群星-世界上最伟大的爵士音乐合集

 

World's Greatest Jazz Collection - The Encyclopedia of JazzThis encyclopedia of jazz is the first standard collection which will be hard to copy or to top. The decisive periods in the development of jazz are captured in five hunks, each containing 100 compact discs, from classic jazz to swing and the era of big bands, to bebop, cool jazz and hard bop.
More than 10,000 titles present all the musicians who played an important role in their time and who influenced the development of jazz.
The jazz encyclopedia is the work of experts who share the love of jazz and possess a thorough knowledge.
It is a gargantuan project which has never been tackled before.

100 CD-Boxes: In x5 sub sets
1. Classic Jazz
2. Swing Time
3. Big Bands
4. Bebop
5. Modern Jazz

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Classic Jazz
The most important recordings of Classic Jazz: New Orleans Jazz, Dixieland, New York and Chicago Jazz, Kansas City, Harlem and Territory Jazz - from 1917 to 1932.

New Orleans was the starting point of collective improvisation. The jazz for which the city on the Mississippi delta was to become so famous developed at the beginning of the 20th century - fusing Creole-Afro-American music, Marching Bands and French Quadrilles. With the rise of Swing, New York and Chicago became the new jazz capitals.

The early jazz which was played in honky-tonks or in the streets of New Orleans and later in New York and Chicago is excellently covered in this encyclopedia. The rich musical heritage is connected to many prominent names: King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon, Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Lang, Bud Freeman - the list is much longer.

Highlights of this edition are the complete titles which the mighty cornetist Joe "King" Oliver recorded in Chicago and New York. The young Louis Armstrong is represented on his recordings of the 1920s and 1930s. He can be heard with King Oliver and Fletcher Henderson as well as with his Hot Five, Hot Seven and with the band of Luis Russell.

Several big bands such as the orchestra of Bennie Moten, which was the nucleus of the Count Basie band played an important part in the twenties. Fletcher Henderson led a band with outstanding soloists like Rex Stewart, Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins. Duke Ellington also had an impressive ensemble including trumpeter Bubber Miley who already experimented with his special growl technique.
[img]Classic Jazz
The most important recordings of Classic Jazz: New Orleans Jazz, Dixieland, New York and Chicago Jazz, Kansas City, Harlem and Territory Jazz - from 1917 to 1932.

New Orleans was the starting point of collective improvisation. The jazz for which the city on the Mississippi delta was to become so famous developed at the beginning of the 20th century - fusing Creole-Afro-American music, Marching Bands and French Quadrilles. With the rise of Swing, New York and Chicago became the new jazz capitals.

The early jazz which was played in honky-tonks or in the streets of New Orleans and later in New York and Chicago is excellently covered in this encyclopedia. The rich musical heritage is connected to many prominent names: King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon, Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Lang, Bud Freeman - the list is much longer.

Highlights of this edition are the complete titles which the mighty cornetist Joe "King" Oliver recorded in Chicago and New York. The young Louis Armstrong is represented on his recordings of the 1920s and 1930s. He can be heard with King Oliver and Fletcher Henderson as well as with his Hot Five, Hot Seven and with the band of Luis Russell.

Several big bands such as the orchestra of Bennie Moten, which was the nucleus of the Count Basie band played an important part in the twenties. Fletcher Henderson led a band with outstanding soloists like Rex Stewart, Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins. Duke Ellington also had an impressive ensemble including trumpeter Bubber Miley who already experimented with his special growl technique.
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Swing Time
From the early days to the late 1950s, the highlights of Swing are presented on these 100 CD's.

The music of the decade between the Depression and World War II gave people hope - and entertainment. Swing records, ballrooms and touring bands made Swing one of the most rousing Jazz styles.

One of the reasons is evidently that the music was made for dancing and people were tempted to dance. But the big bands alone were not the cause of the jazz craze but also the abundance of small groups presenting the best soloists at the time. The swing era celebrated them: soloists such as Lester Young whose later work is covered to a great extent in the encyclopedia, or Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Jack Teagarden, Oscar Peterson, Teddy Wilson, Roy Eldridge.

A number of the great swing musicians met in Lionel Hampton's small groups. In 1937 the vibraphonist began recording under his own name and the conditions were extremely favorable. He had signed a contract with the Victor label which enabled him to get any musician he liked into the recording studio. Consequently he recorded with the elite of jazz musicians, producing swinging gems.

Similarly thrilling are the recordings of jam sessions and all-star groups; the set-up often looks like a who-is-who of the greatest jazz musicians.

