John L

If Mosaic can't even make us happy with their service, the are not going to get anywhere with the general public.

Well, I have listened through the box already and it is pretty incredible. I was surprised at how little of this music I had previously. It turns out that the vast majority of my previous JATP recordings from this period were unofficial and therefore not even included on this set. I think that Mosaic is under-selling this set a bit in its advertisements. Most of this music is rare. Nothing much of it was ever released on CD with the exception of the Krupa/Rich Drum Battle and the Opera House recordings of Hawkins/Eldridge, Getz/J.J. Johnson and Ella Fitzgerald (A track was actually omitted from the Hawkins/Eldridge CD for space reasons that is restored here). Hell, there is some Pres and Bean here that is previously unreleased in any form! I seem to recall that Larry Kart posted here that he was at the September 1957 concert at the Chicago Opera House that included Lester Young, Sonny Stitt, and Illinois Jacquet. Interestingly, it would appear that the LP that was released as the "The JATP All-Stars At The Opera House" included music not from that concert but from a performance done one month later at the Shine in LA. This set presents the known music from both concerts, including previously unreleased performances from Chicago. I am VERY SATISFIED with this set. Bravo, Mosaic!

Almost like magic, after I wrote that post, I got a shipping notification.

For this pre-order, as well as my last one from Mosaic, I never even received any sort of confirmation about it. When I gave my credit card online a week ago, I just got a message that my order is "being reviewed." That is it. Last time I sent 5 emails to inquire about it that went unanswered. Client relations at Mosaic have really reached a low point.

Jim's original answer to the question with the Warne Marsh cover was a somewhat subtle but good one. It is much easier for a non-musician to recognize the changes of a standard when the soloist is playing around the melody as opposed to something completely different on the changes. I am speaking for myself, although I am not sure if I qualify as a "non-musician." I am not a professional but I do play music (mostly non-jazz). I can almost always recognize changes, including passing chords, although I certainly cannot always recognize what the changes were.

Joe Williams could ALSO sing great blues.

When I became a jazz fan in the mid-1970s, my biggest hope was that Monk would come again to the West Coast where I was living. It never happened.

There is no question about Monk's greatness as a composer. But I consider the unique way that Monk played music to be at least as great a legacy.

Pick this one up if you can still find it. If I could have only one blues disc, it would be disc 2 from this set. (It is not a selected compilation as the title might suggest but all of Muddy Waters' first recordings for Chess)

Yes. The closest thing that we have are the Billy Eckstine band recordings from 1944-1945. But Bird wasn't present on any of those.

That is a really fine session.

I saw him a few times in Paris toward the end of his life.

In an essay in on Miles Davis in "The All American Skin Game," Crouch writes a paragraph on the December 24, 1954 session, which mostly praises Thelonious Monk's contributions to the date. I have it in the 1996 anthology "Reading Jazz" edited by Robert Gottlieb. But maybe you have in mind a longer essay.

Or the Munich tracks?

This is great, Allen. I love it!