Blues 1927 1946

In 2005 the Classics Chronological Series, in a continuous effort to reissue the complete recordings of boogie-woogie piano ace Meade "Lux" Lewis, released a fourth volume containing material dating from between 1946 and 1954. Opening with a solo Lewis set recorded by Norman Granz for the Mercury label at a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert inside of the Embassy Auditorium in Los Angeles on April 22, 1946, this delightful album also features the work of bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Louie Bellson. These are some of Lewis' very best recordings; the tonal palette is richly varied as he pays homage to his influences and contemporaries in the pantheon of classic blues and boogie-woogie piano. They include Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, Cow Cow Davenport, Jimmy Yancey, Clarence Pinetop Smith, Hersal Thomas, and Freddie Shayne.

The archive contains of 3179 tracks from 1899 until 1956 on 168 CDs and 2 books with 180 pages of artist biographies each. High-End mastered at 24-bit and 96 kHz.
The Archive is split into 42 Sets x 4xCD. Each CD is untitled and dedicated to one musician, who mostly appears in different collaborations.

The archive contains of 3179 tracks from 1899 until 1956 on 168 CDs and 2 books with 180 pages of artist biographies each. High-End mastered at 24-bit and 96 kHz.
The Archive is split into 42 Sets x 4xCD. Each CD is untitled and dedicated to one musician, who mostly appears in different collaborations.

This is how traditional Chicago-style jazz sounded in New York during the mid-1940s. When he wasn't brusquely emceeing these bands on-stage at Town Hall, guitarist and organizer Eddie Condon presented this music on the air and in the recording studio. The phonographic evidence, chronologically arranged and carefully documented, makes for enjoyable listening. Three V-Disc sides for the armed forces have Hot Lips Page lined up next to Sterling Bose, Miff Mole and Pee Wee Russell. This interesting blend of musicians from radically different social and ethnic backgrounds is typical of Condon. Lips sings on a nearly four-and-a-half-minute version of the "Uncle Sam Blues," a wry ode to military conscription…

This 24-CD box, which dwarfs even most Bear Family sets in scope, is essentially everything Ellington cut for RCA-Victor over a 46-year period. There are gaps, especially after 1946 when he jumped to Columbia, but otherwise, this is all of it. One quickly discovers that, by virtue of its leader's taste, combined with the good sense of RCA-Victor's recording managers, this was a band that did little, if any, wrong on record…

To say that Benny Carter had a remarkable and productive career would be an extreme understatement. As an altoist, arranger, composer, bandleader, and occasional trumpeter, Carter was at the top of his field since at least 1928, and in the late '90s, Carter was as strong an altoist at the age of 90 as he was in 1936 (when he was merely 28). His gradually evolving style did not change much through the decades, but neither did it become at all stale or predictable except in its excellence. Benny Carter was a major figure in every decade of the 20th century since the 1920s, and his consistency and longevity were unprecedented…

General critical consensus holds Mahalia Jackson as the greatest gospel singer ever to live; a major crossover success whose popularity extended across racial divides, she was gospel's first superstar, and even decades after her death remains, for many listeners, a defining symbol of the music's transcendent power.

This 10-CD set is as good a compendium of the genius of Louis Armstrong as anyone could wish for. It’s all here: the early years with the King Oliver and Fletcher Henderson bands, the glorious period of the Hot Fives and Sevens, the big band recordings of the Thirties, the collaborations with contemporaries such as Ella Fitzgerald. Then there are the later recordings, when Satchmo’s celebrity empowered him to soar over many political and racial divides. There’s also a fascinating unreleased Hollywood Bowl concert from 1956, a CD of “out-takes” from recording sessions, and a revealing interview with Dan Morgenstern.

Dancer, actor, and singer Fred Astaire worked steadily in various entertainment media during nine decades of the 20th century. The most celebrated dancer in the history of film, with appearances in 31 movie musicals between 1933 and 1968 (and a special Academy Award in recognition of his accomplishments in them), Astaire also danced on-stage and on television (garnering two Emmy Awards in the process), and he even treated listening audiences to his accomplished tap dancing on records and on his own radio series. He appeared in another eight non-musical feature films and on numerous television programs, resulting in an Academy Award nomination and a third Emmy Award as an actor. His light tenor voice and smooth, conversational phrasing made him an ideal interpreter for the major songwriters of his era, and he introduced dozens of pop standards, many of them written expressly for him, by such composers as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Arthur Schwartz, Harry Warren, and Vincent Youmans.