Hier ist ein Auszug aus einer Amazon-Rezension des Hindsight-Sets (übrigens ist die Musik – wie bei Ellingtons Hindsight-Set auch – zuvor auf fünf LPs erschienen):
Here’s the straight deal: these are recordings of live radio broadcasts of Artie Shaw and his Orchestra that were performed between November 1938 and November 1939. The broadcasts came from The Blue Room in the Hotel Lincoln in New York City, the Summer Terrace at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Roof in Boston, and the Café Rouge at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. (Trivia note: this is the hotel that hosted Glenn Miller’s Orchestra for years, and lead to using the hotel’s phone number, Pennsylvania 6-5000, as a name for one of their pieces.) Although recordings of live radio are sometimes inferior, this collection has superb sound and captures the Shaw band at its peak: relaxed, creative, and swingin‘. You’ll hear many classics in new versions, as well as some wonderful rarities. There are a couple of duds, as Artie Shaw himself admits, but even these are interesting!
The Artie Shaw Orchestra of 1938-1939 was the best band he ever assembled, and the most popular. This is the orchestra that recorded „Begin and Beguine,“ Shaw’s best-selling record, and contained a line-up of astonishing musicians: Buddy Rich on drums, Tony Pastor on tenor sax and vocals, Georgie Auld on tenor sax, Helen Forrest on lead female vocals, and of course Shaw himself playing the most brilliant clarinet music you’ll ever hear. The music on these recordings shows them powering at their best, and you can see why they became America’s most popular band of the time.
Es gab von BMG auch eine Doppel-CD (zuvor Doppel-LP) mit dem Titel At the Blue Room/At Café Rouge, auf der einiges vom selben Material enthalten ist. Alles vom BMG-Release ist im Hindsight-Set, dieses ist aber wesentlich umfangreicher.
Ich melde mich gerne mal wieder zu Shaw und den Hep-Sets, wenn ich mir die Musik wieder mal anhöre. Kann aber dauern.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba