Fare Thee Well

Benny Morton didn't make very many recordings as a leader. What you've got here are apparently all of them. The 1934 band contained several musicians who had worked in Don Redman's orchestra. "Fare Thee Well to Harlem" is one of many preposterous Tin Pan Alley songs depicting a "negro" who yearns to go back to the noble South, in this case because of the questionable assumption that down there people go to church instead of hanging out in bars. Note that Duke Ellington always insisted there were more churches than nightclubs in Harlem. Ellington gave the world the diametric opposite of this song when in 1941 he composed "Jump For Joy," that ode to emancipation with its opening lyric: "Fare thee well, land of cotton, fare thee well"…

This magnificent three-disc set has the first 63 recordings by Count Basie's Orchestra, all of his Deccas. The consistency is remarkable (with not more than two or three turkeys) and the music is the epitome of swing. With such soloists as Lester Young and Herschel Evans on tenors, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, the great blues singer Jimmy Rushing, and that brilliant rhythm section of Basie, guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones, the music is timeless.

Count Basie - Complete Original American Decca Recordings (1937-1939) [3CD Set] {2000 Disconforme 24-bit Remaster}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 514 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 400 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 54 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2000 Disconforme / Definitive Records | DRCD 11173
Jazz / Big Band / Swing

All the tunes recorded by this legendary label. Each volume represents one year's recording activity: 1937, 1938 and 1939. Featuring Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Jo Jones, among others. Newly remastered. I don't have much to say about this compilation. Hey, it's Count Basie from the late 1930s! What more need be said?! Just listen to the "skeletal" piano by the genius Count Basie. Talk about the use of white space! And, of course, that absolutely KILLER rhythm section! I will mention that all of the tracks are presented in the sequence they were recorded except for the alternate takes which are at the end of each disc respectively. Presumably, the alts presented here were recorded at the same time as the masters (as implied, though not overtly stated, in the booklet).

This magnificent three-disc set has the first 63 recordings by Count Basie's Orchestra, all of his Deccas. The consistency is remarkable (with not more than two or three turkeys) and the music is the epitome of swing. With such soloists as Lester Young and Herschel Evans on tenors, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, the great blues singer Jimmy Rushing, and that brilliant rhythm section of Basie, guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones, the music is timeless. It's all here: "One O'Clock Jump," "Sent for You Yesterday," "Blue and Sentimental," "Jumpin' at the Woodside," "Jive at Five," and many others. This is the first Count Basie collection to acquire and should be in every jazz collection.

Sometimes people assume progressive rock should be ever-changing, always experimental and constantly ground-breaking. But sometimes, when you’re lying in your bed with a book to read and a cup of tea, and when you’re not in the mood for listening to a 25-minute experimental avant-garde prog-jazz opus, you look for familiarity and simplicity. Berlin-based prog-folk outfit Favni, formerly known as “Fauns”, achieves exactly this intimacy with their newest album Windswept…