Original Dixieland Jazz Band Music

Put this one on and your ears will pop at the clarity of the audio restoration done here. Ben Pollack had a great dance orchestra - one of the best of the 1920's. If you love twenties jazz dance numbers, this will be perfection for you. "Futuristic Rhythm," is only one of the many great cuts here. Try it!
I got into twenties music as a refuge from the tape loop, "Yo! I's a tough gangsta," hip-hop, pop diva slut, no-talent but mediagenic, good publicity agent, music people dominating the charts today. Listen to real music by live musicians (not tape loops) who could sizzle!

Marvelous early jazz easily on a par with the recordings of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, though more big-band in style. I've been an enormous fan of Sweatman ever since hearing "Ringtail Blues" many years ago--"a ragtime orchestra gone berserk" was my description of this wonderful side. If only I'd gotten to hear the manic, drum-dominated "Oh! You La! La!" all those years ago, a side even more remarkable in its raggy jazzness than "Ringtail." And there is the remarkable Sweatman-penned jam number, "That's Got 'Em," which nearly qualifies as pre-1920 swing! There's a delightful kind of controlled sloppiness to the playing on these sides, a quality that is calculated and studied and always effective. I refer to a type of jazzy looseness that only the very best musicians can pull off. And these are great musicians. Bless Archeophone for giving us this priceless slice of jazz history. Get this one in your collection!

When I discussed the Ric Burns documentary about the old West with an Amerindian acquaintance, I complained that the film concentrated on the Lakota, to the exclusion of other peoples. My friend answered that, as the Lakota was the best known native American culture, that was a good place to start, and the audience would then move on to learn about other parts of the story.

I suppose the same is true of the documentary by Ric's brother Ken Burns, on the history of Jazz, on which this box set is based. It is heavy on Louis Armstrong and on the Big Band sound of the Swing era - probably the Jazz best known to the general public - but light in other areas, including the many, varied strands of Jazz in the last 30 years or so. There is a whole series of albums in the Ken Burns Jazz Collection, featuring individual artists, for those who want to pursue the story and start to fill in the gaps.

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 omission of Erroll Garner is one that struck me, especially ironic as the booklet accompanying this set has his name displayed on the cover! 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. I realize that this is specifically titled the story of American music, but Django Reinhardt gets a look in, as does some forgettable French rapper.

But this collection of 94 tracks, featuring recordings from 1917 to 1995, attractively packaged and with good notes, remains a great introduction to Jazz. In fact, now that the price has come down so much, it can be recommended for every music fan.

this music is classic jazz!
for anyone starting a jazz collection, you need this set.
if you like the pbs jazz series, your gonna love this music!

To chronicle the first six decades or so of American jazz in five CD's is an ambitious undertaking. Ken Burns pulled it off by making it the soundtrack to stories he wanted to tell. This made for heavy representation of songs from Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis easy choices. The documentary, in some ways, tells like an allegory of racism and civil rights in 20th century America, yet the soundrack includes white musicians like Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Dave Brubek and Benny Goodman in the CD selections. Brubek's inclusion is particularly notable after the documentary was so dismissive of "West Coast Jazz" - I don't even remember Take 5 being mentioned in the documentary. It would have been nice to include Bill Evans since every jazz pianist that followed him credited Evans as an influence, but his work as side man on "So What" is all we get. Herbie Hancock's Rockit is nowhere close to representative of his body of work. My main disappointment is that after Free Jazz and the like, jazz had nowhere left to go except backwards, yet the contemporary "pop" jazz at the end comes across as the latest and greatest thing yet. I respectfully disagree.

For those just getting into Jazz or just need a refresher course this is a great CD. I brought it for my husband who is a big Jazz fan and he just loves it and gets alot of use out of them.

A great cd with many remastered original recordings of jazz greats. Each cd features a different jazz era, so one can select a jazz genre to suit one's mood.

What a wonderful introduction to classical music for your children this CD is. My children love it and I do too. We use it as bedtime music now (ages 4 & 7). However, if your children really tune in to the music it can be a bit unnerving in parts so we used to only listen to it at home or in the car......they had to gain a few years to become comfortable with it in the darkness of their rooms at night. Buy this!

This is the first CD by the New Columbian Brass Band I have ever purchased, and I can't wait to own them all. This virtuoso group is a joy to listen to. Owning this CD is a must for lovers of brass band/turn-of-the-century music. It's a delight!

Dorian Recordings should be given some kind of award for the most imaginative releases of not only great historical but great musical value. (DOR-93201) features the New Columbian Brass Band under George Foreman playing 15 pieces written from 1900 to 1921 and inspired by animals.

So we have "The Teddy Bears Picnic," "A Morning in Noah's Ark," "The Two Little Bullfinches," "Turkey in the Straw," and even "Tiger Rag." The Noah's Ark number is replete with animal sounds by a guest expert and links up with an earlier Dorian release called "A Trip to Coney Island: Descriptive Overtures from America's Golden Age" (DOR-80153), which introduced me to a form of musical tone poem very popular around the turn of the century.

This is one of those rare recordings that will appeal to all age levels; and scholars will be delighted to note that "Turkey in the Straw" is actually a Humoresque for Clarinet. Also anyone who has ever seen barnyard chickens in any old Warner Brothers cartoon will have already heard "Chicken Reel." A very definite 5 star Grabbit.