Customer Reviews

The Earl Bostic Story

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am pleased with this cd set. Earl Bostic's sound is so different from most other sax men of his time. His flamingo and east of the sun are the best I have heard. Averall I give this set five stars.

Bob Poirier

This box set is half great and the other half is pretty useless, cornball pop all the way. Most of the first half, certainly the entire first cd is pretty hot, smokin', jazzy, jumpin' blues. Same for about half of the second cd, and half of the third cd. The fourth cd is pretty much totally useless. The good stuff is good, but the bad stuff is bad; pretty much sticking to the melody with straight arrangements, with Earl's alto sounding very old fashioned with a corny vibrato and not at all jazzy. I don't think that's what listeners would want in a set like this. Unless you're not interested in jazz or blues, but rather mundane recitals of melodies; then you would have no problem with the bad parts of this set. The odd thing is that the bad stuff is the stuff that would seem most interesting, with Blue Mitchell, Stanley Turrentine and John Coltrane in the band. But they do not solo and there is nothing here distinguishing them from any other unknown, nameless sidemen. In all fairness though, the hot stuff is very very fine with some great playing from Earl and some lesser known players, like Count Hastings on tenor. The first few cuts feature interesting solos from Tiny Grimes. There is some interesting guitar here, but on the interesting Sugar Hill Blues, the catchy guitar soloist is unknown. I'm not an expert on the Earl Bostic discography, but I suspect there there are more solid collections available. This is budget set though, so there may be enough to glean here to justify the purchase. But if you're looking for hard hittin' jazz blues all the way through, this is not the way to go...