Essential Jazz Classics

2008 release featuring the complete original 1957 album Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk plus bonus tracks. Although this album marks Thelonious Monk's sole recording as a member of Art Blakey's celebrated Jazz Messengers, the pianist and drummer were very close friends who understood each other well on both a personal and musical level.

2008 expanded edition of the Coltrane classic, which he himself proclaimed was his favorite recording from his discography. This release includes the complete album Blue Train, plus four bonus tracks showcasing Coltrane's genius on several sessions from the same period and with similar personnel. Includes 16-page comprehensive booklet!

2008 release that compiles two of The Modern Jazz Quartet's most highly acclaimed albums in their entirety: Fontana (1956) and No Sun In Venice, originally released under the title One Never Knows.

The complete classic album Clifford Brown With Strings, one of the most lyrical albums in the trumpeter's career and an indisputable Jazz classic featuring six bonus ballads taken from different 1953 sessions in New York and in Paris. Everyone who knew him agreed that Clifford was a very friendly, humble and sweet person. Many of his recordings show him full of fire and intensity.

Two CD set. The complete master takes by the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet featuring Harold Land on tenor sax! Includes all the music from the original albums Clifford Brown & Max Roach, Brown & Roach Inc. and Study in Brown, plus many alternate takes originally issued on the LP More Study in Brown and in later compilations.

2008 reissue of the Jazz great's 1957 album featuring bonus alternate takes. This album offers an unequalled opportunity on record to hear Rollins' tenor almost isolated from any other instrument. It is exceptionally well recorded, there is no piano, Manne's drums never intrude, and Brown in many places plays an obbligato accompaniment.

Improbable as it may sound, the sextet was one of the largest groups that Art Tatum ever worked with; it may even be the largest for Tatum, who worked for most of his life with no accompaniment at all, towards the end showed a marked preference for a trio, but rarely ever appeared as one of six. The reasons are easy enough to surmise.

Appearing at a time when for the grand public Nat King Cole was more of a singer and entertainer than a Jazz pianist, this album was a reminder of Nat's superlative skills as an instrumentalist. For the remainder of his successful career, which ended with his sudden death in 1965 due to lung cancer, he continued singing more and more, and playing less and less.