Stompin at the Savoy

Say what you will, this was for the recent Paul Desmond set, and Scott did respond and did expedite the shipment. I don't think Scott will mind if I quote his email here: My point is not to define how service will take place or how they operate nowadays but rather that they really are pretty good about customer service if you give them a chance. It's a very small outfit and they depend on a number of providers to print the books, make the boxes, manufacture the disks and mail them; I expect delays occasionally and am not bothered by that.

Yes indeed, many thanks Ian for all the work getting these up so quickly after the volumes are released! I've been relying on your work as I listen to these. I am puzzled that the company doesn't provide something official but hopeful they will someday.

About a year back I noticed that musicbrainz had photos of the Lou Donaldson Mosaic set booklet ( https://musicbrainz.org/release/68c6e801-6648-4b4d-a246-7a1af02cb564/cover-art ) and went for a cd quality download of the music from Presto ($40, which is published as digital media by Blue Note). I had heard most of it at one time or another but enjoy getting a coherent bunch of albums with the Mosaic treatment. A lot of Donaldson's output has aged really well, IMO.

After they redesigned the site all the original accounts got lost, so they offered the option to create a new account. When that first happened I ordered without creating an account for some reason. Everything worked fine. The next time I created an account with the order. Everything worked fine. Whenever you experience a problem with orders, just write to them. They are very responsive. There was one time I bought a set for a relative. There was some delay and it looked like the relative might change address before the set arrived. I wrote to Scott Wenzel and he expedited the shipment and personally took the package to the post office. People complain about Mosaic but in what other record company would one of the principals write back to you and take care of your order? They don't have many people working there but since each release is typically only a few thousand sets (divided into a few pressings) they are able to give very good service to individual customers.

I like the Dick Hyman volume:

Yes, there are some discrepancies in the track order and the documentation, which is provided by a fan, not the company. The company starts this huge reissue program and then provides no discography? Nevertheless, what we have is better than nothing, I suppose.

Yeah there were spots in the Basie Columbia discography where they left things out because Lester Young didn't play. I suppose every additional disk reduces sales numbers so they have to strike a balance, esp when the set is already 10 disks...

Pre-ordered!

1955. It's kind of hard bop just emerging from bebop. Wallington was kind of a bop figure who retired from the music fairly early.

High mountain oolong from Li Shan in Taiwan.

A lot of the Lunceford material seems to be on a digital series Verve issued in 2017. Four volumes, four cd's worth of material. The order is different from the Mosaic box and I am not quite sure how the two releases relate but the digital release would appear to be a subset of the Mosaic. Mosaic booklet is here: http://web.archive.org/web/20141207214247/http://www.mosaicrecords.com/discography.asp?number=250-MD-CD&price=$119.00&copies=7 CDs

Judging by the sound and the fact that this came out in 2022, this is very likely derived (stolen) from the masters done for the Mosaic set - The Complete Blue Note Donald Byrd/Pepper Adams Studio Sessions. I was able to get the other two albums on the Mosaic set - Chant and The Creeper - as downloads. Chant in particular was rather nice because Presto had this as a hi res 96 kHz, 24 bit file, which turned out to have incredible detail, esp the cymbals, when listening with the appropriate equipment through LDAC equipped headphones. To complete my poor man's Mosaic, I get the book here: https://musicbrainz.org/release/cc1484c5-c59f-439c-8fe3-a10763ab1b3a/cover-art

I had some of the 7 albums on here. I found it was cheaper to get CD quality FLAC files for the whole set from Presto ($32) than buy the remaining single albums. The mastering is good on this set. Listening to Up and Down at the moment.

Yeah, they are kinda pricey though. I have a Japanese issue of The Procrastinator, which includes the later sessions on some releases of Sonic Boom, so I only need the first session with David Newman and Harold Mabern, around 37 minutes. I am thinking of getting a download. Presto has cd quality for $8.50. I'm retired and have somewhat limited resources, necessitating that I be a bit of a cheapass now... The session with Newman is quite nice and there are a couple spots where Morgan's trumpet work is really marvelous.

Thanks for the correction!

For some reason I never heard this before. It's somewhat hard to obtain on cd.

Volume 5 is on spotify now. As far as I can tell scanning the titles quickly it looks like this volume includes all of disks 3 and 4 of the Mosaic Ellington orchestra set plus 4 tunes with one alternate each from Victor sessions in Sept and Dec of 1933. I was planning on getting the download of this but after listening to the 8 Victor session tunes not on the Mosaic (last 8 tracks) I am re-thinking that. Probably not worth it.

Volume 4 includes all of disks one and two of the Ellington Orchestra Mosaic set. Plus it has a small number of RCA sessions.

Volume 4 includes pretty much everything (as far as I can tell) on the first two disks of the Mosaic Ellington orchestra set, plus a few RCA recordings. I haven't really compared them closely but it seems possible that the mastering is the same or derived from the Mosaic masters.

Wes made a lot of jazzified popular music which I am mostly indifferent toward. He became a musical celebrity and they were trying to make some money out of it, which I get. But when he plays real jazz he is truly great, IMO. His single note soloing is harmonically more advanced than most guitar players IMO. I need to fill in my Wes M collection some more.

The rest of the album doesn't do that much for me but this piece is beautiful.