Various Artists

DE-LUXE 5-CD BOX SET INCLUDING 9 ORIGINALS LPs

INCLUDES 32-PAGE BOOKLET

Between January of 1958 and April of 1959, famed English jazz writer Stanley Dance produced nine glorious LPs of traditional jazz for the Felsted label. Among the performers were many superb jazzmen who had been forgotten for decades or had rarely recorded as leaders. This 5-CD box set puts together, for the first time ever, all of the Felsted swing albums in their complete form, half of which had never previously appeared on CD, while many others have been long unavailable and truly hard to find. The leaders on the nine albums are clarinettist Buster Bailey, trombonist Dicky Wells (two LPs), tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Buddy Tate and Budd Johnson, pianists Earl Hines and Billy Strayhorn, and drummer Cozy Cole. Also featured are: Buck Claytonlayton, Charlie Shavers (tp),Johnny Hodges (as), Vic Dickenson (tb), Willie “The Lion” Smith, Hank Jones, Dick Caryary (p), Kenny Burrell (g), Rayay Brown (b),Jo Jones (d), among many others.

• CD 1 [1-6]: REX STEWART: Rendezvous with Rex (Felsted 7001)
• CD 1 [7-11] & CD2 [1]: DICKY WELLS: Bones for the King (Felsted 7006)

• CD 2 [2-8]: DICKY WELLS: Trombone-Four-in-Hand (Felsted 7009)
• CD 2 [9-11]: EARL HINES: Earl’s Backroom (Felsted 7002 –Side A)

• CD 3 [1-3]: COZY COLE: Cozy’s Caravan (Felsted 7002 –Side B)
• CD 3 [4-10]: BUSTER BAILEY: All About Memphis (Felsted 7003)
• CD 3 [11-13] & CD4 [1-3]: BUDD JOHNSON: Blues à la Mode (Felsted 7007)

• CD 4 [4-9]: BUDDY TATE: Swinging Like Tate (Felsted 7004)
• CD 4 [10] & CD5 [1-5]: COLEMAN HAWKINS: The High and Mighty Hawk (Felsted 7005)

• CD5 [6-12]: BILLY STRAYHORN: Cue for Saxophone (Felsted 7008)

• All titles recorded in New York between January 28, 1958 and April 22, 1959. Original recordings produced by STANLEY DANCE.

• “Initially a jazz critic, Stanley Dance has done a great deal through the years to help swing and mainstream jazz musicians. In fact ‘mainstream’ was his term which he came up with in the 1950s to describe music played by musicians who were stylistically between dixieland and bebop. Dance has occasionally produced recording sessions through the years (most notably for Felsted in the 1950s) and has in his own way influenced jazz history.” - Scott Yanow (All Music Guide)

CD 1: Total Time: 74:33 Min.

• 01 Tillie’s Twist (*)
• 02 Pretty Ditty (*)
• 03 Tell Me More (*) >
• 04 Danzon D’amor (*)
• 05 My Kind Of Gal (*)
• 06 Blue Echo (*)
• 07 Bones For The King
• 08 Sweet Daddy Spo-de-o
• 09 You Took My Heart
• 10 Hello, Smack! V
• 11 Come And Get It

CD 2: Total Time: 65:23 Min.

• 01 Tillie’s Twist (*)
• 02 Pretty Ditty (*)
• 03 Tell Me More (*)
• 04 Danzon D’amor (*)
• 05 My Kind Of Gal (*)
• 06 Blue Echo (*)
• 07 Bones For The King
• 08 Sweet Daddy Spo-de-o
• 09 You Took My Heart
• 10 Hello, Smack! V
• 11 Come And Get It

CD3: Total Time: 77:30 Min.

• 01 Caravan (*)
• 02 Phatz’s Blues (*)
• 03 Margie (*)
• 04 Bear Wallow (*)
• 05 Hatton Avenue And Gayoso Street (*)
• 06 Sunday Parade (*)
• 07 Beale Street Blues (*)
• 08 Memphis Blues (*)
• 09 Chickasaw Bluff (*)
• 10 Hot Water Bayou (*)
• 11 Foggy Nights
• 12 Leave Room In Your Heart For Me
• 13 Destination Blues

CD 4: Total Time: 72:53 Min.

• 01 À La Mode
• 02 Sed Blues
• 03 Blues By Five
• 04 Bottle It
• 05 Walk That Walk
• 06 Miss Sadie Brown
• 07 Moon Eyes
• 08 Rockin’ Steve
• 09 Rompin’ With Buck
• 10 Bird Of Prey Blues

CD 5: Total Time: 69:08 Min.

• 01 My One And Only Love
• 02 Vignette
• 03 Ooh-wee, Miss G.P.!
• 04 You’ve Changed
• 05 Get Set
• 06 Cue’s Blue Now
• 07 Gone With The Wind
• 08 Cherry
• 09 Watch Your Cue
• 10 You Brought A New Kind Of Love To Me
• 11 When I Dream Of You
• 12 Rose Room

• FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER ON CD

• All of the sessions included on this 5-CD package have two common denominators. First, they all consist of recordings by major swing artists, most of whom had already enjoyed long and fruitful careers by the time they recorded these albums in 1958-59 (even though many of them were experiencing a period of relative obscurity and rarely recorded under their own name). Second, Stanley Dance produced all of the sessions (and wrote all of the liner notes) for the Felsted label. Stanley Dance was born on September 15, 1910 in Braintree, Essex, in the East of England, and would become one of the most important jazz writers and oral historians of the swing era, as well as a close friend of Duke Ellington (he co-authored Duke’s memoirs, titled Music Is My Mistress). In the 1950s he coined the term “mainstream” to describe the musical style in between revivalist and modern, or alternatively between Dixieland and bebop. Dance himself described “mainstream” with these words on the back covers of all of his nine Felsted albums: “Mainstream Jazz…….what it is: Primarily, it is a reference term for a vast body of jazz that was at one time in some danger of losing its identity. Practically, it is applied to the jazz idiom which developed between the heyday of King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton on the one hand and that of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie on the other.

• The tag originated during the recent period when jazz seemed to be entirely divided between Traditional (alias Dixieland, alias New Orleans, alias Two-Beat) and Modern (alias Bop, alias Cool, alias Progressive). Among those this division left out in the cold were musicians like Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, and Buck Clayton. Since all good jazz, of whatever kind and era, theoretically swings, ‘Swing’ was hardly an adequate label for them. Hence “Mainstream” for jazz of a “central” kind, a music not inhibited by any particular instrumental combination, but emphasizing the twin virtues of communicable emotional expression and swing. Yes, swing, without which jazz ‘don’t mean a thing’.”