Description
Mastered by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound, from the original 3-track tape
180-gram LP plated and pressed at Quality Record Pressings!
First time gatefold old style tip-on jacket from Stoughton Printing with gorgeous photos!
Featuring Wild Man Blues Dickies Dream and more!
This 180 gram Analogue Productions LP reissue is a magnificent-sounding recording of a historic TV event. For a rare and glorious one-hour nationwide broadcast, CBS brought together 32 towering heavyweight jazz musicians of the swing era for the jam session to end all jam sessions.
See the video above for a look at how the program went down.
The one-hour program aired on Sunday, December 8, 1957, live from CBS Studio 58, the Town Theater at 851 Ninth Avenue in New York City. The show was hosted by New York Herald-Tribune media critic John Crosby, directed by Jack Smight, and produced by Robert Herridge. Jazz writers Nat Hentoff and Whitney Balliett were the primary music consultants.
The Sound of Jazz brought together 32 leading musicians a Whos Who of the swing era including Count Basie, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Jo Jones and Coleman Hawkins; the Chicago style players of the same era, like Henry Red Allen, Vic Dickenson, and Pee Wee Russell; and younger modernist musicians such as Gerry Mulligan, Thelonious Monk, and Jimmy Giuffre. These players played separately with their compatriots (see the song list below), but also joined to combine various styles in one group, such as Red Allens group and the group backing Billie Holiday on Fine and Mellow.
Columbia Records released this LP in 1958 that is actually a rehearsal that preceded the telecast (recorded on December 4 at Columbias 30th Street studios), and is not its soundtrack. The LP was released in 1958 as Columbia CL 1098, with liner notes by Eric Larrabee, and the cover photo is by Tom Yee. The recording doesnt include all of the performers on the TV show (Mulligan refused to participate because no additional payment was involved) and includes several who were not on the show. Bassist Walter Page rehearsed, and is featured on the LP, but collapsed on the way to the studio for the telecast.
For this Analogue Productions reissue we started with the original tape and the best mastering available Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound did a steller job, and naturally, plating at Quality Record Pressings was handled by master plating technician Gary Salstrom. Our 180-gram QRP platters serve up an utterly noiseless background that lets the superior sonics shine through.
The shows performance of Fine and Mellow reunited Billie Holiday with her estranged long-time friend Lester Young for the final time. Jazz critic Nat Hentoff, who was involved in the show, recalled that during rehearsals, they kept to opposite sides of the room. Young was very weak, and Hentoff told him to skip the big band section of the show and that he could sit while performing in the group with Holiday.
During the performance of Fine and Mellow, Webster played the first solo. Then, Hentoff remembered: Lester got up, and he played the purest blues I have ever heard, and [he and Holiday] were looking at each other, their eyes were sort of interlocked, and she was sort of nodding and half-smiling. It was as if they were both remembering what had been whatever that was. And in the control room we were all crying. When the show was over, they went their separate ways.
Within two years, both Young and Holiday had died.
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