I knew the Ellington set was coming out because I was volunteering at the Smithsonian and helping with the Ellington book, “Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington,” so I had saved up and got it new (with a little discount from a friend at a cd/record store) on release day. It is great box set. I do think it could be improved now by Mosaic. But, that would be adding a Pushmi-Pullyu to the unicorn list of probably won’t happen sets.
I'm listening to the Dorsey set I mentioned now. I think the SQ is excellent. Not much NR. I can hear the crackles and pops.
The Mosaic Goodman Columbia set is pricey, but I often see a listing for roughly what it went for originally (about $120, I think). Otherwise, the best choice for RCA Victor is the 16 LP set. The large Goodman boxes from Membran and Past Perfect fairly suck.
Get in line (albeit a short one). Unless some third party licensed the Japanese set and just reissued the discs without the elaborate box, I doubt it will ever see the light of day in the US. UMG has been licensing Motown reissues to third parties, such as Real Gone Music, over the past few years, but even that has ground to a halt. I just don't think the market is there for a Goodman set. I would love to see sales figures for some of the last single CD releases in the early 2000s, such as this: Maybe I'd be surprised and they at least broke even on the production of discs like this, but I fear not, or there would still be more releases.
I'm more of a fan of the vocal jazz era that came out of the big bands than of the bands themselves but I love them just as much. It's also a crime that Harry James has like, TWO good US CDs from his 30s-40s prime -- and one has an alternate take of "It's Been A Long, Long Time" as opposed to the hit version. Edit: nope, only one! What the heck...
I've seen the following listed at Jpc.de for quite a while. The lack of detail is strange. https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/jazz/detail/-/art/Bennie-Goodman-Complete-Bennie-Goodman/hnum/3728347 There are similar out-of-stock listings on Amazon.de and Amazon.es. I cannot find a single picture on the internet of this supposed 2001 release.
Another sad fact, which we have discussed earlier in this thread, is that the Goodman estate is holding up any releases. The 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert, remastered, complete (the 30 seconds of I Got Rhythm that Schapp accidentally deleted is restored) and excellent sounding (done by Jon Hancock and Mark Wilder using several sources) is just sitting in Sony’s vaults. And, if the estate would just say “yes” material from the Savory collection would come pouring out. This is just to add to the problem that for the most part the major labels just don’t seem to care about reissuing much this music anymore.
I haven’t gotten to SQ yet. Just in pure enjoyment mode but will do a comparison of the tracks other than those that came from the 90s CDs (which came from the metal parts). I already had those discs and they sound very good.
The six volumes are all at the Internet Archive (so far alone among all the Ruppli discographies): https://bit.ly/3Bd9P6V I have a print set too, though. The prices have come down considerably since the publisher switched to digital printing: the Decca set was originally $595 when it came out in 1996, but is now down to $179, which is less than $0.03 per page. I also have the Ruppli volumes for Atlantic, Prestige, Savoy, Aladdin/Imperial, Chess and King; all good fun, although much of the data from the first three is at jazzdisco.org nowadays.
It would be a lifetime's work. It's impressive enough that Michel Ruppli wrapped up his career with Capitol, and even that had to come out as a CD-ROM. The Sony archives are well maintained by all accounts, so maybe something will materialise for both RCA Victor and Columbia over the... I almost said decades, but maybe "centuries" would be more realistic.
Speaking of Benny Goodman and Decca. In May 1966 Goodman signed with Decca, a press release celebrating this was sent out, and it was duly reported in the trade magazines. But nothing seems to have been recorded under the contract, and for the rest of the '60s, the only major releases of newly recorded material by Goodman were two classical LPs on RCA Red Seal. Some papers of veteran Decca producer Milt Gabler's at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, copies of which I am privy to, even give an LP title (B. G.'s Choice) and a catalogue number (DL 4745 mono, DL 74745 stereo). But there's no track listing, and nothing in the Ruppli books. The number ended up being used for Ernest Tubb's Fabulous Texas Troubadours. Among other things, there's also a draft of a letter to Goodman where Gabler seemingly pitches Nancy Harrow as a vocalist for the planned recordings! There has to be an untold story behind this all, which I'd like to know.
Something or other went in a fire at Camden. But all the (countless) Bear Family releases of RCA material for instance, regardless of the style of music or the period the material is from, have very full session discographies in the customary format. That information has to have come from somewhere.
Those recordings mostly came from 50 years or so after Victor began. The peak activity of Victor (the majority of their recordings) came before 1930
I was recently looking at a live Decca recording (2 CDs) from 1970. And I think there was a Phase 4 recording around then.
But for that early period, there is already the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings, which has been worked on since the 1960s, and whose data is nowadays at the Discography of American Historical Recordings website: Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings Project History - Discography of American Historical Recordings Discography of American Historical Recordings - Site - Discography of American Historical Recordings
I am thinking of the actual archival documents, the countless examples of communications, letters and other paper and photographs concerning the artists. Those were the priceless files. The lists of recordings in discographic format are great but only part of the story.
Yeah, that was a 1970 live-in-Stockholm double. But it was done for British Decca, which as always traded as London in the US for trademark reasons, not having been under the same ownership since the 1940s. The 1966 contract I talked about was with US Decca.
