Here's what I got: a large square box (with a handsome picture of the Club) which holds a 121 page hard back book with a ton of cool pictures and 2 cds. I just popped 1 cd in and, on my not so hot office cd player, the sound is simply incredible. Why, just now it's Dukey playing something not on my RCA set....Sounds like the Orchestra is in my office. This is my first Bear set...but if all of them are of this quality, I'm gettin' into C&W. To me, this is well worth the price.

Interesting thread. For me, it's the Vaughan set by a wide margin-I was hopin' against hope that her Roulette work (only a couple of which I had) would be more jazz than pop...but my hopes were dashed when I played it through.

Lon-I am in favor of barring the recidivists and incorrigibles like Deep, whose venom runs thick and deep. But, these "warning" systems only lower the bar so far that the innocent and the guilty all are made to walk the plank. In short, plain overkill.

Lon-I hear ya, but I am not persuaded. I have found Deep's postings nasty and useless to me, and I simply avoid reading them. But, the presence of a couple morons doesn't warrant some non-transparent (that is, only the censors know what is worthy of warning and we are in the dark until we start getting pluses or whatever) system. How can anyone conduct him or herself properly when the rules are, at best, ambiguous and found only in the desk drawer of the Board moderator? A tip of the cap, then, to Senator Joe McCarthy, who had a long run on Broadway with this approach. I'm hardly some wild-assed (sorry) libertarian, but, as you can see, this new "system" has pricked (sorry) my conscience.-Chuck

I may win the thick-member-of-the-year award, but I guess I still don't get it. Does the appearance of this "warning bar" indicate I have been deemed to have transgressed before, or is this being seen by everyone who makes a post? It can't be the former since I have been too busy to make many postings at all, let alone recently, and my posts are not exactly "in your face" stuff. If it's the latter, then I am surprised that some parental guidance system has been deemed necessary here-I haven't seen any of the nasty stuff that used to pass for posts on the BNBB. I don't recite the First Amendment much in my daily (or, for that matter my yearly) life, but is this warning system really essential to this Board? If so, count me as one even less enthusiastic poster...that comment will probably get me a plus one in the system-good in hockey but, I suppose, bad here. If the Board guru is really concerned about close supervision, may I suggest that each poster be made to sign a certification that he, she or it will not write displeasing things-this is being used to "great" advantage by the SEC in the corporate world and would get the HUAC seal of approval.

Hmmmm. Anyone know what "warn" means under my avatar? Have I offended the god of music? Maybe I was too enthusiastic about Benny..........gee, I am so sorry.