duaneiac

i thought that line was attributed to Winston Churchill.

Discs 1 & 3 of 3.

The "friends" included James Taylor, Diana Krall, Dave & Matt Brubeck, Joshua Redman, Chris Thile, Paquito D'Rivera and Renee Fleming.

Disc 1 of 2

Got a package from CD Baby today with:

Disc 2 of 2.

This probably won't be the last time I play this one this month!

Discs 1 & 3 of 3. The music assembled here -- Disc 1 gathers various early sideman appearances by TD, while Disc 3 has songs from various radio broadcasts made by the TD Orchestra -- is fine, but this is one of the crappiest boxed sets ever slapped together. There is a very brief outline (I'd hesitate to call it an "essay") by Richard Sudhalter, but fully one-fourth of the booklet is made up of full page photo collages. Full recording session data and personnel are supplied for each track, but they do insist (twice) that "Connie" Boswell was the singer's name and really, any one involved in assembling a set of pop music from this era should know better than that. The whole project feels like something nobody at the record label really cared about or wanted to do in the first place.

Disc 1 of 2.

It's nice to have these two A&M albums on CD, even if this is apparently a needle-drop. The "live" tracks on the More Than Before album are really great! This was a dandy compilation and that concluding track by the O'Jays is just magnificent. I think the only track I already had from here was the Nina Simone one. Many of the other tracks I'd never even heard before. I give this one a big thumbs up! Disc 1 of 2. This era of Ramsey Lewis' career is mostly unfamiliar to me. You always see copies of his Columbia albums in used record stores and they have always been played, so there must have been an audience that loved this music. This is a handy way for me to sample this stage of his music.

It was nice of Roy to take time off from his Martin Landau Look-Alike classes in order to pose for this cover photo.

These various Jazz Giants Play CDs culled from the combined Fantasy group of labels make for good listening when you want to hear something, but you can't decide if you want to hear a piano trio or an organ trio or some West Coast jazz or a hard bop session or . . . Here you get a little bit of it all, all performed by some of the top musicians. The stand out track on this disc for me came from (no surprise here) Lester Young who just did what he did so well on this version of "Jeepers Creepers".

Now listening to: and specifically to his "groove"-y version of "What's Going On?"!

A favorite album. For me, it's traditionally the last disc I play on Christmas. His "Farewell" version of "Jingle Bells" seems to bring things to a seasonal end quite nicely. Recent listening: Something about Jo Stafford's voice simply turns me into mush.

A pleasant way to ease into some holiday music since this disc has no worn out, overdone songs or carols. All of the material was newish (as of 1991 when this album was recorded) and only 2 of the 12 tracks could be considered somewhat familiar -- "A Christmas Love Song" by Johnny Mandel and the Bergmans and "Christmas In The City" by Jay Leonhart. Ms. Dearie gives sensitive, yet not saccharine, performances on all the songs here. With Mike Renzi, Jay Berliner, Jay Leonhart and Grady Tate.