Artists: Wilbur Harden, John Coltrane
     Album: Jazz Way Out
     Label: Savoy/Denon
     Year: 1958, release: 1991
     Quality: MP3@320 kbps
     Size: 61,8 mb
     Total time: 28:42



Fantastic early work by John Coltrane an album that shows that he was already reaching far, even in the 50s! The tracks on the set are quite long quite speculative work that predates some of the searching experiments that Trane began in the 60s, with a nice undercurrent of spiritualism that's missing from some of his other work of the period. The work's played by a hip sextet co-led with trumpeter Wilbur Harden, and featuring Curtis Fuller on trombone, Tommy Flanagan on piano, Art Taylor on drums, and Ali Jackson on bass. Titles include the classic original reading of "Dial Africa", plus the super-extended "Gold Coast", and the nice "Oomba". (HQ Hi Quality CD pressing.)

     Artist: Louis Armstrong
     Album: Hot Fives and Sevens Vol. 4
     Label: JSP
     Year: 1929-1930 ; release: 1998
     Format, bitrate: mp3 @ 320kps
     Time: 67:33
     Size: 162MB
     AMG Rating


The fourth and last volume in JSP's Louis Armstrong Hot Fives & Sevens set diligently follows the Armstrong discography from March 5, 1929 through April 5, 1930, with a couple of alternate takes tacked onto the end like marzipan truffles. Decidedly different from the preceding volumes, this disc mostly features ensembles of nine and ten players, with even the Savoy Ballroom Five weighing in as a ten-piece big band. These marvelous Okeh sides paved the way for the smoother dance and swing band sounds of the 1930s. Armstrong handles five melodies composed by his pal Fats Waller, sings a duet with Hoagy Carmichael on "Rockin' Chair" and ushers in the Great Depression with charming renditions of "When You're Smiling" and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love."

     Artists: Coleman Hawkins & Ben Webster
     Album: Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster - The Complete Session (with bonus tracks!)
     Label: Essential Jazz Classics
     Year: 1957, release: 2009
     Quality: Mp3, 320 kbps. Scans.
     Size: 135 mb




This release contains the complete classic album "Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster", as well as the other six tunes from the session, originally issued on different Hawkins’ albums and long out-of-print anthologies. As a further bonus, it is added four tunes from sessions recorded on both the previous and the same day by each saxophonist alone with the same rhythm section. The sessions end with each player presenting his own reading of “Ill Wind”.

     Artist: Kenny Clarke
     Album: Kenny Clarke Meets The Detroit Jazzmen
     Label: Savoy Jazz
     Year: 1956
     Quality: MP3@320 kbps
     Size: 95,5 mb
     Total time: 43:14



Drummer Kenny Clarke, who was the first to record with Cannonball Adderley, was an underrated talent scout. On this album, Clarke utilizes bassist Paul Chambers and three relative unknowns who had recently arrived in New York from Detroit: baritonist Pepper Adams, pianist Tommy Flanagan and guitarist Kenny Burrell. During what would be the drummer's last date as a leader before permanently moving to Europe, the quintet performs one original apiece by each of the Detroiters plus four jazz standards. This high-quality hard bop set in 1956 showed that the latest NY imports were already major leaguers. ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

     Artists: Derek Bailey / Han Bennink
     Album: Han
     Label: Incus Records
     Year: 1986, release: 1988
     Format, bitrate: FLAC
     Size: 308.8M
     AMG Rating

