The various white lead guitar gods who began to garner so much critical press during the rock explosion of the late '60s owe more than a lot to Elmore James. While working as a radio repairman in the early '50s, James spent hours rewiring speakers and amplifiers so that they would deliver the kind of harsh and distorted sound he favored when he played electric guitar through them, and that act of rebuilding amps alone would have made him an unsung hero to rock guitarists everywhere a decade or so later, but James also happened to be a pretty damn good player himself, and there may well not be a more powerful and exciting sound on Earth than James' trademark "Dust My Broom" slide guitar riff, which bottled megawatts of power, energy, and passion into one swooping rush…
This Final Performance Tribute all began on Les Paul's 90th birthday when luminaries from the musical world gathered to celebrate at New York's historic Iridium Jazz Club. Les and friends 'jammed' every Monday for the next four years until the legend left us. Great moments from many of those cool sessions are presented in this tribute to the man who created a sonic boom with the solid-body electric guitar. It's all here…
Charlie Parker's historic Dial sessions have been reissued in a variety of ways over the years. This is especially true since the advent of the compact disc. These sessions not only capture Parker's alto brillance but highlight his interaction with such jazz stalwarts as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Max Roach, Erroll Garner, Howard McGhee and Dodo Marmarosa. This four-disc set is broken up into Hollywood Sessions 1: Moose the Mooche, Hollywood Sessions 2: Relaxin' at Camarillo, New York Sessions 1: Scrapple from the Apple, and New York Sessions 2: Drifting on a Reed. It's fortunate that these slices of jazz history are available allowing the listener to hear several takes of classics like "Moose the Mooch," "Relaxin at Camarillo," "Scrapple from the Apple," and "Ornithology" take shape. Sound quality on these Stash discs is good for the most part, fair but not great on others.