Ella Fitzgerald – Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas – Acoustic Sounds Series 180g Vinyl
"Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas album is a secular holiday delight sure to please every listener, even atheists and agnostics. Originally released in 1960, the sound here is warm and inviting as a Yule log burning in the fireplace ... Perfect QRP pressing too." — Music = 9/11; Sound = 9/11 — Michael Fremer, AnalogPlanet.com.
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong – Ella & Louis – Analogue Productions 180g Stereo Vinyl
Elvin Jones – Poly-Currents Blue Note Tone Poet Series 180g Vinyl
After his six years with the seminal John Coltrane Quartet, the master drummer Elvin Jones signed with Blue Note in 1968 and began building his own career as a bandleader. His first two albums for the label were spare trio outings—Puttin’ It Together and The Ultimate—both featuring saxophonist Joe Farrell and bassist Jimmy Garrison. For his next album—1969’s unfettered post-bop exploration Poly-Currents—Jones expanded his ensemble with additional woodwinds and percussion while still maintaining spacious realms for the musicians to delve into on modal band member originals including “Agenda,” Agappe Love,” “Mr. Jones,” and “Whew.” Jones is joined throughout by a cast that includes Farrell on tenor saxophone, English horn, and flutes, George Coleman on tenor saxophone, Pepper Adams on baritone saxophone, Fred Tompkins on flute, Wilbur Little on bass, and Cuban conguero Candido Camero.
Eric Dolphy – Outward Bound (Stereo) – Analogue Productions 180g Vinyl
Eric Dolphy has sometimes been described as an iconoclast, but in Outward Bound, he was not overturning his idol, Charlie Parker; he was building on Bird’s legacy. So deep was Dolphy’s musicianship, so free his imagination, that he enchanted trailblazers like John Coltrane and Charles Mingus. Partnering in this collection with the brilliant trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and a stunning rhythm section, Dolphy is at a peak of energy and creativity on alto saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute. He and Hubbard work with empathy reminiscent of the young Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Pianist Jaki Byard, bassist George Tucker, and drummer Roy Haynes were ideal accompanists and co-conspirators in this widely influential work.
Erroll Garner – The Unreleased Berlin Studio Recording 1967 – The Lost Recordings 45rpm 180g Vinyl
Erroll Garner – A heavenly sense of magic
Erroll Garner was revered by both his peers, who ranked him among the foremost of the purest, most spontaneous geniuses that jazz has ever given us, and the general public, who intuitively recognized him as one of the magicians of the golden age, along with Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald, whose gifts could transform the suffering and humiliation of Afro-American life into the rhythm and outpouring of joy rather than anger and resentment. Forty-five years after his death, Garner, with his dazzling style that made such a radical break from existing trends, remains an enigma in the history of twentieth-century popular music. He is still unique and cannot be pinned down.