Vic Dickenson

Coleman Hawkins - All Stars (1960) {Swingville Prestige OJCCD-225-2 rel 1996}
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© 1960, 1996 Swingville Prestige / Fantasy | OJCCD-225-2
Jazz / Bop / Mainstream Jazz / Swing / Saxophone

Not the sprawling session you'd usually get from a record with "all stars" in the title, and instead a tight small group record that features Coleman Hawkins at his later best! The setting is an outwardly trad one – recorded for the Swingville label with Joe Thomas on trumpet and Vic Dickenson on trombone – but there's a decidedly modern feel to the way that Hawk opens up the tunes – that undercurrent of darkness in his best later work, accented nicely by a hip rhythm trio that features Tommy Flanagan on piano, Wendell Marshall on bass, and Osie Johnson on drums.

Taken from his last major tour of the United States, this live session teams the passionate soprano with the subtle wit of trombonist Vic Dickenson and a fine rhythm section including George Wein on piano. This set may contain only familiar standards, but the general enthusiasm and the interplay between Bechet and Dickenson makes the music enjoyable and well worth hearing.

Billie Holiday - The Complete Commodore Recordings, 1939-1944 (1997) {2CD Set GRP Records CMD 24012}
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© 1939-44, 1997 Commodore / GRP Records | CMD 24012
Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Swing / Classic Female Blues / Traditional Pop

Throughout these sessions, a window into Billie Holiday's creative process is provided by the inclusion of alternate takes. Many of them are rare, although all have previously been issued on one or another of the labels that have interacted with Commodore over the years. As alternates for records on other labels also reveal, once Billie conceptualized her approach to a song, she seldom varied the basic template. She seemed to decide the best way to organize the expressive gifts at her disposal and "photograph" in her mind a musical image of how she would do the number. Once that image was in place, subsequent versions for the most part differed only in matters of nuance or animation.