Lush Life

Received my shipping notice today. I learned a valuable lesson: always open Mosaic e-mails as soon as you spot them in your Inbox. I ordered this box the "next day" after the original email, and missed completely the first run of this set.

There are discussions taking place at the Steve Hoffman forum and at Film Score Monthly forum (and perhaps others) that indicate Sony Music has made a decision to terminate third party licensing for reissues, presumably as a way to maximize the value of their future digital business. I can't find a specific press release/announcement from Sony Music itself, but at minimum there's a lot of smoke around this issue. If there is "fire", there are a lot of reissue labels who suddenly have no access to old recordings for modern release. https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/sony-music-cuts-off-third-party-licensing.813214/ Also being discussed in this thread: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/current-sony-remaster-campaign-digital-only-releases.776635/ My apology if this is already being discussed somewhere here within organissimo.org, I looked but didn't see any threads that jumped out at me.

Given that the Savory recordings were first issued only as downloads (to my utter despair at the time), I am totally fine with waiting until May, or July, or sometime this year, as long the box really arrives. I haven't been this excited about a new release in ages.

The delays for this box set reaching my front porch have concerned me, but the news that it is due "mid-March", combined with a recent review of it by Kevin Whitehead on NPR's nationally-broadcast program "Fresh Air" a couple weeks ago in late February has me more optimistic that it's really on its way. https://www.npr.org/2018/02/21/587608828/new-box-set-showcases-the-reserved-style-of-the-late-jazz-pianist-teddy-wilson

Doug Pomeroy is listed as the engineer in charge of the sound/restoration for this new Mosaic box. A year ago, he posted this at the Steve Hoffman forum: Third, yes, there has been talk about a possible release of the music on CDs, but it would be irresponsible of me to say any more because it is not any of my business. I do know that Mosaic was contacted several years ago and, at that time, for reasons unknown to me, declined. http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-savory-collection-jazz-trove-to-be-released.598384/page-2#post-17736117 (Bold/Underlined emphasis added by me) This morning's email from Mosaic is headlined: Our Most Momentous Collection In Years - Upcoming Release. A Treasure Trove of Previously Unknown Music. I guess my question is this: what changed Mosaic's mind about cutting a deal to issue these recordings? They had to know what a big deal these were several years ago when they first had a chance to garner the rights. Did they simply not have the money to do a deal? Did they get outbid by iTunes on an 'exclusivity' deal? (It is interesting that one full year has passed since iTunes first issued these, which suggests some kind of exclusive agreement on the rights for a period of time.)

This is fantastic news. I was so disappointed when this was released as download-only. Merry Christmas to us, thank you Santa Mosaic!

Earlier in this thread, it was asked where the suggested list price of $469.98 came from. At least one public source for that price comes from no less than famed blues researcher Frank Scott, owner at Roots & Rhythm music. He posted that info at Paul Vernon's Real Blues Forum. Discussion about the box possibly containing mp3s on that USB also originated at the RBF and over at Stefan Wirz's Black & White Hillbilly & Blues Music Forum. I don't know much about this guy Blue Train and I don't much care, but it's abundantly clear that he doesn't indulge in facts if he wants to continue to insist that the Hoffman forum was the original source of the info in this thread. It wasn't, it merely repeated info that originated elsewhere.

Blue Train guessed: "Nowhere is it mentioned it's going to be mp3 but on the the Ultimate fetish remastering/engineer God's site." That's simply not true, you don't know what you are talking about. You obviously aren't subscribing to blues boards that have discussed this days before it hit the Hoffman board. Is it your usual M.O. to offer up wildly inaccurate opinions dressed up as "facts"?

The person who suggested that did not literally mean this sale included free shipping. What he meant was that the size of the discount was equivalent to getting free shipping.

3CD? I thought it was 2 CDs...or was there an issue of this with a 3rd disc that I missed?

I'm not particularly a fan of them, they're okay for what they are. I just found the notion that they influenced "much of 80s jazz" to be absurd, but wondered if I was mistaken or uninformed.

