These are among the finest of all large ensemble jazz recordings of the past 50 years, and Gerald Wilson is a great big-band composer/arranger/leader, although he has not received enough credit for a couple of major reasons. He came to the fore after the end of the big band era, and his outfits did not tour. Hopefully, this five-CD set will refocus attention on his major accomplishments.
Sarah Vaughan recorded frequently during her three years with Roulette, and all 16 albums she completed for them plus five previously unissued tracks are included in this comprehensive eight-CD boxed set from Mosaic. The gifted singer is heard in a variety of settings, from superb small-group sessions to big-band settings and various dates bordering on easy listening; the sessions omitting the often syrupy string sections are the cream of this bumper crop.
For Loren Schoenberg of the Jazz Museum of Harlem, it's the discovery that capped nearly forty years of searching. For us at Mosaic, it's the "find" that has us re-examining an era we thought we knew inside out. And now, for listeners, it's an historic and fleeting opportunity to own a treasure trove of previously unknown music. Mosaic Records presents "The Savory Collection" - six CDs with 108 tracks locked away for more than 70 years and finally available on CD for the very first time anywhere. The recordings are from the personal collection of Bill Savory, a quirky and secretive studio engineer in New York whose day job in the late 1930s and early 1940s was transcribing radio broadcasts for foreign distribution, and whose nighttime passion was turning on the disc recorders to pull in and preserve what was happening in the clubs of New York City and other cities.
Under the watchful eye of famed producer Michael Cuscuna, this nine-CD set serves as a compilation of Stitt's 1950s and 1960s Roost LPs. This release also features a 28-page booklet consisting of comprehensively annotated liners. Moreover, the record label does its best to convey the artistic element via a series of black-and-white photos of Stitt and his sidemen amid anecdotes by many of the late saxophonist's affiliates. Interestingly enough, seven of the original LPs did not list personnel. In some instances, guesses were made, although most of these tracks are well-documented, thanks to the producer's diligence and painstaking research. Artists such as drummer Roy Haynes, bassist/composer Charles Mingus, and pianist Harold Maber represent but a few of Stitt's accompanists.
Onzy Matthews was an arranger and pianist who wrote for Lou Rawls, Esther Phillips, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington and others without achieving any fame. Matthews recorded 51 selections as a leader, all of which are on the three-CD Onzy Matthews (Mosaic Select). The program, which includes 29 previously unreleased performances, features some of the top Los Angeles-area jazz musicians of 1963-64, including the legendary trumpeter Dupree Bolton, altoists Earl Anderza and Gabe Baltazar, and tenors Curtis Amy and Clifford Scott. The music, played by groups ranging from combos to big bands, includes hard-bop, bossa nova and a few commercial numbers. Capitol only chose to issue two LPs during Matthews’ life, which ended in obscurity in 1997, but Mosaic has now made it possible to fully enjoy and appreciate his overlooked talents as an arranger, pianist and (on three songs) vocalist.
Dan Morganstern makes an excellent point in his liner notes when he laments the tendency to refer to Roy Eldridge as a “link between Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie.” For one thing, Diz eschewed the kind of brilliant trumpet tone that characterized the work of Eldridge and Armstrong. Considered in this light, if one starts with Armstrong’s early achievements and then looks for anything like that kind of distilled joy in all the subsequent history of the music, one gets no further than the spectacular sides the man they called “Little Jazz” made for Columbia in January 1937. There’s just no one after that to “link” to, ever…