Stompin at the Savoy

A high school friend introduced me to Gordon Lightfoot around '69 and I had the first album. I was trying to learn to play folk guitar and I remember being very perplexed by the guitar playing on the record. After a while I realized he was playing a 12 string and there were multiple guitars!

I dunno, but it seems like you are missing something about the basic nature of Mosaic. This started as deep dives into big label vaults, restoring old discs, tapes, etc., reissuing important music that had become unavailable, and issuing iconic stuff that for one reason or another was never published. If some label was publishing Baroque music for decades would you tell them stop with all the ancient stuff and publish the modern performances I want? Part of the reason Mosaic is not handling more recent stuff is newer music is well engineered and digitally recorded - it doesn't require discovery and restoration, which is what this label is all about.

Wait, what? Count Basie, Lester Young, Herschel Evans, etc in 1938 is not good enough for you?

I don't want to believe that and there are lots of people still making good jazz music at present but it is difficult to deny that the glory days of jazz as a popular music and as a dance music appear to be over. Nevertheless it may be mostly gone but not forgotten: pop, rock, and blues music continue to revive elements of jazz.

I like reviews. A well done review is helpful even after you own the record sometimes, by pointing out interesting things about the recording or giving background info, identifying soloists, mentioning related recordings, exploring technical or harmonic details etc etc.

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!