Paul Wee

The year was 1947: World War II was over and there was music in the air, with Frank Sinatra making teenagers swoon. On other airways, primarily black radio stations, another, earthier music was being played which would become the foundation for what is now called rock & roll. Back then it was called the blues and rhythm & blues, and its voices had names like Wynonie Harris, Willie Dixon, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Among its musicians were Big Bill Broonzy, Hosea Sapp, and Thunder Smith. This CD is part of a series that chronicles the history of this music that was to have such an impact on rock & roll. This volume collects some of the great hits of 1947, when many baby boomers were born, who would go on to become the major supporters of the idiom…

Limited 29 disc (28 CDs + DVD) box. As a tribute to the one and only Dutch Blues legend Harry Muskee, 2016 will see the release of Alles Uit Grolloo. The box set contains all the original studio albums by Cuby + Blizzards plus the official live albums and all other projects of Muskee. Especially for this release the first albums are mastered in their mono versions. Even releases that have long been deleted, such as Kid Blue, Old Times Good Times, Forgotten Tapes, Afscheidsconcert and Red, White & Blue, are present here. Next to the 27 albums the box set contains a disc with rarities and a DVD with the Classic Albums documentary on the legendary "Groeten Uit Grollo" album.

The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records is a four-disc set, compiled and annotated by author Ashley Kahn who wrote the book of the same name being published concurrently with its release. Impulse's great run was between 1961 and 1976 – a period of 15 years that ushered in more changes in jazz than at any other point in the music's history. Impulse began recording in the last weeks of 1960, with Ray Charles, Kai Windig /J.J. Johnson, and Gil Evans. While Impulse experimented with 45s 33 1/3 EPs, cassettes, and reel to reel tapes later in its existence, it was–and this set focuses on– it was the music on its LPs (with distinct orange and black packaging in gatefold sleeves containing copious notes) that helped to set them apart.

If compiler Neil Slaven was an axe hero, he says he would favour a Danelectro Guitarlin, with its longhorn body, its lipstick pickups and coke-bottle machine head. Perhaps he d settle for the red Gretsch Duo-Jet Bo Diddley sported on his first album cover. That puts him out of step with most of the guitarists gathered on Deep Feeling. Albert King favoured the Flying V, Buddy Guy liked the metallic clatter of a Strat and Muddy Waters slashed his slide down a Telecaster neck. Semi-acoustics were the name of the game for the average blues guitarist. B.B. King and Little Milton took an early shine to the Gibson ES-335 (our cover star incidentally, in rare original watermelon cherry finish), although B s Lucille was actually a slimline 355…

Born 25th August, 1925 in Montreal, Canada, Oscar Emmanuel Peterson grew up in Little Burgundy, a predominantly black neighbourhood in greater Quebec. He took up piano and trumpet at age five, quickly becoming adept on both instruments. At seven he was diagnosed with tuberculosis which prevented him from playing the trumpet, he thus concentrated on the piano during this time, practising four to six hours a day. Studying under the Hungarian-born player Paul de Marky - himself a student of virtuoso Istvan Thoman - the young Oscar began learning classical piano but later switched to jazz styles, most notably 'boogie-woogie'. By 1961, with the piano-bass-drums line up now firmly established, the OPT performed a week's residency at The London House, a renowned jazz spot in Chicago. These performances were among the finest the new line-up ever gave, and were released on Verve as four separate albums; The Trio, Something Warm, The Sound Of The Trio and Put On A Happy Face, in '61 and early '62. The following year, Peterson's most commercially successful record Night Train (Verve, 1963), was released, another Trio masterpiece that due to its shorter track times, received considerable radio play.

On May 15, 1953, five of jazz's most influential musicians - Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Bud Powell - met at Massey Hall in Toronto for their first and only known recording as a quintet. Although only a small audience had the opportunity to experience this historic evening in person, it was captured on tape. The resulting album, The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall, became one of the genre's most important and acclaimed releases.