Fast Charlie

Music Club has done it again with this amazing retrospective of blues guitarist and harmonicat Charlie Musselwhite. The Mississippi-born, Memphis-raised, and Chicago-trained bluesman has issued so many strong recordings it's a wonder that this isn't a box set. But if you have to boil it down to a single disc for a budget price, this is the one to have without question. Contained within its 20 selections are tracks from his two 1970s Arhoolie albums, Takin' My Time and Goin' Back Down South, from 1971 and 1974, respectively; The Harmonica According to Charlie Musselwhite, issued first on Kicking Mule and later on Blind Pig in 1978 and 1994, respectively; and finally from his Alligator albums, Ace of Harps (1990 and a Grammy winner), Signature (1992 and Grammy nominated), and In My Time (1994, also Grammy nominated).

These recordings came about because the directors of Club Francais du Livre decided to go into the record business. Their plan was to record the top French musicians of the time, each session having an American visiting guest star. One suspects that the documentation of each session was sketchy, for instance there is an unlisted Bass player on the Buck Clayton set and there are other similar anomalies. This in no way detracts from the music, the Buck Clayton session is a classic of the great and often underrated Mainstream Trumpet Man. Michelle de Villiers acquits himself very well on both Tenor and Baritone and the rhythm section is clean and swinging. Andre Persiany is a class act on keyboards and it sounds like a session where everyone was enjoying themselves…

After dramatically altering the course of human evolution by making dozens of hot records with the John Kirby Sextet, Charlie Shavers went to work for Harry Lim's amazing Keynote label. The music made on June 8, 1944, is typical of the no-nonsense jam atmosphere that usually prevailed at Keynote. Fronting with Jonah Jones and Budd Johnson, and wonderfully supported by Johnny Guarnieri, Milt Hinton, and J.C. Heard, Shavers sautés his way through each four-minute performance. Edgar Sampson's "Blue Lou" is particularly spicy with its interplay between Hinton and Heard. "I Found a New Baby" is the hottest of all. A V-Disc jam tosses Shavers into the midst of a group of individuals from different stylistic backgrounds…

The Jazz Club series is an attractive addition to the Verve catalogue. With its modern design and popular choice of repertoire, the Jazz Club is not only opened for Jazz fans, but for everyone that loves good music. This collection by the Jazz great features 18 tracks including 'Laird Baird', 'Now's The Time', 'I've Got You Under My Skin' and more.
One of a handful of musicians who can be said to have permanently changed jazz, Charlie Parker was arguably the greatest saxophonist of all time. He could play remarkably fast lines that, if slowed down to half speed, would reveal that every note made sense. "Bird," along with his contemporaries Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell, is considered a founder of bebop; in reality he was an intuitive player who simply was expressing himself…