The Chess Story

[kulu se mama]

i might be in the market for "the chess story" import box set.

this material is attainable in 2 different ways.

3 - 5 cd box sets, or 1 - 15 cd box set.

if i purchase them, the price will be about a wash.

is there any reason for or against either way.

also, either way it's an expensive set - is it worth it?

[John L]

Is there a track listing? Is this the complete ball of wax?

Edited April 10, 2005 by John L

[kulu se mama]

not the complete ball of wax (it's only 15 cd's which equals about 30 - 45 lp's).

it's a 359 song survey.

[kh1958]

On a bit smaller scale (3CDs), this Sun Records Blues anthology is rather good.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00...6210757-2429443

[Mark J]

I never heard of this. Who put this set out? Is it from the Chess masters, or like the old English Charley/French Chess albums in the 80s where there was a lot of music in really bad sound? I used to buy those because the real stuff was not available from Chess, which was in 'transition', but once MCA started releasing all the old albums on Chess CDs and LPs in the late 80s I dumped my old European versions and bought the new ones with good sound. Since the late 80s much of the Chess catalogue has been reissued legitimately by Chess in excellent sound, even the late 80s CDs, although a lot is now OOP, so I wouldn't jump at this box unless I knew exactly what was on it and what the sources were.

[kulu se mama]

it was put out by universal in 1999.

the complete 15 cd box was limited to 10k worldwide.

[Mark J]

I don't remember this, I guess I wasn't buying a lot of blues at that point, I had almost everything I wanted - if it's from Universal from 1999 the sound should be good, so the main thing is to look at the track listing and see how much of this you already own and how much remains that you want, especially if there are some rarities. I bought that Chess Blues box in the mid 90s which I think has 4 CDs even though I had all the 'hit' material (plus) because there were a bunch of nice rarities on the box that I wanted to hear (much of which I wound up buying again on the 2 CD Aristocrat set later - that is a real treasure trove), so a purchase like this depends on what you have and what you like.