Stompin at the Savoy

And he's not even an old white man!

I was watching PBS Newshour tonight and there was a piece on football player, actor, and activist Jim Brown, who died. Kevin Blackistone was interviewed about Brown's legacy and as he was speaking I noticed some books about jazz on the bookshelf behind him. Each time they cut back to him I would check out his shelves and there I spotted - Mosaic sets!

Still slowly making my way through this. I was familiar with most of the musicians but had never heard these albums. A wealth of stuff with Ben Webster, Billy Strayhorn, Roy Eldridge, Clark Terry and others. I like Les Spann a lot - such a different style - and enjoyed his playing on this. He doesn't solo much but his comping is tasty. At times he plays a role somewhat like Basie in the ensemble. Also some previously unissued west coast sessions with Mel Lewis. Excellent sound throughout. Overall surprised, even a bit shocked how much I like this set! Some great music. Now I may have to pick up a few more Johnny Hodges records and re-listen to some I have.

No, you deleted your posts because you wanted to. Nobody made you do it. I have no objection to you continuing to post here but I think if you want to continue you must drop the attitude of contempt toward other posters.

The problem is these figures are meaningless unless we consider the context of how many female jazz artists were there during the period Mosaic covers. How many female trumpeters? How many of them led a band? Etc. Statistics of female versus male leads getting Mosaic treatment don't tell the full story. In fact they are misleading. These stats tell us nothing without reference to the bigger statistics: what kind of representation as players and leaders did women have during this period?

Not part of the Mosaic wars but can't resist one last... Haha whatever This is really cherry-picking statistics, isn't it? How many lead male vocalists did they have? I'm sorry but this is all so specious! They publish what they can license and what they can sell. They are a private company and are not required to meet somebody's politically correct ratios of male to female artists published. Somebody, maybe you, said previously I'm just assuming they aren't sexist. But whasisname is assuming they are sexist! What I am doing is extending the benefit of the doubt when there is no credible evidence to the contrary.

That sounds an awful lot like you are accusing people here of crass consumerism and insensitivity to music. I find it offensive. It's ad hominem attack. I advise you to drop the attitude. As far as being resistant to political implications... it's just such a shitty, wrong example you've hit on to try to pillory Mosaic. You can put on the Berkeleyer than thou attitude but it won't work here because it's just wrong. No support and quite a bit of evidence against. Come on, you are accusing two people of sexism, two people we are very familiar with and have done business with for decades. It's not right to fling accusation and innuendo around like some sort of ... discussion board Tucker Carlson.

I'm not asking anyone to leave. I disagreed with some opinions from Face of the Bass and probably a few others and made my own reactions clear. When you post something and get blowback and disagreement - that's normal. Nobody gets to post with impunity. Getting back to the original topic - the problem is it's silly. I think we all agree that there has long been sexism and discouragement of female participation in music and most other professions. Mosaic isn't sexist. They publish what they can and what's out there. Oh give me a break! They've published numerous female vocalists. They're output is probably quite proportional to the jazz of the periods they cover. I don't buy the charge of sexism at all. Where's the evidence? None. I regard it as bullshit. Unfair and unwarranted innuendo.

Yes precisely. Sometimes when I am learning a tune I like to check all the examples of how people have arranged that, soloed on that, etc. Not to mention I can be somewhere like an auto dealership waiting for my car to be finished and on a device smaller than an iphone I can pick and choose music from most of my collection. It's a thing. Not everybody is interested in it and I get that. On these big Mosaic sets or any box set it's great to separate out the various albums into playlists, so you can click on the title of a particular album.

You don't actually have to do too much labeling - the track titles and artists and other information is derived from online databases when you import a cd. Nevertheless there is a considerable amount of curating required to keep it all organized and so on. Hence not for everybody.

Well the point would be you can dispense with the hard copy - cd, jewel case, etc and keep lot's of recordings on hard drives, thumb drives, pc's , sd cards, etc. And you can also still listen to the music even after you sell it off. But as I said, this is not everyone's cup of tea and if you don't like it I have no issue with that.

Yeah, it's not for everybody. I have a friend who is still trying to adjust to the idea of cds.

It would take a lot of work to rip 30,000 cds to a hard drive or some other storage. Takes maybe 10 or 15 minutes per disk. About 10 or 15 years ago I ripped all the cds I had (took quite a while!) and since then have routinely ripped any new acquisitions to a hard drive (and backups). But you could certainly save off all or some of your Mosaics as you sold them with relatively little effort. If you do make sure to use a no-loss format such as Apple Lossless format (m4a) or flac so that you retain all the information on the cds (and could re-create the cds at will). This is nothing more than installing the free itunes program, inserting a cd into your drive and choosing to import the disk into itunes (or a similar process with numerous other cd player programs such as MediaMonkey). You then have a bunch of files (equivalent to the tracks on the cd) which you can move around and play at will. The music was in digital format on the cd to begin with so playback through the same amplifier with a quality playback system will be identical to the cd.

