Most of Mel's recordings have come out on CD, but not these! In fact, most of these (recorded in London while he was on tour in the UK) were never issued at all in the U.S.: Limehouse Blues; Time Was; Hooray for Love; Let There Be Love; These Foolish Things; Danny Boy; Greensleeves, and more. The twenty tracks on this CD sound as fresh now as it was when it was first created over fifty years ago and serve as a wonderful tribute to the great musicians and singer who recorded them.

After the ballad-heavy In the Wee Small Hours, Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle returned to up-tempo, swing material with Songs for Swingin' Lovers!, arguably the vocalist's greatest swing set. Like Sinatra's previous Capitol albums, Songs for Swingin' Lovers! consists of reinterpreted pop standards, ranging from the ten-year-old "You Make Me Feel So Young" to the 20-year-old "Pennies From Heaven" and "I've Got You Under My Skin." Sinatra is supremely confident throughout the album, singing with authority and joy…

In the '50s, the party line among New York jazz critics was that hard bop was the "true faith" and that cool jazz was lightweight and unemotional. But Miles Davis knew better. The trumpeter (whose Birth of the Cool sessions of 1949-1950 proved to be incredibly influential) was smart enough to realize that cool jazz and hard bop were equally valid parts of the house that Charlie Parker built, and he had no problem working with cool jazzmen one minute and hard boppers the next. Recorded for Charles Mingus' Debut label in 1955, Blue Moods is an excellent example of cool jazz. However, not all of the musicians who join Davis on this album were full-time members of jazz's cool school.

This Audiophile CD release is comprised of 22 brief performances (generally 2-2 1/2 minutes apiece) that were originally recorded as radio transcriptions (rather than commercial records). Altoist Gene Quill and tenorman Al Cohn (one of the main arrangers) are the main soloists on the big-band selections while Lawrence (on piano) is also featured in a sextet with guitarist Mary Osborne and Tyree Glenn (who doubles on trombone and vibes)…

Recorded in 1957, Ella & Louis Again re-teams Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong after the success of their first album and a popular series of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl the previous year. Stylistically, Fitzgerald and Armstrong had very different histories; he started out in Dixieland before branching out into classic jazz and swing, whereas Fitzgerald started out as a swing-oriented big-band vocalist before becoming an expert bebopper…

Study in Brown features the 1955 version of the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet, a group also including tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Richie Powell, and bassist George Morrow. One of the premiere early hard bop units, this band had unlimited potential. Highlights of this set are "Cherokee" (during which trumpeter Brown is brilliant), "Swingin'," and "Sandu." All of this group's recordings are well worth acquiring.

Dave Brubeck's defining masterpiece, Time Out is one of the most rhythmically innovative albums in jazz history, the first to consciously explore time signatures outside of the standard 4/4 beat or 3/4 waltz time. It was a risky move – Brubeck's record company wasn't keen on releasing such an arty project, and many critics initially roasted him for tampering with jazz's rhythmic foundation…

A collection of five great albums: "Milestones", "Sketches On Standards", "Kenton Classics", "Portraits on Standards", "Rendezvous with Kenton".
There have been few jazz musicians as consistently controversial as Stan Kenton. Dismissed by purists of various genres while loved by many others, Kenton ranks up there with Chet Baker and Sun Ra as jazz's top cult figure. He led a succession of highly original bands that often emphasized emotion, power, and advanced harmonies over swing, and this upset listeners who felt that all big bands should aim to sound like Count Basie. Kenton always had a different vision.

This most unusual Duke Ellington record includes two selections featuring nine symphonic percussionists on timpani, vibes, marimbas, and xylophones. Dizzy Gillespie makes a historic appearance with Ellington's orchestra on "U.M.M.G."…

Emerging as a great pop vocal stylist in 1954, Nat King Cole enjoyed a string of hit singles and albums thereon, but Unforgettable is perhaps the singer at his early peak. With romance as the watchword, Cole slides through some of his most familiar ballads, include the title selection, "Portrait of Jennie," "Mona Lisa," and "I Love You (For Sentimental Reasons)." There are quite a few lesser known, but attractive songs, plus a small handful of standards ("What'll I Do?" is a keeper) that round out this interesting collection. The very artistic, near surreal three-dimensional white, charcoal black, and royal blue-hued front cover may be the best part of this reissue, as it reflects a time period defined by its simplicity and yet its increasingly technological, superimposed modernity.

One of the more notorious albums in the history of vocal music, What a Diff'rence a Day Makes! is the lush session that bumped up Dinah Washington from the "Queen of the Blues" to a middle-of-the-road vocal wondress – and subsequently disenfranchised quite a few jazz purists…

Chet Baker - In New York (1958) {OJC Remasters Complete Series rel 2011, item 8of33}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 308 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 123 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 328 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24-bit remaster
© 1958, 2011 Riverside / Concord | 0888072328433
Jazz / Cool / West Coast Jazz / Trumpet

An extension of the popular Original Jazz Classics series (est. 1982), the new OJC Remasters releases reveal the sonic benefits of 24-bit remastering-a technology that didn't exist when these titles were originally issued on compact disc. The addition of newly-written liner notes further enhances the illuminating quality of the OJC Remasters reissues. "Each of the recordings in this series is an all-time jazz classic," says Nick Phillips, Vice President of Jazz and Catalog A&R at Concord Music Group and producer of the series.

Charlie Parker - Retrospective 1940-1953 (2005) {3CDs Set Saga}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 724 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 599 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 370 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1940-53, 2005 Saga Jazz | 982 765-6
Jazz / Bebop / Classic Big Band / Swing / Bop / Saxopohone

Excellent French three CD compilation from the Jazz legend. This is a set that any self-respecting Jazz fans will want to own. They may already have all of these recordings on other releases, but never have they been put together before in such luxurious packaging. Of all the Parker sets on the market, this is definitely one to be put at the top of the list. Disc One features 24 tracks spanning the years 1940-47. Disc Two also features 24 tracks that cover the 1947-51 time period. Disc Three contains an additional 14 tracks that were recorded between the years 1947 and 1953. Includes tracks recorded for the Decca, Savoy, Dial, Comet, Musicraft and Guild labels. Also included in this package is a beautifully illustrated 80 page plus booklet with tons of archival photos. 62 tracks total. Saga Jazz.

One of the reasons that some major labels love to license big chunks of their catalogs to smaller independent outfits for box set reissues is that they never know that those licensees will turn up in putting those sets together, and it all becomes fair game for the parent company. Thus, in 1994, a year after Mosaic unearthed five previously unissued tracks from the October 1957 sessions that yielded The Atomic Mr. Basie on Roulette, Capitol Records (which had acquired the Roulette library) issued this expanded version of the original album. The original 11 songs are here, remastered into proper mono (there was an impossible to listen to duophonic stereo master made at the time of release that was in circulation on LP for a time), along with five outtakes consisting of material written and arranged by Jimmy Mundy…

One of the staples in the Count Basie discography, April in Paris is one of those rare albums that makes its mark as an almost instant classic in the jazz pantheon. April in Paris represents the reassembly of the original Count Basie orchestra that define swing in the 1930s and 1940…