crisp

Sadly, for Hip-o boxes that Amazon.de price *is* unbelievably great. Twice that is the norm. I've gone for it anyway.

The new editions of both the solo and group masterpieces are now for sale online. Amazon.it (a new one on me) has them for the cheapest: 22.04 euros for the solos and 19.01 euros for the group. I'm in the UK, so I've gone for Amazon.co.uk which has them both for £26.50 delivered. I'm really pleased -- I've wanted this music for years and never bought it because I could never find the old boxes at a good price (I missed that Zweitausens sale a few years ago). Be good to hear these sessions in full for the first time!

Well I agree with you there, John. I would imagine it's easier to do a show with a specific focus than one with a broad range, which is why I wish more people would attempt the former rather than making the latter the default. When he did the Radio 2 jazz show, Humphrey Lyttelton somehow made a catholic playlist work (probably because he actually knew something about jazz) but that ability is relatively rare. Ted O'Reilly's show sounds great.

That playlist posted above strikes me as perfectly fine for a radio show -- all mainstream jazz to be sure, but good quality just the same. The selection is not too obvious either. He could easily do a bland Cullum-esque show of Brubeck and Count Basie doing From Russia With Love plus a bit of electronica for "the kids", but he doesn't, and is more likely to draw new people into jazz as a result. If he dropped a bit of Anthony Braxton or even Jelly Roll Morton into the middle it would be jarring. Eclecticism is fine for a private collection, but not for radio IMO.

Perhaps it's a sound-quality issue. He might be a bit anal about only playing post-high fidelity discs on his show. For all we know he may have plenty of pre-Fifties music in his collection. I think it's a good idea to limit yourself to one kind of jazz on a radio show. Too often you'll get a "jazz" show that tries to cast its net wide and ends up unlistenable as a result. I had Jamie Cullum's execrable Radio 2 show on last night while doing the washing up and had to turn it off as it veered from Mel Torme to someone called Dosh, then to Lorez Alexandria and so on, back and forth, with Cullum boasting and displaying his ignorance in between. Each of those artists might be OK, but all mixed up together it's like having your starter, main course and dessert all at the same time.

Pretty bad sound on the RVG as I recall - fuzzy to say the least.

If "last man standing" HMV goes the way of Tower, Virgin and Zavvi, I suspect we might see a revival of the independent, specialist record shop. Big stores can't beat the web on prices, but a well-run indie could certainly outdo the internet on knowledge, stock and overall service.

Actually, you may be right. These are all McCartney songs and he tends to lean on the wistful little-boy-lost sentiment when he sings his own ballads. Gene Puerling's arrangements dig much deeper. But it's not a competition. We have both versions.

Something Cool and Ballads for Night People by June Christy Black Coffee by Peggy Lee Intimate Ella by Ella Fitzgerald You might also want to look into Jeri Southern and Chris Connor.

Menuhin/Grappelli: Friends In Music (4 CDs) £4.99 at HMV.

Hm, I very much like Jobim as a songwriter, and he's OK as a guitarist and pianist, but I find his singing frustrating: not only does he not have the chops to do the material justice, he has many mannerisms (sniffing, gulping etc) that annoy me. In fact, I once returned a number of his albums (including the Riddle one, and I love Nelson Riddle) because of the vocals. But then most of the great songwriters couldn't sing -- Cole Porter, for example -- and Jobim was a great songwriter.

The problem with that is that the masters remain in the original copyright holder's vaults. There's no incentive to make them available to independents and, since the market is glutted with rips of 78s and LPs, no incentive on the part of Mosaic to seek access to them. Result: zillions of shoddy releases with the odd half-decent one lost among them. I think Christiern's solution is the best one, although it would potentially be a legal minefield. Even so, Bing Crosby's estate has found a way to bring out his latterday recordings, by licensing them to Mosaic and Collector's Choice, so it can be done.

I recalled that the British critic Benny Green hated the MJQ. Googling around brought up this little essay, not by him but quoting him and giving an impression of how the MJQ were received in their day. As far as I have been able to deduce, from his general behaviour as well as from his playing, Lewis believes jazz to be vulgar… [His] dream has been to purge jazz of all indecencies, all coarser overtones, all unfortunate rabelaisian gestures, which is certainly a thoroughly praise-worthy ambition, always provided that in cleansing her soul you do not make the same mistake as Othello and fracture her windpipe at the same time. There can be no argument that in a strictly limited sense, Lewis's bowdlerising campaign has flourished famously. No music by the Modern Jazz Quartet has even been tainted by even the faintest hint of vulgarity… In his attempts to distil the decorous essence, Lewis has refined jazz out of existence, which raises the question, vulgar in comparison to what? And once we find the answer it seems plain that Lewis is yet another victim of a common American cultural complaint, familiar enough in the arts generally but unprecedented in jazz. Lewis has caught a chronic case of Jamesian obsession with Europe

It's not unprecidented for Mosaic to release a vinyl edition of another label's CD release. Sony's Miles boxed sets were dealt with in this way. I imagine Universal thinks that a CD release would do well in the stores while a vinyl one would be better off in the specialist mail-order market. Agree with you about Hip-O's price/packaging, though.

