Coleman Hawkins Perdido

Chest of 10 CDs, an essential guide to delve into 'pre-bebop jazz': there are all of them: from the first 'dixieland' bands, including Bessie Smith, Fats Waller, Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver , Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, Sidney Bechet, Art Tatum, Louis Prima, Benny Goodman, Django Reinhardt, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Glenn Miller Charlie Christian…

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.

Back in 1940, Keynote Recordings Inc. was a new, small and independent New York company with offices at 522 Fifth Ave., recently founded by Eric Bernay, the owner of a midtown Manhattan record store called The Music Room. Bernay was musically openminded and, looking for a place in the increasingly convulsed American record industry, he launched a catalog of varied music and performers.

A collection of hits from the times of World War II 1939-1945. Includes legendary performers - Glenn Miller, Oscar Peterson, Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters, Vera Lynn, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Coleman Hawkins, George Formby, Nat King Cole, Gracie Fields …

This set contains some of the hottest JATP sessions from 1944 through 1953.
J.J.Johnson, Shorty Sherock, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Killan, Buck Clayton, Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Harry 'Sweets' Edison, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Coleman Hawkins and Gene Krupa.