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60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complete Recordings With Sound Restored Finally Available, October 8, 2005
A portion of these recordings was released on a 12 lp set many years ago. My dad had a copy of the set when I was in my teens. I determined that as a fan of early jazz, I should listen to the whole set. I decided to make myself listen to one side of one lp every day. The first day I sat down and went through 3 1/2 lps. There was something hypnotic and fascinating about listening to Jelly talk and play, even though the speed was way off and the sound quality not good. It was hard to stop listening. With these disks it will be harder.
These are not for everyone. Someone just wanting to sample Jelly's music should buy a Red Hot Peppers CD. Jelly's language, in places, is not fit for young children or the faint of heart, particularly in sessions in which he had consumed a fair amount of whisky while recording. But this is a historic set of recordings. It is a first hand account of a largely undocumented world that existed a century ago and still has a profound effect on present day jazz and popular music. The speed has been corrected and the sound is much improved over the old Circle and Riverside issues.
I think it was Danny Barker who pointed out that Jelly was the product of an era in which there weren't publicists, so he can be excused if he engages in self-promoting hyperbole. While not everything Jelly says is the gospel truth, others have pointed out that many of the things he described have been authenticated by totally independent sources. Jelly may not have been the inventor of jazz, as he claimed, but he is probably closer than any other person. He was a generation earlier than Louis and Bix, and is one of the few primary sources of jazz prehistory.
I think everyone seriously interested in early jazz should consider this set. It is a monumental historic document in the field of jazz. For the price of an evening at a good restaurant, you get eight CD's, a copy of the Lomax book, and a new booklet which I must confess I have not read yet since I only have had the set for a couple of days.
I did notice a couple of things that might be corrected if there is another edition. The tracks on the CDs are in the order as stated in the printed material, but if played on a computer, some of the track names are wrong. Also, on Disk 8, in addition to the material that is supposed to be there, there is a repeat of an earlier track in which Jelly talks about Tony Jackson. These are minor items and shouldn't put anyone off from buying the set.
Rounder is to be congratulated. 67 years after the recording of a historic and entertaining document, we finally get to hear the whole thing at the correct speed and with much better sound than the earlier excerpted versions.
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44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Do not buy if you're only interested in the music!, November 11, 2005
The below reviewer (a reader) is absolutely right. The new audio restoration has impressively gotten rid of almost all of the extraneous hissing and popping that you heard on the 1993 release, but unfortunately, this has been carried out at the expense of the bass! It now sounds like you're listening to something recorded in 1903- everything is tinny and jarring. What's really a shame, though, is that the lower register of Jelly Roll's rich, rolling God-like baritone is attenuated, so though he's still chilling and wonderful to listen to, his voice no longer carries the same kind of authority it did in the old releases.
That said, this is an absolutely invaluable historical document, and even though it's no longer as pleasurable to the ear, Jelly Roll is still Jelly Roll, and listening to his unexpurgated conversation is sublime and worth twenty times the price of admission.
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64 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Important release marred by sound "restoration", November 4, 2005
These recordings are legendary, and it's taken 67 years for them to fully emerge. Though they are complete here for the first time (including all of Morton's spoken narration and incidental music), I feel this release has been mishandled.
The audio "restoration" here is vastly inferior to the 1993 Rounder issue of these sessions. Some pre-release apprehension arose when Rounder announced their use of the notorious Cedar remastering system for this 2005 edition. Concern was well-founded: the sound is thin, sharp and tinny. Even turning the treble response all the way down seems to have no effect. I've listened on different systems, with the same frustration--the material is great, but enjoyment is limited. The 1993 (music only) discs had a few minor speed/pitch inconsistencies, but the sound was rich and full, and made for pleasant listening.
This 2005 set does have some positive features. The booklet includes 25 pages of Morton's fascinating 1938 prose writings; another highlight is Disc 8, an audio/data CD with over 200 pages of written material, including a complete transcript of the Library of Congress interviews and other documents, enough to keep Morton scholars and enthusiasts busy for a while...
About the packaging: the box is rather unwieldy (shaped like a piano), a bit flimsy, and about twice as large as it should have been.
To conclude: a disappointing release (I recommend hanging on to those 1993 discs, if you have them). However, it contains much additional material (especially the data disc) essential to those interested in jazz history.
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