John L

I think that it is a safe bet that no new tapes were found, in which case the average sound quality of this material is significantly worse than the Pablo Live box. The latter consists of mostly, if not all, professionally made recordings. But the sound quality is still quite acceptable to non-audiophiles like me.

Among the less celebrated albums, I have always been particularly fond of It's Only Rock and Roll.

He loved a long and productive life. We can only be grateful for all of the great music that he left us. RIP

For some years now, Bird's White Christmas has been included on a number of Christmas music compilations. I rather doubt that anybody is getting paid except maybe the music company that had the guts to release the record without regard for copyright.

Thanks, Ricky. I am really looking forward to this one.

I love Coltrane on Prestige, particularly from 1957-1958. In fact, I prefer these recordings to the Altanic records, even if the latter might be more important from an objective point of view. If the Atlantic recordings give the feeling of a great transition that has not yet been fully realized, some of the Prestige recordings are a peak of Coltrane working his mature magic firmly within the bop/hard bop tradition. Soultrane is probably my favorite. But most of the others are also fantastic. My favorite Coltrane from the Atlantic years is not on Atlantic - Coltrane with Miles in Europe: 1960/

Oh no!

Happy birthday!

I'll pay for it if they will also play the Buddy Bolden cylinder.

It would be nice if they could start releasing it in pieces. OK, the Benny Goodman estate is causing delays. So hold back on the Benny Goodman material for the time being. There must be agood amount of material for which all the musicians are dead and there are no issues from estates. No?

Sorry. I only looked at the link in the second post. The single disc looks like a compilation of tracks from various Europe tours in 61, 62, and 63. As far as I can recall, Coltrane only played Blue Train in Europe in 61, Traneing In in 62, and Spiritual in 63. Of course, it also could be something else, but I very much doubt that it is from the same concert.

Another way to think about this thread is through the benefits of sometimes listening to jazz with a blindfold. You start to think "who is this?" Then one possible artist comes to your mind, then another. In the end, all of this pondering has forced you to listen to this music differently than you would have otherwise, and notice some things that you probably would not have otherwise noticed. Then you find out the correct answer: "Wow, I wouldn't have thought that X would have played that." You gain something from it.

It would appear that there is nothing new here in the sense that it has all been bootlegged before. But it might be a nice supplement for somebody who only has the official recordings.

Brownie is refering to the same CDs as I am. As I wrote, they were released also in smaller sets and individually. As I recall, the complete 9 disc box came a bit later, and was only available for a very short time. Here are the discs that I have (it turns out, 4). The first three I bought packaged together. They contain all of the Vogue studio recordings through January, 1952 The only other disc that I have in the set has recordings from late 1954 to early 1956

Great photos, Chuck! Thanks.

RIP. A fine fine musician.

Seeing Mandela on his world tour following his release from prison was an extraordinarily moving experience. I had tears in my eyes the whole time. RIP. The world needs a few more Nelson Mandelas.

Sorry, I guess that there were only 9 CDs. http://www.cdmail.fr/affich_fich.asp?refcdm=CDM005841

Brownie - There was a CD version with more than 6 discs, 12 I believe, housed in a cheap box. It was the complete Vogue recordings of Sidney Bechet. I have about 6 of the individual discs.

The box set was called "Sidney Bechet Integrale Studio 1949/1958." It packaged together 12 or so discs that were also released separately or in packages of three. It was available for a very limited time. I was in Paris when it came out. I didn't allow myself to buy it right away because I had already spent a lot of money on music in the last month. The next month I started looking for it, but never found it again.

Yes, there was indeed an R&B/soul singer named Lester Young. I have a few of his tracks on compilations. But what an insane choice of album cover!

Sonny Cox Sonny Criss is not always overlooked, but he is still overlooked too often. Julius Hemphill too.

I would like to mention Michael Brooks. I particularly enjoyed his notes for the Lester Young Story.

I like Lange and Gleason, the latter for giving a real feeling of the time and excitement about new developments in jazz. As for Robert Levin, he wrote some of the worst liner notes that I have ever seen. I recall a racist write-up for one of the Prestige Shirley Scott albums where he laments the inherent limited emotional range of the blues, attributing it to the limited exposure to culture in the ghetto.

I've noticed that Amazon has also raised the prices on many of its MP3s, from under $10 a disc to $13 for many discs, from 99 cent song downloads to $1.29 a song. I guess that Amazon has figured it out - "the people who still pay money for MP3s are such fools that we can charge them anything and get away with it."