I am able to keep all my dozens of Mosaic sets in lossless files and photos of the booklets, along with a sizable part of my other jazz records on one of these cards. Of course I still have all the hard copy sets in a storage unit. I can't quite bring myself to sell them, especially the Basie sets😕

This arrived in the mail today and I am enjoying it now. Yeah! discography here: http://web.archive.org/web/20051226172905/http://mosaicrecords.com/discography.asp?number=200-MD-CD Check it out!

Take a look at the sets currently in print: Classic Jazz At The Philharmonic Jam Sessions 1950-1957 The Complete Freddie Hubbard Blue Note & Impulse Studio Sessions Classic Black & White Jazz Sessions Lennie Tristano Personal Recordings The Complete Joe Henderson Blue Note Studio Sessions The Savory Collection 1935-1940 The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia & RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-66 and recently out of print sets: #260 The Complete Dial Modern Jazz Sessions (9 CDs) #261 The Complete Bee Hive Sessions (12 CDs) #262 Classic James P. Johnson Sessions (6 CDs) #263 Classic Columbia, OKeh and Vocalion Lester Young With Count Basie 1936-1947 (8 CDs) #264 Classic Savoy Be-Bop Sessions 1945-49 (10 CDs) #265 Classic Brunswick & Columbia Teddy Wilson Sessions 1934-1942 (7 CDs) #267 The Complete Woody Herman Decca, Mars and MGM Sessions (1943-1954) (7 CDs) #268 The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-70 (7 CDs) #269 Paul Desmond: The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings (7 CDs) This is by no means bad stuff. That Lester Young set was pretty important to me.

I was kind of mystified about this thread and the Mosaic bashing. There were some attempts to vilify the external designs of the packaging, some vague claims that the sets weren't good, that they are too expensive, that box sets are too big or too expensive, that the focus was too narrow (whatever the heck that actually means) and finally that the company was sexist. These objections all seem half-hearted and I kept trying to figure out why go after Mosaic. After all no one is forcing anyone to buy these things. The one feller mentioned that he didn't like two recent sets he bought and sold them at a loss. It strikes me that that may be the underlying explanation for these attempts to counter the supposed "deification" of Mosaic: this is a disgruntled customer! If you are sore about some purchases that you didn't like and lost money when selling them off, this is a way to hit back, I think. It has me scratching my head because if you buy a new Mosaic you don't like all you have to do is wait till shortly after it goes out of print and then you can probably sell it for at least the original price.

This? https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/zcQAAOSwiJJjRJze/s-l1600.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/MjQAAOSw~H1jRJzg/s-l1600.jpg

That was so great seeing Kamala Harris enthusing about jazz records! OMG not all jazz fans are old, white men! Every once in a while I think about selling off my many Mosaic sets. And then I don't.

This is something you can get after you've got all the Dial, Savoy, and Verve recordings and possibly a few others. In small doses it's kind of good, IMO. Some fragments are so short you barely have a sense of the key or structure of the tune and it's over. But hey, there was this legendary guy who followed Bird around and recorded his solos and these are the actual recordings he made!

That's a very enjoyable set. Ed Bickert has a unique style and plays beautifully throughout. When it came out I remember thinking wow how come I never heard this guy before. Desmond in great form too.

So knowing a lot of people here like Mosaic you started this thread to do what - point out to all these fans how bad the object of their interest actually is? That those Mosaic sets fans mention enjoying here are actually not good? You indicate that you wish the label were like some other labels. Why? How in any way does the existence of Mosaic label and its adherents injure you, those other labels, your pursuit of other labels, or your decision not to buy Mosaics? Why all the put-downs? Nobody is forcing you to buy Mosaics, like Mosaic sets or be involved with them in any way if you don't like them. It's as though you resent the fact that people praise them here. But why should you? Why would you want to change what other people like? Is this all a big attempt to justify your own refusal to buy Mosaics? You don't need to justify your tastes - we are perfectly cool with it if you don't like Mosaic sets. You seem to be not cool with it if others like them? I'm not mad at you and think you have some interesting things to say. In this particular you seem to be going after Mosaic. I'm trying hard to imagine a way for this not to be the same thing as going to a Taylor Swift fan site and posting stuff dissing the hell out of Taylor Swift.

The sound quality on this is great. Some terrific, toe-tappin stuff.

I would definitely buy a Mary Lou Williams set. My guess is they thought of it long ago and didn't produce it - not because they are biased against female musicians but because they encountered difficulties licensing the material or getting it at prices which fit their model.