Jazz musicians always loved jam sessions but in the past they could not be recorded because the sessions were too long for the old shellac records. Only when the long-playing record had started its triumphant advance in 1953, it was possible to record long sessions. Technical progress introduced a new quality into recorded jazz.
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Big Bands
100 CD's provide you with the most exciting, most beautiful and most swinging recordings from this period.

The glorious time of the big bands which was followed by the dance hall craze in the swing era started in the 1920s. Bandleader Fletcher Henderson and his arranger Don Redman developed the style of the big bands. They organized the band completely different from the way it was done in classical jazz. Now they had a brass section with more trumpets and trombones, a reed section with several saxophones and a strong rhythm section. The result was a new powerful sound, based on sophisticated arrangements fired by hot solos. The Henderson band that employed soloist like Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Chu Berry on tenor and trumpeters Rex Stewart, Roy Eldridge and Henry "Red" Allen was the role model for many following big bands.

Benny Goodman, the King of Swing of the 1930s, learned a lot from Henderson. He copied his big band concept and played his arrangements. Henderson wrote some of his best pieces for Goodman. His "Let's Dance" became the motto of an entire country - in fact, of the whole world. The encyclopedia includes many recordings of Goodman's big band in the 1930s and 1940s.

For many connoisseurs however Count Basie's orchestra was the ideal of a big band, fiercely swinging and relaxed. In 1932 Basie formed his first band with members of the Bennie Moten orchestra and he successfully led big bands for many years. He worked with soloists such as the trumpeters Harry "Sweets" Edison and Buck Clayton, saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans and the famous All American Rhythm Section with Walter Page on Bass, Freddie Green on guitar and the drummer Jo Jones. In 1939 the Basie band performed at the Carnegie Hall in New York City, playing two concerts "From Spiritual to Swing" which were organized by the promoter and Basie fan John Hammond.
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Bebop Story
The most important recordings of Bebop from the 1940s and 1950s in this exclusive box.

Bebop marked the beginning of Modern Jazz - a musical and technical revolution and the first example of Jazz as an "art" form. New harmonic structures coupled with improvising at a fast tempo together with "hip" outfits like big, thick-rimmed glasses, "Zoot suits" and "goatee" beards - those were bebop's trademarks.

Bebop was developed at the Harlem Club Minton's Playhouse. Black musicians met there to jam after they had finished their routine in a band. Tired of playing swing standards, they were looking for new possibilities to express themselves in their music. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were the key figures, attracting other musicians. Pianist Thelonious Monk and drummer Kenny Clarke were there as a rule because they were members of the house band. Among the musicians who helped to lift jazz to new heights was pianist Bud Powell, who appeared at Minton's as a very young man, when he was just seventeen, for the first time. His playing reminded admirers of the flowing melodies on Charlie Parker's alto.

The new music was mainly disseminated via concerts and found a rapidly growing crowd of fans. When bebop conquered Europe, the big music companies finally saw their chance.

It is quite natural that the works of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker dominate the recordings of the bebop era. Both can be heard on many titles under their own names and as participants in live concerts. They often performed with Jazz At The Philharmonic, organized by Norman Granz, and played in the company of jazz greats such as Lester Young, Oscar Peterson, Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge. The impresario Gene Norman also organized bebop concerts and produced the recordings under his label Just Jazz. Many concerts were recorded on the American Westcoast, featuring musicians like Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and Wardell Gray.

First there were only black musicians experimenting in Minton's Playhouse, but in the course of time white musicians arrived, listened and picked up new harmonies and tones. Musicians like Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and Kai Winding became protagonists of a white bebop, and many recordings demonstrate that all the outstanding musicians speak the same language.
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Modern Jazz
The greats of Modern Jazz with their best and most characteristic recordings in this 100 CD box.

In the 1950s Jazz spread throughout the world. With the advent of the long playing record, jazz improvisation was freed from the limitations of the old 78s' three minute playing time, providing the space for passionate and lengthy artistic statements.

Everything was different after the dramatic evolution initiated by bebop. It seemed as if a valve had been opened, permitting various currents to flow, trends in music which all sound more modern, more sophisticated or intellectual. Now you have cool jazz, Westcoast jazz, hard bop and all those variations of jazz which are modern but have little resemblance to the experiments in Minton's Playhouse -mainstream is the common term.

Hardbop is the logical resumption of bebop, but down to earth with roots into the blues. Many hard bop musicians, especially pianist Horace Silver, show a strong influence of gospel and spiritual. Silver and alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley are the most important protagonists of a hard bop variation called soul jazz that found a large following. The term "funky", in the past a dirty word, was also used to characterize this exciting type of music.