Excellent
Eliminator Man | Plymouth, MN | 02/12/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This review started as a commnet on the other reviewer's review, but I've added to it a couple times and thought I'd make it a full review.
This is a great collection at an incredible price. I'm pretty much through all the discs now, just finishing up the last couple. I found a lot of these tracks on the Proper box, which I also own but there is a lot more.
The first two discs have quite a few vocals, mostly by Billie Holiday, with Lester taking a chorus on the break. After about the first six songs, the third disc is all instrumental. Discs four and five are all instrumental. The music on 3-6 covers the period from around 1943 to 1947. Lester plays well throughout. This is probably my favorite period for him. He plays as well or better at the end of the period as at the beginning and always swinging hard. By the sixth disc he sounds boppish at times till I think I'm listening to Dexter, not Lester.The sound quality is good and improving with the newer recordings, but even the earliest recordings sound as good as other collections I've heard.
The seventh and eighth discs are small groups, mainly quartets, with lots of room for Lester to stretch out. His solos for the most part are more probing and thoughtful than on the earlier stuff. I think this stuff dates from the late 40s to early 50s.
The ninth disc is big band. I think it is a Basie session and by the sound quality I'm thinking air check from late 40s to early 50s. There's no audience but it has a live quality to it. I'm no Basie expert so I could be wrong. The 10th disc is live. I saw most of this track listing on an early 50s cd of Lesters.
I always bought the idea that Lester's playing suffered after he was in the army in spite of the fact that some of my favorite stuff was from the late 40s. Now hearing his career on these consecutive discs from Shoe Shine Boy up through the early 50s you can hear that he was evolving over time and not just declining. I do have a later 50s disc where he is sounding pretty tired and in decline but I suspect that a lot of the Verve 50s releases will have a lot to offer.
I love the Proper box for Lester. It covers the prime period without the vocal tracks and ends by about 1950. YOu really need a collection like that or this one to really get the good stuff from the 30s and 40s. This one has the added plus of having some of the Billie Holiday recordings early on and then going several years past the Proper box which allows you to hear a clear evolution in his conception. I recommend this box whole heartedly. Toss in a few Verves and you've got him covered well enough for most people. I paid 20 dollars for this set. 20 dollars for 10 discs of one of American music's titans. Incredible.
PS, I got some of my information about the tracks by looking at allmusic's discography for Lester. I could at least find dates for original releases. The Proper box has the added advantage of having complete personnel and dates for all sessions."
Excellent Collection
Jazz Listener | NYC, NY | 09/21/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Excellent allstar collection of Prez recordings, on various labels, from the late 1930s through late 1940s. However, be warned, there is no booklet, so you have to search out, on your own, to learn the exact label, dates and personnel on each of the tracks covering 10 discs of music."
Sit Back and Listen!
Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 06/14/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"That might be all you'd want to do, anyway. Lester Young (1909-1959) was surely the "easiest" listening in the history of jazz, with his wistfully soft timbre and his fluid articulation, able to make even a jitterbug tune pumped out by a driving 'swing' orchestra sound like a ballad. But at the same time, Young was impeccably rigorous and inventive in his harmonic progressions, playing at the highest level of 'classical' sophistication yet never ever making his musicality obtrusive. In his early career in the 1930s, and ever since, his emotive style was always a strong contrast to the forthright power of 'rival' tenor sax Coleman Hawkins, while in the 1940s, Young was the only sax player who made Charlie Parker sound more like him at times than he sounded like Parker. This 10-CD box seems to include tracks recorded both live and in studio from the whole span of Lester's career, most of them three to four minutes long, the time allowed by oldtime vinyl 78rpms, but including some gloriously extended sen/eight minute cuts. There are big band tracks on which Lester adds only a lick or two, tracks of Lester with just a rhythm section, tracks shared with the sublime vocalist Billie Holiday and/or with the best of the best of swing and bebop instrumentalists. A few tracks are scratchy and smoky, obviously recording with a hand-held mike in a raunchy club setting, but the vast majority are clear and clean, well remastered.
So, as I said, sit back and listen! Because that's all you'll be able to do. There are no notes with with box of ten CDs. No dates or places of recording. No names of the bands or the other players on a single track! Just the titles and the 'composers' names'. It may be that the set follows some sort of chronology, or some other principle of order, but it would be tedious labor to try to sort it out. Ordinarily, I'd be furious at such cavalier non-information, but with Lester Young playing, I hear a voice in the back of my mind, saying "facts don't matter so much, it's all just the music that makes life livable, my life is all about music." That line - "my life is all about music" - comes from the film Round Midnight, by the way. It's spoken by Dexter Gordon, acting the role of a tenor sax player very reminiscent of Lester Young at the end of his career, wearily drinking himself to death. There's never been a sadder and more beautiful 'sound of music' than that of Lester Young."
