Classic Vanguard Small Group Swing Sessions Limited Edition Box Set (#280 – 7 CDs)

[romualdo]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

Who are the tenor players in this set, and how often are they in there?

Buddy Tate (28 tracks) has the lion's share followed by Sam Margolis (8 tracks ts & cl), Lucky Thompson (6 tracks), Coleman Hawkins (5 tracks), Frank Wess (4 tracks ts & fl), Frank Foster (4 tracks with Frank Wess)

also on alto we have

Earle Warren (12 tracks including 5 with Coleman Hawkins), Pete Brown (4 tracks), Ben Richardosn as/cl (7 tracks), Rudy Powell, as/cl (10 tracks)

BTW, the SQ is stunning - only listened to disc 1 so far & the opening bars of the first track just blew me away for audio quality

[JSngry]

Thanks!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I wish I were more of a vocal fan. I might pick this up for the instrumentals but I'm just not a fan of vocal Jazz so a lot of this box won't get onto my player very often.

[jazzbo]

I really enjoy the only vocals here, by Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. 

Seems the set is on back order for a few weeks, selling well I guess. I'm happy to see Mosaic in such a healthy stance the last two years.

[romualdo]

1 hour ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I wish I were more of a vocal fan. I might pick this up for the instrumentals but I'm just not a fan of vocal Jazz so a lot of this box won't get onto my player very often.

23 of the 85 tracks are Jimmy Rushing vocals whilst Joe Williams sings on 3 tracks

[JSngry]

Jimmy Rushing is fundamental.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I understand that Jimmy Rushing is an important figure in Jazz history but I just don't dig his singing. There are a lot of important singers and historic vocal recordings that I don't enjoy as much as instrumental Jazz. It doesn't mean they're bad, it just means that I don't think I'd ever find the time to play them.

The last Mosaic I bought with all vocals was the Charles Brown set. I don't think I ever played all of those CDs... & it's not like I don't have a few thousand other CDs to spin at any given moment. Only so much time in the day.

[king ubu]

Earle Warren is pretty great here! Quite rough, with an r&b'ish delivery.

[Dan Gould]

FWIW Earle Warren is all over the Schaap archive at Vandy:

 

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[Big Al]

Got my set and am enjoying it even more than I thought I would! Great stuff and I'm eager for the next volume!

[Lyin' Wolf]

Got a back in stock email from Mosaic today

[Stompin at the Savoy]

I'm fond of Jimmy Rushing but have to admit being underwhelmed by the first of the Rushing albums on this set - Going to Chicago.  The band, while all fine players, seems unfocused and unrehearsed.  They are playing mainly 12 bar blues and Walter Page often plays one note ostinato, four to the bar, for each chord.  I find this boring and surprising because Page played way better than this with Basie. Jo Jones also seems to be having a bad day and plays in an old fashioned way, with bass drum on the beat like Krupa. Rushing brings back some of his hits from his time with Basie, but performs them less well than on Basie records.  I can't figure out what happened here but this album is unlikely to get a lot of play.  I'm about to listen to the rest of the Rushing material on here but not optimistic. 

Nevertheless I really do like the rest of the set and am happy to have it.

[jazzbo]

We're all different but I've always enjoyed this material, and it sounds probably best of all here than on earlier issues I have.

It's NOT the Basie band with Rushing, it's Rushing, singing the blues, not intended (I think) to be a jazz album but Jimmy singing the blues, and the band is behind that notion, solidly.

[Stompin at the Savoy]

1 minute ago, jazzbo said:

 

It's NOT the Basie band with Rushing, it's Rushing, singing the blues, not intended (I think) to be a jazz album but Jimmy singing the blues, and the band is behind that notion, solidly.

Yeah, I agree with that.  It's meant to be a blues album, even though the band is a Basie alumni gathering.

[jazzbo]

16 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Yeah, I agree with that.  It's meant to be a blues album, even though the band is a Basie alumni gathering.

I bet Jimmy loved singing with those guys and they probably really dug playing with him. Or it might have been a producer's (good) idea.

 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

1 minute ago, jazzbo said:

I bet Jimmy loved singing with those guys and they probably really dug playing with him. Or it might have been a producer's (good) idea.

 

It's a bit of a surprise, coming after four disks of jazz, and certainly confounded my expectations.  I have to give it another listen after a bit and see what I think but it sounded sort of like Basie with the rhythm dumbed down to something more elemental.  Which felt like a loss to me.

[jazzbo]

Well, having been familiar with the material in this set for a couple of decades I have to imagine hard to have a similar reaction. I've collected Rushing on all the other labels as well, so have a strong sense of what a Rushing album would be. . . and they are consistent.

[Stompin at the Savoy]

46 minutes ago, jazzbo said:

Well, having been familiar with the material in this set for a couple of decades I have to imagine hard to have a similar reaction. I've collected Rushing on all the other labels as well, so have a strong sense of what a Rushing album would be. . . and they are consistent.

In his autobiography Basie said something to the effect that Rushing had been pigen-holed as a blues singer but he actually had a background in jazz and pop song or something like that.  So I was expecting more of a jazz bent here.

[JSngry]

Blues? Jazz? Rushing? There's a difference? Really?

[mikeweil]

Many labels liked to have blues singers backed by jazz players - there is this Brother John Sellers LP on Vanguard with Basie-ites in the band. Prestige/Bluesville made many, or Atlantic for their R & B sessions. No real borderline between jazz and blues and R & B.

Edited 22 hours ago by mikeweil

[medjuck]

Didn't Ivory Joe Hunter make a record with members of the Ellington band?  And did James Brown do something similar or am I hallucinating that? 

[jazzbo]

6 hours ago, mikeweil said:

Many labels liked to have blues singers backed by jazz players - there is this Brother John Sellers LP on Vanguard with Basie-ites in the band. Prestige/Bluesville made many, or Atlantic for their R & B sessions. No real borderline between jazz and blues and R & B.

Except that there often is a difference in the arrangement and execution.

[JSngry]

Same language, one with a lot of dialects.

[Big Beat Steve]

Don't have the set but about 80% of the Jimmy Rushing Vanguard material on vinyl and have been familiar with it for quite a few years from and after numerous listens, and agree with those who find it consistent, constantly enjoyable and "in keeping" with what Rushing did and liked to do (and did well). Some is bluesier, some is jazzier, but it "always is Jimmy Rushing above all". It's just so that Jimmy Rushing did both, and did it well (and something a bit more maintreamish here and there on Columbia later on but that's just another nuance of the same story IMO).

BTW, I find this ...
"...it sounded sort of like Basie with the rhythm dumbed down to something more elemental.  Which felt like a loss to me."....
isn't the right approach to that sort of music. It was never a matter of "dumbing down" but rather of trimming it down to the core, the essentials, the basics that were supposed to come to the fore for the occasion. Nothing wrong or lacking there, but - as said by others - just an example of the continuum between "canonized" jazz and R&B (or R&B-ish jazz or jazzish R&B).
(Overtones of other discussions/statements here on this forum? Yes, probably .... )
 

[JSngry]