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Count Basie - America's Number One Band


Brad

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Geez, Brad, thanks alot. After my recent pigfest in the Mosaic True Blue promotion, I was trying to keep a low buyer's profile for at least a week or two. So long low profile. Nice price and great music. Heads-up like this are what make the board so terrific. Buying this even though I suspect Mosaic will eventually do a more complete Basie Columbia set.

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I just preordered this through CDUniverse. Of all the stuff coming out this month (Mosaics etc), this is my first priority--I've been waiting a long time for Columbia to do something with at least some of the Basie material in their vault. The only question for me at this point is who did the transfers. Sony's remastering of older stuff has been pretty good lately, so I'm pretty confident.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Looking at the DeepDiscountcd.com website, I also noticed that DEFINITIVE has a 3-CD Complete Columbia set 1941-1951. So is this the same, but with disc 4 of the AMERICA'S #1 BAND being extra live material? :o

Don't think so, tjazz!

Disconforme/Definitive has TWO Basie Columbia sets, one 1941-1951 (3CD) (link) and one 1936-1941 (4CD) (link). There has been some talk about these somewhere before (probably in the lost part of AAJ), and they seem to be "complete" (no additional material, no alternate takes, certainly no of the new stuff on Columbia/Legacy).

I am not sure about this. And Definitive (just in case you don't know this yet - otherwise forgive me for stating the obvious) is a rip-off label. They have quite a lots of stuff which in Europe is in the public domain now (meaning older than 50 years), and they copied a fair amount of other label's releases. So generally, one should try to go for the original (though Basie is a special case, as no original exists - maybe the Chronological Classics would be the way, there).

ubu

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Well, only one copy made it to my local Tower and I had it held for me, and so glad I did! So far I'm enjoying this a lot, I'm just listening at work and I've had all this music before but I suspect it will be better sounding here, and the booklet looks pretty nice. . . .!

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Edited by jazzbo
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Andreas Meyer did the transfers from acetates and metal parts, and Mark Wilder and Seth Foster have done the tape transfers. So far I have only really heard the transfers from acetates and metal parts and they sound very very good, typical of Meyer's work. There's depth to the sound, and Pres and the trumpets sound great!

I think they did a good job selecting and assembling this set. Once you know ahead of time it isn't complete, then the usual incomplete nature of Keepnews' productions aren't an issue. I haven't been able to really read too much of the booklet yet, but it seems solid.

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Andreas Meyer did the transfers from acetates and metal parts, and Mark Wilder and Seth Foster have done the tape transfers. So far I have only really heard the transfers from acetates and metal parts and they sound very very good, typical of Meyer's work. There's depth to the sound, and Pres and the trumpets sound great!

I think they did a good job selecting and assembling this set. Once you know ahead of time it isn't complete, then the usual incomplete nature of Keepnews' productions aren't an issue. I haven't been able to really read too much of the booklet yet, but it seems solid.

Thanks for the early report, Lon. Mine shipped on Friday and should arrive sometime later this week... Is most of the Famous Door material from '38 or '39? I have a lot of the '38 on a VJC CD called ROCK-A-BYE-BASIE, but, judging from the song titles, there won't be much overlap.

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I am interested in this set but have some questions for those of you that have it.

I have the Chronological Classics stuff for Basie for 1939 and 1939 Part 2, plus 1940, which I assume the new box duplicates a lot of. The sound I presume is substantially improved?

THe live material on teh box, is Lester Young on that stuff too? Are these performances considered to be among the better live stuff or is it just box filler?

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I just received this and not being acquainted as I'd like to be, I can't comment on the sound versus other reissues, except sound has to be better because obviously Columbia has the masters. However, the book (and it's pretty thick) is tremendous, with detailed analysis. To me, that's worth a lot. Obviously, this is not the end all or be all since it's only a snapshot of a portion of his Columbia work but it's a worthy pickup, nonetheless.

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Found this in the mailbox when I got home late last night--just enough time to skim some of disc 4 before bed & work again this morning. In case there was any confusion regarding the source of recordings of Disc 4, not all of them are from the Famous Door. And three of the cuts are the live airchecks with Billie Holiday that have come out several times before (most recently on the 10-CD LADY DAY box).

This looks like a beautiful set, and I'm really looking forward to spending some time with it after my radio program tonight!

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