That's why I wish EU copyright law wasn't the way it was. If the rights were still in the exclusive hands of the majors there would be more of an incentive for them to release or license them. As it is pre-1963 sessions can't be legitimately released without the danger of being immediately and legally booted by dozens of fly-by-night companies -- and they are ALL ropey outfits IMO, no exceptions.
The majors had been able to issue tons of material on CD in the eighties, nineties and naughties, before it went out of copyright and didn't. What makes you think that, without EU copyright law allowing the issue of this material, any of it would have come out, or would come out if things weren't as they are?
The majors own heaps of great music recorded in the 70s and 80s by the West African branches of Decca UK, Philips, Polydor (all with Universal now) and EMI. Mere scratchings of it are available. The same seems to be true for a lot of Latin American music - Colombian recordings seem to be the rarest, though I'm no expert in this.
The rule of my record collecting life has been to avoid the recordings of the major companies as much as I could. So they bought up the indies and treated the material much as they treated their own material. 'I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you'.
MG