Georgie Fame - Survival: A Career Anthology 1963 - 2015 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) - 2.2 GB | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 935 MB
6:39:48 | Cool Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, Swing, Soul-Jazz, Smooth Jazz | Label: UMC
If you wish to judge a man by the company he keeps, then look no further than the Hall of Fame that is the listing above, a roll call of the good and the great musicians that enrich Fame's music. If the The Whole World's Shaking collection of Columbia recordings captured Fame the young R&B Mod God, then Survival signposts the later material which found Fame calling on a classic line-up of Brit and American jazzers. The public profile may not have been so high, but the music has grown all the richer. Two of the six CDs here cover the years 1991 to 2015 and feature top bands, Brit (notably with Guy Barker) and US, in full flow. Likewise, Fame's voice, if not as elastic as before, finds him able to narrate a lyric as few can (check out what he does with Fran Landesman's lyrics to ‘Eros Hotel’). It also finds him as the carrier of the flame: where once he was a young tyro, now he is putting listeners in touch with Mose Allison, Ray Charles and Ben Sidran, keeping the heritage live with songs like ‘Mose Knows’ and ‘Flamingo All Nighter’. There's a wadge of unreleased material, with the most notable plums appearing on the fourth disc, a whole unreleased live at the Lyceum set featuring an incandescent Alan Skidmore. Throw in an intelligent interview with Paolo Hewitt and handsome packaging and your Fame collection should now be complete.