Stompin at the Savoy

You've had me grinning here at the way you use "anecdotal evidence" as a fig leaf for "personal opinion".😃

I agreed with most of what you said until the above. By the way I like you and think you have interesting things to say. But I hope you will consider the kinds of unsupported generalizations you are making. We live in an age of disinformation and misinformation. Be careful about what you really know and don't know and then you won't add to the mess.

In other words you have no idea what the actual statistics might be and are blowing smoke. In this situation anecdotal evidence is no evidence. I don't know either but at least I don't make unsupported claims about it.

In other words, you have zero evidence and are guessing.

How do you know that?

Very nice live Dexter!

I liked him and was especially fond of Don Martin.

To the late 50's albums I would add Jazz in Silhouette from '58

I keep going back to this set.

And here are the jazz piano clips:

Here are the clips in a spotify playlist: Some good stuff in there.

I understand your point there about the immediate outlay and I don't know what the jazz buying public wants or needs; possibly you are correct about the business prospects for large box sets. The flip side of your observation - that buying a bunch of disks at once is a problem - is that some of us actually really like getting big, coherent chunks of work all at once. Recently I got interested in Chu Berry and ended up getting the Mosaic. To me this is very good when I think of all the gyrations I would have to go through to hear all this material otherwise, with varying quality masterings. You may be correct that there is an age factor at play here. Younger people are used to buying single tunes as downloads. Their music buying habits are the opposite of us geriatric hippie jazz collecting types?

Actually they are not all that pricey. When I first started getting them I think they were something like $15 per disk and more recently it has been something like $17 per disk. Which is less than the $20 single reissues you mentioned earlier. If you buy a bunch of those, it actually costs more than a Mosaic box. It really depends on how you feel about large sets, complete xyz, etc.

I'm 70. I started buying the sets around '95 or so. I used to love reading the lavish Mosaic pamphlets and I would order by phone. Over the years I picked up quite a few of the boxes new. The last several years I started buying up sets I missed when they came out from ebay, discogs, etc. I enjoy the whole esthetic of the boxes, their distinctive look, the large format booklets, the exacting discography and research. They have introduced me to a lot of swing, big band, west coast and other jazz. I've particularly loved the Basie sets and in a way the Basie interest has reoriented a lot of my jazz listening. I like the fact that Mosaic sets are quirky and unique. I also own and enjoy plenty of single disc issues and other styles of box set. In my view there is and should be plenty of space for different types and styles of publishing for jazz music and music in general.

Something Larry Kart said in another thread made me want to go back and listen to all these Dream Band recordings again. Mel Lewis!

Enjoying the show!

I haven't actually listened to the 5 minute presentation but from my point of view anything that promotes jazz listening is good. Far be it from me to quibble about the choice of excerpts, etc. If the NYT is going to promote jazz I like it. I even swallowed my reservations when Ken Burns did his thing on jazz. OK I hated it but it was promoting jazz, so you know, good, I guess... edit: OK I listened to the excerpts, which were mostly 29 second sound clips. Um, good, I guess? I mean they had people like Andrew Hill and Ahmad Jamal. I don't think those clips will make you love jazz. But in this case any publicity is good publicity.

Sometimes his stuff can seem arranged and mannered. But there are some nice, in the pocket, swinging things in there so I like it.

Checking it out. Nice flugelhorn you've got there.