WOODY HERMAN The Complete Columbia Recordings Of Woody Herman And His Orchestra & Woodchoppers (Extremely rare & limited 2004 US 141-track Mosaic audiophile 7-CD box set, including many alternate and unissued takes, entirely comprehensive of Woody's fabulous output for Columbia. Housed in a beautifully presented textured outer black box with front pasted picture cover, complete with four credit/tracklisting picture booklets plus an informative 32-page LP sized booklet, featuring stunning black & white session photographs and extensive liner notes. Woody Herman’s bands had it all in the years documented here: hit vocal tunes, top-rated national radio show, star instrumental soloists, new instrumental sounds hailed by jazz critics and fans alike, adventurous arrangements, female singers with sex appeal and a level of musicianship marking them as among the best large ensembles in jazz history.
SoulMusic Records is very proud to present “Sacred Kind Of Love: The Columbia Recordings,” a 5-disc deluxe box set of six stellar albums, spanning nine years (1987-1996) by legendary saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr., justifiably considered an influential pioneer in fusing jazz, soul, R&B and pop and bringing his distinctive sound to mainstream audiences globally.
With Another Side of Bob Dylan, Dylan had begun pushing past folk, and with Bringing It All Back Home, he exploded the boundaries, producing an album of boundless imagination and skill. And it's not just that he went electric, either, rocking hard on "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Maggie's Farm," and "Outlaw Blues"; it's that he's exploding with imagination throughout the record…
Aretha Franklin has simply been one of the greatest singers of the modern generation, and whether bringing her powerful, passionate voice to bear on gospel standards, songs from the Great American Songbook, jazz standards, pop ditties, or deep Southern soul and R&B, she has always had the presence – much like Ray Charles – to make anything she touches unmistakably hers. Franklin began her career in gospel when she was still a teenager, and her amazing vocal talents, coupled with her fine piano playing, marked her as a once-in-a-lifetime kind of artist, qualities very apparent to legendary talent scout John Hammond, who signed her to Columbia Records.
THE COMPLETE BITCHES BREW SESSIONS won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Boxed Recording Package. Released in 1970, BITCHES BREW undeniably changed the shape of jazz to come. Fundamentalists groan that it diluted the form, bringing on the fusion plague and sowing the germs of smooth jazz. But a cross-section of adventurous listeners recognized it for the monumental sonic breakthrough it was: slabs of free jazz mixed with hard-funk rhythms, rock's electric textures and a meditative blues spirit, with the studio used as the editing desk to tie these elements together.
Biograph is a 53-track compilation spanning the career of Bob Dylan, from his 1962 debut album to the 1981 LP Shot of Love. It was released in 1985 by Columbia Records, one of the earliest and most successful examples of the CD Box Set. It reached #33 in the US and went platinum.
Thanks to the research that went into the box set The Complete Miles Davis/John Coltrane Sessions there's a the definitive Newport 1958 date that features the debut live performances to the Miles Davis Sextet's two newest members: drummer Jimmy Cobb and pianist Bill Evans. The gig was part of a festival tribute to Duke Ellington, but that didn't stop Davis from showing off – aggressively – what his new band was capable of (six months later he would show the world when the band went to record Kind of Blue). This is a revelatory performance for fans of Evans. When Cobb kicks off into Charlie Parker's "Au-Leu-Cha," the tempo is breakneck. Davis' solo is all fire, pure heat, and inspiration. The melody goes by in a blink, and Cobb and Chambers carry the dictum to go faster as Davis gives way first to Coltrane, already moving his angular lines to the harmonic breaking point and doing them not in scales but in modes, fast and footloose.