oscar peterson songbook

[fabsax]

http://www.amazon.fr/Complete-Songbooks-Os...-7842640#disc_1

anaybody has already heard of thisone?

take care

[Ted O'Reilly]

A look at the cover picture suggests Norgran/Clef/Verve ripoffs. It was a good period for Peterson material...

[Swinging Swede]

A couple of years ago Avid released a 10 CD box set called Songbooks Etcetera.

It included OP's ten 1951-54 Clef songbook albums, the majority of which saw their first CD release. The box set also included sideman and JATP material, but the main reason to buy it was to get the complete songbooks, which were:

Plays Cole Porter (Clef MGC 603)

Plays Irving Berlin (Clef MGC 604)

Plays George Gershwin (Clef MGC 605)

Plays Duke Ellington (Clef MGC 606)

Plays Jerome Kern (Clef MGC 623)

Plays Richard Rodgers (Clef MGC 624)

Plays Vincent Youmans (Clef MGC 625)

Plays Harry Warren (Clef MGC 648)

Plays Harold Arlen (Clef MGC 649)

Plays Jimmy McHugh (Clef MGC 650)

The first 5 CDs of the boxset were essentially twofers, with each CD containing two complete albums with the original track order of the albums.

This new United Archives releases has the same 10 albums, but also adds the later Plays Count Basie (Clef MGC 708) from December 1955 which was a quartet album with Buddy Rich added to the trio. Then as filler on the 6th and last CD they have the 10-incher Oscar Peterson Plays Pretty, which only was part of the 12-incher Pastel Moods, plus one track from Recital By Oscar Peterson. The filler material doesn't make much sense as far as completeness goes.

Looking at the track lists it also becomes apparent that unlike the Avid set which has the tracks in album order, the United Archives has them in chronological order within each album!

My educated guess is that United Archives has ripped all the songbooks from the Avid set. The rest (Basie etc.) has previously been out on CD, so it was most likely ripped too.

My recommendation would be to get the Avid set instead. They have done original work in transferring many of the songbooks to CD for the first time, and you also get the albums with their correct track order.

One last note: These early "songbooks" didn't actually have "songbook" or "song book" in the title, just Oscar Peterson Plays [insert composer's name]. When nine of the composers (all but Vincent Youmans for some reason) were rerecorded in stereo in 1959 with OP's new trio, which had drums instead of guitar, they were actually called "Song Book" in the title (Oscar Peterson Plays The Cole Porter Song Book etcetera).