Best Boogie-Woogie
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Its interesting, and fun, to listen to the old music and hear songs that are early versions of music we still hear today."
"As I write this in mid-2006, the above retrospective box set is now long out of print and is fetching between $70 to $120 from Amazon's 2nd tier vendors. It is quite doubtful that it will be reissued in the near future.There is a myriad of selections, eclipsing The Anthology of American Folk Music in running time, years covered as well as musical styles- so this is still not a overpriced purchase at the above prices."
"The long box format includes a large, well written and illustrated booklet that is almost worth the cost all by itself!"
"This set is actually exactly what I expected and hoped that set to be: foot tappin' music which evocatively brings to mind fond thoughts of a simpler and more visceral era in American life. The Anthology of Amercian Folk Music may have some profound academic significance which escapes me, but if you want great music with a lot of mood and attitude, I don't think you can do much better than this Retrospective set."
"But oink oink what a money grubber to ask 299.00 for this set."
That it is: piano-roll recordings by Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Scott Joplin, James P. Johnson and more!
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I had hoped it would include "Alexander's Ragtime" but it didn't."
"But best of all, over in one dark corner out of the way was an old player piano, with a small adjacent cupboard stocked with the paper piano rolls. You could play it like a regular piano, but we never bothered, and although my parents preferred the radio, my dad would occasionally set up one of the rolls and after some tinkering and pumping off the machine would go, gobbling up the turning perforated rolls and making music. But in fairness to the old system, it has to be remembered that in its hey day these piano rolls sounded pretty darn good - and vastly better to the sounds you could hear on a 1917 Victrola playing a shellac disc of a piano! Too, the player piano, while frightfully expensive, offered a remarkable range of great piano artists - many of the greatest recorded extensively on these machines, and most felt them far superior in reproduction to what the phonographs of the day could give."
"Would have been nice if they had included a few rags by James Scott and Joe Lamb, but perhaps the rolls weren't available when this collection was recorded."
"The title is no exaggeration - this is the best collection of ragtime piano I've ever heard."
"Very good recording.Representative of much of the piano playing of the era, by some of the greatest players of this time."
"The versions of Scott Joplin's songs are played a bit brash and speedy when compared to Joshua Rifkin, but I think they sound livlier because of it."
"Time to learn about the greats of Ragtrime in the early 20th century....great music, great artists, buy it, you'll love it."
If you managed to catch the fabulous Martin Scorcese Blues series, broadcast by the BBC last year, then you will be familiar Jay McShann as he featured heavily in the Clint Eastwood directed program.
Find Best Price at AmazonBest St. Louis Blues
101 cuts from the most important post-WWII blues label, including 19 unreleased recordings and over two dozen singles making their album debuts (which means those with every Chess re-issue only own about half this set!).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"If you like Blues, you are familiar with Chess records."
"Anybody who is a real blues fan will already own the big hits in this set - the real reason to have it (besides having those hits in a single package) is for the lesser known artists, which make up over a third of the collection."
"From the gritty Robert Nighthawk to the urbane Lloyd Glenn to the soulful Etta James, the creators of this collection have managed to bring together some of the most interesting, moving, and important recordings of the post-War era. Put the discs into your player and you'll hear famous classics like Otis Rush's "So Many Roads, So Many Trains," as well as unnoticed gems like Willie Dixon's "Walking the Blues" (a little gimmicky, but a rare chance to hear some terrific unaccompanied riffs by Lafayette Leake)."
"To the best of my knowledge, there is no better collection of Chess Blues classics to own than this one."
"Learned the great blues singers from Chess Records."
"This is an absolutely essential collection for any serious blues or music collector."
"Great collection of standards."
"one of the very best in box sets there is!"
Best Ragtime
The epic sweep of Ragtime is captured in its opening prologue, a nine-minute kaleidoscope of fictional characters mingling with historical figures from the early 20th century as originally captured in E.L. Doctorow's sprawling novel . Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens ( Once on This Island ) mix marches, cakewalks, and of course ragtime to create a rich, compelling score, including Sarah's song to her baby, "Your Daddy's Son," her soaring duet with Coalhouse, "Wheels of a Dream," Mother's self-revealing "Back to Before," and numerous set pieces, all performed by a perfect cast.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This was supposed to be the later full cast recording, when I went to download the MP3 it was the earlier version that eliminated much of the dialog, e.g., the opening number is only 3 minutes rather than the 5 to 8 minutes it should be for a full version."
"Marin Mazzie sings the remarkable "Back To Before" and Audra MacDonald "Your Daddy's Hands" making them songs that will stand as monuments to theatre the way that "People" does for Streisand, "Rose's Turn" For Merman, "Hello Dolly" for Carol Channing. The songs themselves are spectacular; each piece develops and we do hear character development themes; each repeated motif in a song has thickened and developed along with the character, so we never ever feel as though the score was written hastily."
"This great work would have made it on the music alone, but when you factor in some of the best voices in the business, it's incredible. The musical focuses more strongly on the black-and-white race relationships than the original novel, and this works to the advantage. The juxtaposition of cultures makes for not only great storytelling, but variety in musical numbers, keeping the boredom factor at bay. An example of this occurs when the Irish Fireman--after a blatant display or racism--claims, "They'll get used to it the way we had to," pointing out the fact that at one time the Irish were not treated so well in this country. The cons: This is not a short musical."
"An excellent cast performs an excellent musical."
"I forgot how good the show was and how great the voices of the cast are on the recording."
"THIS 2 DISC CD BRINGS IT TO LIFE...."
"This music is incredible."
Best Stride Piano
If you set out to create a single anthology that charted all the twists and tributaries of that uniquely American river we call jazz, you couldn't do better than this companion set to the PBS series-94 tracks on 5 CDs licensed from virtually every important label in the history of the music. Includes The Pearls Jelly Roll Morton; Charleston James P. Johnson; West End Blues Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five; The Mooche Duke Ellington; Singin' the Blues Frankie Trumbauer & His Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke; Moten Swing Benny Moten's Kansas City Orchestra; Strange Fruit Billie Holiday; Three Little Words Art Tatum; Body and Soul Coleman Hawkins; In the Mood Glenn Miller; Take Five Dave Brubeck; So What Miles Davis; Giant Steps John Coltrane; Desafinado Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd, and many more classics.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"It is easy to list regrettable omissions from this set (and many reviewers have done so) and just as easy to point out how impossible it is to do full justice to a century of music that had multiple sources and spread rapidly to a plethora of sub-genres (and many reviewers have done that too). The British Trad Jazz that took hold in the early 50s and is still going strong (Chris Barber, Kenny Ball and their followers) is another indispensible part of Jazz history that finds no place in this collection."
"That being said, each of the four better discs in the set leaves much to be desired as a "listening experience." With such different styles and aesthetics encompassed on each disc, you're not likely to just put one on and enjoy the whole thing-and none of the discs are, or even could have been, arranged as coherent sets."
"Best $5.00 I have spent on some great music.Yes,it was a used CD set but plays perfect and everything was included."
"the best way to learn about most styles of 20th century jazz!"
"This 5-CD set is a great introduction to jazz music."
"terrific music, it's been a long time sense I heard original jazz."