The Cotton Club 2019

This very attractive four-CD box set has definitive liner notes from Dan Morgenstern, and draws its 81 selections from Louis Armstrong's prime period. Why then does it not receive the highest rating? Armstrong's immortal Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, along with his early big band sides, had already been reissued complete, and in chronological order on seven Columbia CDs and his less interesting performances as an accompanist to various blues singers (some of which are on this set) have also been reissued in similar fashion.

Here is a beautiful partnership between one of the more individual tenors from the swing era the distinctive Buddy Tate, and the always swinging Harry “Sweets” Edison who got the most mileage out of a single note and is immediately recognizable within a note or two for his long-used repetition and simplicity.

Karol Beffa was awarded first at the Ecole Normale Supérieure but also received first at the Music Aggregation. He is now leading a double career. On the one hand, he graduated from ENSAE as an engineer statistician and in 2003 obtained a doctorate in musicology from EHESS by supporting a doctoral thesis on György Ligeti's Piano Studies. In November 2015, he supports a habilitation to direct research. He teaches at the University of Paris IV, then at the École Polytechnique and is a lecturer at ENS.

No doubt you’ve seen it by now: That viral video of a woman onstage in a bright purple dress, playing one absolute scorcher of a slide guitar solo. That’s Joanna Connor in her home turf of Chicago, with the firepower she delivers to local crowds on a nightly basis.

The funky organist of the same name became so famous during his life — and his style of playing so beloved in the hereafter — that the resulting near-total eclipse of an earlier Jimmy Smith in classic jazz is not surprising, if still regrettable. The Smith who was part of the marvelous rhythm sections on many famous recordings by bandleader and singer Cab Calloway came from an era of syncopated music when it was not written in stone that a string bass would be holding down the bottom end. Thus Smith became adept at any and seemingly all musical instruments capable of making noise in the low register.

HE APOLLO: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the audio accompaniment to the HBO documentary released November 6. Helmed by Oscarr and Emmyr-winning director Roger Ross Williams, THE APOLLO chronicles the unique history and contemporary legacy of New York City's landmark Apollo Theater. The soundtrack album is produced by the film's music supervisors, Grammyr-nominated Dondi Bastone and TunesMap founder G. Marq Roswell, and mastered by Ian Sefchick at Capitol Studios.

Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years.

Six CD set. Long acknowledged as one of the greatest and most influential acoustic guitarists to emerge from the British folk scene, the late John Renbourn is best known to the wider world for his membership of Pentangle, the genre-busting band that he was instrumental in bringing together in 1967. Pentangle's recordings are widely available, most recently with Cherry Red's 2017 highly-acclaimed box set Pentangle: The Albums. However, Renbourn recorded extensively both before and during the band's early genesis, with a trio of solo albums joined by two vital collaborations with American-born folk singer Dorris Henderson as well as Bert And John, his joint album with Bert Jansch in 1966. Housed in a clamshell box that boasts replica album sleeves, some very rare photos and a new essay on the man, Unpentangled anthologises that essential but often overlooked body of early work.

American jazz pianist and bandleader Earl Hines was one of the most influential figures in the development of jazz piano whose playing shaped the history of jazz.