Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Lester Young

Ken Burns JAZZ Collection, Lester Young | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 7, 2000)
• Original Release Date: November 7, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Polygram Records
• ASIN: B000050I3V
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #182,422 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What happened?, December 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Lester Young (Audio CD)

Being a Lester Young fan,I rushed home after buying this new CD.Even before playing it-I admired the handsome,nicely designed case it came in.When hearing the very first track"Oh,Lady be Good"-I couldnt believe how much hiss and crackling noise there was.The next few tracks sounded great-but then came the 3 tracks with Billie Holiday-also lots of hiss and noise.Then a few more songs-same distracting pops and cracks.I figured a high profile release like this,celebrating Ken Burn's upcoming documentary-proper care would certainly be taken in assuring clean(or as clean as possible)cuts. Sure,these are old songs from whatever source they had available-but I have most of these tunes on other CD's-particularly the "Quintessential Billie Holiday"series and various "Lester Young cd's-in which they sound fantastic.So,obviously clean sources exist.Perhaps it was the cleaning up process where they screwed up.Whatever the reason,it's a shame.BTW,I also bought the Louie Armstrong and Benny Goodman in this series and every song sounds great. That being said,I still enjoyed this CD.There were several songs that did sound great.I have no beef with the selection of songs-but c'mon-shouldn't they have taken better care with quality?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Founding father, May 10, 2003

By 

Blues Bro "bluesbro" (Lakewood, Colorado USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Lester Young (Audio CD)

The sound is not that bad really, there is some hiss, but nothing out of this world, its listenable. If you are not used to the sound of old 30's 40's recordings, it may sound rough at first. Charlie Parker once said to have leraned some of Lester solos note sby note, and when you hear Lester, you can certainly hera a lot of what Bird later developed. But Lester is undoubtely one of the originals and a giant in jazz.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great Music Ruined By Poor Sound Quality, August 25, 2005

By 

Jay (Chicago, IL.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Lester Young (Audio CD)

The music on this collection is great for an introduction to Lester Young, but unfortunately there seems to have been no effort taken to remaster the cuts here and everything sounds as if you were playing it on the original 78s. I know some people say you can't give this disc a low rating due to the fact that these are recordings from the 30's and 40's. Well, I say you can when there are other discs out there of the same material with sound quality that is far superior to what is offered here. If you want a good introductory disc of Pres that has a lot of material and is not too expensive check out the album "Lester Young: From A Cool Perspective." You get over 40 songs on two discs for around $17 and the sound quality is excellent on all the cuts, especially by 1930's and 40's standards.