VA - Paramount Jazz (4 CD Box-Set) (2009)

Working in collaboration with archivist Joe Bussard, the amazing JSP label has made large quantities of vintage music available in beautifully remastered and surprisingly affordable four-CD sets. Breaking Out of New Orleans documents the early northern migration of Crescent City jazz bands, while Gennett Jazz and Paramount Jazz each sample the thriving Chicago music scene during the '20s. Paramount Jazz forages even wider and deeper than the Gennett set, covering the years 1921-1929 with 100 titles credited to a profoundly diverse procession of singers and instrumentalists. For every familiar name like Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Fletcher Henderson, Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters and Ida Cox, there are dozens more who are well-worth investigating, regardless of how little or how much you think you know about this kind of music. For those who are so inclined, this reservoir of historic recordings may serve as a seed bed for individualized musicological research. Lovie Austin's Blues Serenaders, for example, was both the house band for Paramount Records and an important showcase for the talents of cornetist Tommy Ladnier and clarinetist Jimmy O'Bryant. Multi-instrumentalist Boyd Senter is often branded with the word "obscure", (a term that could be taken to mean "out of sight") but his presence in several early Jelly Roll Morton ensembles seems to bring him ever so slightly forward out of the shadows. As for the Wisconsin U Skyrockets, Charlie Straight's Orchestra, the Midway Garden Orchestra and Devine's Wisconsin Roof Orchestra, these charming dance bands work nicely as stylistic counterweights in the same package as Jeanette's Synco Jazzers, Vance Dixon's Jazz Maniacs, Perry Bradford's Jazz Phools, Jasper Taylor & His State Street Boys, Preston Jackson & His Uptown Band, and Jimmy Blythe's Washboard Ragamuffins. Note that JSP has also released Paramount Masters, a survey of classic early blues, and Paramount Old Time Recordings, a tour of early white rural and hillbilly music. Each compilation in the JSP catalog is intended as both an introduction to and a celebration of the musicians and their music. None of these sets are exclusively designed or narrowly recommended for specialists and connoisseurs. The Gennett Jazz anthology's copious explanatory notes, the inclusion of well-known classic jazz recordings that most experienced early jazz lovers are sure to already own, and the absence of alternate takes are clearly in line with JSP's mission to make historic recordings accessible to anyone who wants to dive in and experience music played and heard so very long ago. The fact that the Paramount Jazz box is richly stocked with a higher percentage of rare material makes it all the more exciting and entertaining for experts and newcomers alike.