Braden King

This is an attractive eight-CD set, whose discs are also available as eight separate releases, that could have been a great reissue but settled for being merely quite good. To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the first jazz recording, RCA released a disc apiece covering each of the past eight decades. In listening to the music straight through, one becomes aware of RCA's strengths and weaknesses as a jazz label.

Highly accomplished English pianist, composer and arranger who shined from the 1930s through to the '80s.
Although the third finger of his right hand was amputated following a playtime accident as a child, McGuffie persevered with his music studies, and at the age of 11 was awarded the Victoria Medal for his piano proficiency by the Victoria College, Glasgow. A year later he made his first broadcast on Childrens’ Hour, and at the age of 14 was playing regularly with the BBC Scottish Variety Orchestra. For a while he studied to be a naval architect, before moving to Ayr to join the Miff Hobson Orchestra. Early in 1944, he moved to London and played with Teddy Foster at the Lyceum, and then spent four years with Joe Loss, before joining Maurice Winnick and Sidney Lipton…