The two-part "Melancholy Babes" presented here is an edited series of duet concerts between Han Bennink and Derek Bailey recorded over a week in March 1986. Over the week four concerts were recorded, and from these Bailey edited together five excerpts as a representation of what transpired. The first part is compiled from a series of audience recordings, and the second from a more conventional source. According to the liner notes, no attempt was made to disguise the editing, though each selection flows uninterrupted as the music would be presented in a live setting. That admission aside, the hallmark of these concerts was their stunning clarity of vision, their razor-sharp wit and repartee, and the fluency of language between the two musicians. Bailey is of his nut most of the time here, digging deeper and deeper into Bennink's glorious assault. The chord voicings and elongated single-string lines he plays here are far from typical for Bailey, even in a live setting; they surround the rhythms that are literally propelled forth incessantly in varying dynamics and tempos. But Bailey doesn't just hang in with Bennink's inexhaustible energy -- he soars with it, coming to grips with a kind of power he knows he possesses but doesn't always have access to. No one does. When the music grows almost intolerably tense, Bennink will let loose with a howl or a yelp to bring the level back to merely superhuman. This is one of the finest recordings of free improvisation to be released in the latter half of the 20th century.

     Artist: Houston Person
     Album: Suspicions
     Label: Muse Records
     Year: 1980
     Format/Bitrate: mp3/320kbps (LP-rip)
     Size: 84.1mb

     Artist: Charles Brackeen
     Album: Rhythm X
     Label: Strata East
     Year: 1968
     Format, bitrate: mp3 320 kbps
     Time: 34.02
     Size: 77.7 MB
     AMG rating:


     On this record, the little-known Charles Brackeen brings his saxophone to a party with most of Ornette Coleman's band. As might be expected, while Brackeen certainly holds his own, it's Ornette's boys who bring the thunder, playing around Brackeen's muscular alto as if they were a gang jumping on a new member. Haden's bass playing provides the frantic pulse, here and there ceding the stage to Blackwell's flexible drumming and dropping out to provide rolling sheets of sound by bowing his instrument. Brackeen and Cherry wrestle across this solid bedrock, with results that are often surprising and never short of beautiful.

     Artist: Chet Baker
     Album: Broken Wing
     Format/bitrate: mp3/320 kbs
     Size: 127 mb
     Audio CD (15 Feb 2001)
     Label: Universal Classics
     ASIN: B000051TKO
     Recorded Paris, 1978

This is a good Chet Baker album that is not know so well. Lots of feeling later in his career.

     The Jazz in Paris-Broken Wing CD presents a 1978 quartet recording by the trumpeter Chet Baker and adds two lengthy alternative takes to the LP from which it's derived. The Paris rhythm section: Phil Markowitz on piano, Jean-Francois Jenny-Clarke on bass and Jeff Brillinger on drums provide ideal support with some particularly impressive bass solos. Chet's wistful singing is heard on "Oh, You Crazy Moon" but otherwise his poignant trumpet, lyrical and beautifully controlled, is predominant. The spirit of Miles Davis hovers at Chet's shoulder, but he has his own tone and phrasing, less dramatic but subtly insinuating. "Blue Gilles", a Baker original, is a very slow, mournful lament dedicated to Gilles Gautherin, the producer of this session. Wayne Shorter's "Black Eyes", which comes in two versions, has a medium-tempo bossa nova beat, but otherwise it's the slower tempos, at which Baker excelled, that determine the reflective ambience of this late December Franco-American encounter. --Graham Colombй

     Artist: Louis Armstrong
     Album: Hot Fives and Sevens Vol. 3
     Label: JSP
     Year: 1928; release: 1998
     Format, bitrate: mp3 @ 320kps
     Time: 69:54
     Size: 156MB
     AMG Rating

From the popping of Zutty Singleton's cymbals and Earl Hines' sparkling piano riffs on "Fireworks" to Kaiser Marshall's brushwork behind Lonnie Johnson's guitar solo on "Knockin' a Jug," Volume 3 of JSP's Louis Armstrong Hot Fives & Sevens contains 22 classic jazz sides that include some of the very best recordings that Louis Armstrong ever made. The perky humor of "A Monday Date," the beautiful vocal harmonies on "Squeeze Me," the intimate duet "Weather Bird," and the undiluted majesty of the "West End Blues" make this an excellent choice that could suffice (for a while at least) if one were to own only one Louis Armstrong compilation. Get the whole four-CD set and you'll find yourself holding one of the cornerstones of the jazz tradition. ~ arwulf arwulf, All Music Guide