Five Keys The Five Keys Collection 1951 58 (2020)

Trumpeter Miles Davis was without doubt one of the most important and influential jazz musicians of the post-war era, not only as a pioneer of the bebop movement but through being at the forefront of many stylistic and musical innovations over the years. His landmark debut album for Capitol “The Birth Of The Cool”, recorded during 1949 and 1950, became regarded as seminal in the history of cool jazz, exploring unusual harmonies and textures. This excellent-value 49-track 2-CD set comprises his studio recordings in small ensembles, in which he is the only trumpeter, from his studio debut in 1945 through to the end of 1948, just weeks before the first of the “Birth Of The Cool” sessions in January 1949.

Chubby Checker, proved to be the single most successful component of the Cameo Parkway artist roster. Beyond “The Twist” and “Let’s Twist Again,” he scored numerous successes, most of which were keyed to dance moves and good times. He recorded numerous dance floor fillers and secured impressive chart successes. Twenty-one of Checker’s recordings are featured in the forthcoming Dancin’ Party: The Chubby Checker Collection: 1960 – 1966. This definitive collection highlights seventeen Top 40 hits of which twelve entered the Top 20; seven charted in the Top 10 with two ultimately reaching the #1 spot.

Anybody who has followed Jack White's online screeds and offstage brawls knows that the White Stripes' mastermind can tend to get a little, well, defensive when he's challenged (and sometimes even when he's not), but this trait hasn't always surfaced on record – at least not in the way he and his merry band of Raconteurs do on their second album, Consolers of the Lonely. At the very least, this bubbling blend of bizarro blues, rustic progressive rock, fractured pop, and bludgeoning guitars is a finger in the eye to anyone who dared call the band a mere power pop trifle, proof that the Raconteurs are a rock & roll band, but it's not just the sound of the record that's defiant. There's the very nature of the album's release: how it was announced to the world a week before its release when it then appeared in all formats in all retail outfits simultaneously; there's the obstinately olde-fashioned look of the art work, how the group is decked out like minstrels at a turn-of-the century carnival, or at least out of Dylan's Masked and Anonymous.

This is a great compilation of group harmony (a.k.a. doo wop) vocal performances, mostly from the 1950s. Some of these tracks circulate widely on holiday compilations, but others are very rare. In my collection, for example, this release is my only source for the tracks by the Shantons, the Golden Gate Quartet, the Larks, and Sir Jablonski.

One of the most important figures in all of jazz and one who both witnessed and contributed to the genre's development through the bop age, Lionel Hampton was revered as a skilled and creative musician, as an exceptional composer and as a charismatic and exemplary bandleader. He was the first player to showcase the vibraphone as a leading instrument, and was a talented pianist, drummer and singer too. During his career, Hampton worked alongside numerous other jazz greats including Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones - among others - both as a sideman and as leader. Hampton provided opportunities to those who he saw as the upcoming generation of musicians and his keen ear in this regard helped the careers of many future legends. During the 1950s in particular, Hampton and his groups produced some of their finest and most challenging work and it is from this era that the contents of this compilation are drawn. Although not again reaching the same peak as he had done in his glory years, Lionel Hampton remained active for much of the rest of his life, receiving numerous accolades in the process. Among these was being named an American Goodwill Ambassador by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in '57, he was also awarded a National Medal Of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1996.