Over on the Steve Hoffman Music Forum, there's a thread debating the merits of the rock band Steely Dan and the music Becker/Fagen have recorded. And one guy there has stated the following: I love Gaucho, it's a great, dark album. It's absolutely the album they should have made at the time. For me it's a singular work and slightly ahead of its time sonically and emotionally speaking. That's probably why it informed a lot of the jazz of the time for most of the '80s. There are some seriously knowledgeable jazz fans here. I'm not as knowledgeable, but that statement struck me as odd, exaggerated, improbable. I'd be more inclined to believe that 80s jazz musicians influenced Becker/Fagen, not the other way around. Anyone with some perspectives on this?

Add me to the wife, shovel and skull brigade. I just bit for the Woody Herman, Django and Dizzy boxes.

Wow, I hadn't played disc 6 yet in my set until tonight, but it was brutal trying to get it out safely, I almost broke it, despite the warning here, which I had read in advance. I still get chills seeing how that disc resisted coming out.

I generally despise white guys trying to play blues, most of them are indeed wankers like SRV. I'll take Charley Patton and Elmore James any freakin' day of the week. But Johnny Winter has always hit me as the real deal, and I've listened to him for 40 years. Sure, he can also play rock, and I'm not certain I'd call this particular performance his absolute best blues performance...but it's close. Side 3 of Second Winter isn't classic blues, either....but it's incendiary, exciting stuff. And for my money, the live "It's My Own Fault" from Johnny Winter And Live is to die for.

Mine showed up yesterday, from Collectors Choice. No glue, listened to the first two discs, they're sublime. However, I can take just so much scat vocals, after the second disc, I needed a change, put on some Art Blakey.

I wish my CD of this played properly. One disc of this set won't play on any of my CD players, and the brick and mortar where I bought it went out of business...

I just visited the Newbury Comics store in Cambridge Mass near Harvard, and all of the sets in this thread are also found in the racks on sale at the prices mentioned. It's pretty obvious that Newbury Comics bought a bunch of these...

Thanks, jazzbo, this explanation is really helpful, I appreciate the clarification of what seemed like a contradictory situation to me regarding the Parlan box.

Okay, I'm a big boy and can take the mocking, but I'm still curious, even if you aren't. So why was it declared sold out last December? Did they have authorization to print 5,000 copies, but only pressed, let's say, 2,000? And when those sold, it was "sold out" because they didn't want to incur the expense of a big press run?

That still doesn't make sense to me. I thought the Parlan box set had "sold out" last December, that it was not a case of the license expired. Obviously, the license must not have expired if they put these sets up for sale last week. But if, as you suggest, it's easy for it to pick up the numbering where it left off when the set originally went OOP, then that suggests that Mosaic fell more than 1,000 copies short of a sell-out. If that's true, why was it listed as sold out last December? Or is it just a case of they had these spare booklets with numbers assigned, but not enough discs to fill them? In other words, they sold box #4,999 and box #5,000 a long time ago, but the booklet for my #3,465 was sitting around as an orphan without discs...(and if my last scenario is true, it still raises a question in my mind about the accuracy of the inventory control software and procedures)

Color me confused. I ordered the Parlan set, and it arrived last week. It's terrific. But how does Mosaic not know whether it is sold out of a set or not? Don't they have inventory control software to let them know what has sold and what has not, ESPECIALLY since every box has a specific number in the limited edition run? And here's what I find doubly interesting/concerning: my box that arrived last week is #3,465 of 5,000. I know they don't necessarily sell them in numerical order, but it raises a little doubt in my mind about the accuracy of their numbering system. How do they keep track of what number to assign a given box? Why didn't they know they'd never sold #3,465? I'm not accusing Mosaic of any shady practices, but it does look a little sloppy and loosey-goosey.

Same here. Me, too! Yippee!

Alas, I ordered this 10 days ago from Best Buy, immediately got a "Back Ordered" notice....and then received a second "Back Ordered" e-mail yesterday. In that second e-mail, they used language encouraging me to call to discuss alternatives, including cancelling my order. I'm hopeful this isn't their way of telling me it's never coming, but I'm not particularly optimistic on that count.

That particular seller has half a dozen similarly outrageously priced Mosaic boxes right now. Thankfully, last I looked, he hadn't gotten a single bid on any of them.