I hate Collectables. It's long been a vortex of lousy remastering and tacky packaging into which much classic music disappears, never to be reissued by anyone else. Mosaic was put off doing a Dakota Staton set by Collectables bringing out its own slapdash releases. I'm hoping that this is a sign that that won't be a problem any more. Also, isn't this the first Mosaic release of WEA material since the Ellington Reprise set (#193)? And it's the first of Atlantic material since the Atlantic New Orleans Jazz Sessions (#179). That was one of the things that surprised me.

The Mosaic announcement only mentions LPs for the Getz set. Am I missing something? The CD edition is being released separately by Hip-O Select. See this thread.

The vinyl is official: http://www.mosaicrecords.com/genres.asp?dept=50 Stan Getz: The 1953-54 Morgran Studio Sessions (4 Audiophile LPs) (Release Date; May 2011) Even in a career as celebrated and prolific as Stan Getz's, there are pockets of neglected gems that dot the landscape. In the case of Getz, one of those overlooked areas is his 1953-54 Clef Norgan recordings with a working quintet that included valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyeer and pianist Johnny Williams (who later became film composer John Williams). The band recorded several excellent albums for Clef and Norgran during those years, but when Clef and Norgran were phased out and the material was recycled on Verve, the tracks from these recording sessions were scattered over many 12" LPs which combined them with other groups from other sessions and some were forgotten altogether. So the impact of the body of work that this group left behind was diluted by the manner in which it was re-released on Verve in the decades that followed. This Mosaic LP-only set returns to the original LP masters and sequence to restore clarity and shape to this exceptional quintet. When Brookmeyer left Getz to join Gerry Mulligan, legendary trumpeter Tony Fruscella replaced him in the final months of the band, long enough to record two extended tunes included here. Midway through the quintet's life, Getz recorded a little-known but superb quartet session with Jimmy Rowles, Bob Whitlock and Max Roach, the four sides of which were also released in splintered form throughout the hears. Now all of this material is gathered in one place on four 180-gram audiophile LPs with three previously unissued alternate takes and the 78 take of "Pot Luck", giving the music its full due and historical perspective.

This one took me by surprise: http://www.mosaicrecords.com/genres.asp?dept=50 It might seem odd that the prototypical bebop rhythm section from Dizzy Gillespie's '40s orchestra would morph into the pioneering chamber jazz group of the '50s. But the music created by Milt Jackson, John Lewis, Percy Heath and Connie Kay (replacing Kenny Clarke) collectively under the Modern Jazz Quartet moniker never strayed far from bop or the blues and much of their classical endeavors were influenced by Johann Sebastian Bach, whose intricate, sycopated music bore an uncanny resemblance to bebop. After two striking albums on Prestige, the quartet was snapped up in 1956 by Atlantic Records, an emerging major label (their forte was R & B) which was then returning to its jazz roots on a grand scale signing the likes of Charles Mingus, Jimmy Giuffre and the MJQ. One of the most popular and controversial groups of its time, the MJQ has faded from the forefront of jazz history in recent times. So Mosaic thought it was about time to pull together the seminal work that the band recorded for Atlatnic over the next years. They were prolific, releasing 14 albums (all of which are included on this 7-CD set) in just eight years. But these albums were more than just blowing sessions; they were well thought-out conceptual albums that required imagination, compositional time and hard work. They range from classic jazz albums by the foursome to collaborations with Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Giuffre and Laurindo Almeida to two ambitious third-stream projects to the masterful reinterpretation of Gershwin's "Porgy And Bess." Taken as a body of work, this set not only captures the creative peaks of this extraordinary group but also puts into focus its expansive scope.

I'm for the music staying in copyright to Universal. Putting it in the public domain just results in zillions of incoherently compiled cheapjack releases mastered from secondary sources. I'd rather have the music licensed and given a unique, top-quality release by a company such as Mosaic. Speaking of which, nobody mentioned this quote in the article: Michael Cuscuna, the jazz record producer and historian who runs Mosaic Records, a label specializing in jazz reissues, said of the Universal donation, “This is very crucial material for us, and we’ve been assured it will be an active archive that is not going to be tied up in bureaucracy, and that we and others will have access to it.” Sounds like Cuscuna will be investigating the archive for Mosaic sets before long.

My favourite noirish jazz track is Chocolate Shake by Freddie Hubbard on The Body and the Soul. I also think Soul Eyes on Coltrane and All Blues on Kind of Blue fit the bill.

Two new titles. Duke Ellington with Such Sweet Thunder, The Far East Suite and ...And His Mother Called Him Bill. Nina Simone with Sings the Blues, Emergency Ward and Baltimore.

I hope this is better than the device I had installed a couple of years ago. That eliminated Jarrett's piano playing and left the grunts and groans intact.

Thanks for the heads-up. Is this available online anywhere?

Amazon is selling this at 57% off: $14.99. I'm tempted, but have too much on the "to watch" pile as it is. Is the jazz content high?

'"Girls love guys who are into jazz," Bergkamp said. "Knowing about, like, Thelonious Monk makes you look all sophisticated and soulful.' That's the bit that made me laugh. Bitterly.