In jazz — a music with a rich and meaningful history — boxed sets are invaluable, since they often retrieve from the vaults music that does not go out of date.
Releases such as those devoted to critical work of Jelly Roll Morton and Count Basie, among others, only deepen our understanding of the music.
What follows are some of the more noteworthy boxed sets of 2005:
Jelly Roll Morton: “The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax” (Rounder Records, $127.98)
No other jazz boxed set of 2005 approaches the importance of this release, which listeners have been anticipating for decades. Though edited versions of Morton’s Library of Congress interviews with Lomax had been issued on a series of LPs, this 8-CD set makes available for the first time every word that Morton uttered when he recorded at the Library of Congress in 1938. Because Morton flourished as a piano player in New Orleans’ Storyville vice district at the dawn of the 20th Century, he was an eye-witness — and a significant contributor — to the birth of jazz. Thanks to his phenomenal musical memory and obvious intellectual prowess, he was able to sit at the piano and recreate the sounds of the prehistory and emergence of jazz, in the process explaining how and why the music came into existence. Listen to Morton conjuring the styles of various piano professors, unfurling early jazz repertoire and describing life in Crescent City brothels and saloons, and you’re hearing the first great oral history of American music.
George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” (Bethlehem Jazz, $29.98)
In 1956, the innovative Bethlehem Jazz label dared to reconceive Gershwin’s landmark folk opera in contemporary terms, commissioning audacious new orchestrations that — in effect — took the piece out of the opera house and fully into the realm of jazz. This was no haphazard or dilettantish effort, for Bethlehem convened an astonishing list of A-list performers, with no less than Mel Torme and Johnny Hartman among the vocalists, and Duke Ellington and Russ Garcia leading top-tier instrumentalists such as Cat Anderson, Clark Terry, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney and Maynard Ferguson. The result, fully documented on this two-CD set, is a fascinating novelty that attests to the extraordinary malleability of Gershwin’s narration interrupts the flow of the music; and the casting of Torme as Porgy seems bizarre, at best, despite the inarguable voluptuousness of his voice. Even so, the daring of this venture and the heat that the performance often attains make this a milestone in the evolution of Gershwin’s masterpiece.
“The Complete Clef/Verve Count Basie Fifties Studio Recordings” (Mosaic Records, $136)
Shortly after singer Billy Eckstine persuaded Basie to create a new big band, the pianist went into the studio in 1952 and began to forge the identity of an organization that would redefine large-ensemble jazz. Powered by charts from Neal Hefti, Ernie Wilkins and Sy Oliver (among others) and blessed with soloists such as saxophonists Paul Quinichette and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, the Basie band offered a rhythmically taut, sublimely economical spin on swing tradition. It’s all here, on eight glorious CDs, which stretch to 1957. The stellar list of guest soloists includes Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Williams, the package offering an illuminating portrait of jazz in the ’50s. At mosaicrecords.com or 203-327-7111.
“Chick Corea: Rendezvous in New York” (Image Entertainment, $99.99)
Pianist-bandleader Corea seems destined to become one of the best-documented jazz musicians on the planet, having already been honored with a previous boxed set: “A Week at the Blue Note,” featuring Corea & Origin on six CDs. The new box goes even further, with fully 10 DVDs showing Corea in duets with Bobby McFerrin and with Gary Burton, leading his Akoustic Band, his New Trio and other ensembles. The musicmaking is top-flight, but only Corea devotees will want to own so much of the man’s work.
———-
hreich@tribune.com
