The Complete Jazz at the Philharmonic on Verve 1944-1949

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Amazon.com Ever wonder what a 1940s-era jam session sounded like? Well, not much gets closer to the real thing than the music on these 10 CDs. Norman Granz, founder of the Norgran and Clef labels before launching Verve in the mid-1950s, brought together dozens of musicians for the popular Jazz at the Philharmonic series, taking the ad hoc bands to delighted crowds. The bands cook, taking on scores of well-known tunes and using them as the basis for loose-limbed improvisations that play off the crowd's energy--often audible after solos. With a frequent audio vérité feel to the proceedings, this set moves through all-star sessions galore. The opening session features J.J. Johnson, Illinois Jacquet, Les Paul, and Nat "King" Cole, and one of the later sessions plays Charlie Parker off Lester Young, Flip Phillips, and Roy Eldridge in heated (though always fun) exchanges. Not surprisingly, great moments crop up amid some faltering jams, places where saxophonists stumble through phrases in high spirits to find a vocalist or another soloist already cutting in on the developments. Billie Holiday does a fine turn on "Fine and Mellow" with a supertrio of tenor saxes, including Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Illinois Jacquet. A running thread throughout the 12-plus hours of music is the crosshatching of bebop and swing, which here work together in excited displays of expertise and imagination. The musical detail on this issue is especially welcome, given the recording ban that complicated the documentation of the bebop revolution in its earliest days. Oh, and nearly all this music is on CD for the first time, and for that reason (and others), the set is a full-on winner. --Andrew Bartlett