Jazz on the Cheap

I bough a couple more Jazz CDs this week. Well, I say a couple but it was actually a total of 6 albums for a shade under £8. Not bad value. In fact it is remarkably cheap - they would probably have cost more than that in the 1950s when they were first released. The reason for this is that, at the moment, there are no royalties due on recorded works over 50 years old in the EU. This is due to be changed once the legislation is passed by the Council of Ministers to extend it to 70 years. On the one hand I'm a bit put out by this as it will make it more difficult to get cheap music. On the other hand the change will protect artists who are still living and provide them with some sort of pension income in their old age - assuming they are actually still the beneficiaries.

As for the recordings themselves, I was a little worried that they may not be up to the standard of a major label release. The albums I was getting are all from the late 1950s so they original masters should have been fine. As it is, the recordings sound excellent to me although I don't have anything to compare them against and, even though they are described as digitally remastered, I do wonder if they may have sounded better if remixed from the original master tapes in the manner that many of the Rudy Van Gelder produced works have been.

Regardless of the fidelity of the recordings the actual albums are a real steal. I've gone for two artists that I have taken to - John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. The Coltrane albums consist of Blue Train, Traneing-In and Dakar. Blue Train is regarded as one of his first masterpieces and it is well worth a listen. However the style of playing is still heavily influenced by Charlie Parker and the whole bebop genre, especially compared to later albums like Giant Steps where he really redefined his own style of Jazz. In this respect the accompanying bonus albums, Traneing In and Dakar, are quite interesting in their own right. These albums are not generally regarded as classics but they do show Coltrane's progression towards his own style and are interesting for that if nothing else - in fact, I thought the music was rather good as well. One point of annoyance is that the cover on the Amazon website actually had Soul Train in place of Traneing In but, in fairness, they did list the tracks correctly.

The Thelonious Monk albums are Brilliant Corners, Thelonious Himself and Monks Music. The only other Monk album I have is a compilation of his 1960's work but these albums offer an overview of Monk at his height with such classics as Bemsha Swing, 'Round Midnight and Epistrophy in different versions to those I have heard previously. This was on a double CD and the label chose to put Thelonious Himself across the two CDs rather than keeping all the albums together (as on the Coltrane disks). This does disjoint the albums slightly but it was required to fit on two CDs and (presumably) keep the costs down. I do like to listen to albums in their original form but it's a sacrifice I can live with to get the three albums at such a low price. As it is, Thelonious Himself is largely solo piano and so the join is quite obvious. I bought this on the basis of the reputation of Brilliant Corners (which is very good) but Monks Music is worth the price of the set on it's own - every track is a classic.

Overall, I'm happy with the purchase and I think I'll be looking for these bargains again (at least whilst they last). Interestingly, I also bought a compilation of Welsh Heavy Metal outfit Budgie on this order. I've always said that I have very catholic tastes in music - but that's a story for another day.