Volume Eight of Mercury's partial transfer onto CDs of its mighty Complete Keynote Collection LP set contains some wonderful Red Norvo small combo swing sessions. "Subtle Sextology," "Blues a la Red," "The Man I Love," and "Seven Come Eleven" come from some sextet sessions that sound very much like the sextet 78s that Benny Goodman was putting out around then. That figures, because Norvo participated on many of the BG sides - and so did pianist Teddy Wilson and bassist Slam Stewart; the latter gets plenty of humorous hum-scat time on these sides, too. For "Russian Lullaby," "I Got Rhythm," and "Sing Something Simple," the personnel shuffles (Wilson and Stewart remain) and expands to a septet for which Johnny Thompson writes some creative charts. Norvo plays xylophone on "Lullaby" and delivers unquenchably swinging vibraphone solos at all times…

The New Orleans barrelhouse boogie piano specialist's earliest sides for OKeh, dating from 1940-1941 and in a few cases sporting some fairly groundbreaking electric guitar runs by Jesse Ellery. Dupree rocks the house like it's a decade later on two takes of "Cabbage Greens" and "Dupree Shake Dance," while his drug-oriented "Junker Blues" was later cleaned up a bit by a chubby newcomer named Fats Domino for his debut hit 78 "The Fat Man."

10 CD Wallet Box featuring the best of late 40s/early 50s rhythm & blues, jump blues, boogie blues and just plain ol' blues.

This 24-CD box, which dwarfs even most Bear Family sets in scope, is essentially everything Ellington cut for RCA-Victor over a 46-year period. There are gaps, especially after 1946 when he jumped to Columbia, but otherwise, this is all of it. One quickly discovers that, by virtue of its leader's taste, combined with the good sense of RCA-Victor's recording managers, this was a band that did little, if any, wrong on record…

This four-CD set contains a somewhat streamlined presentation of Parker's complete known live broadcasts from New York's Royal Roost, dating during 1948 and 1949, augmented with five of the live September 29, 1947, Carnegie Hall recordings and one lower-quality tape made in Chicago during 1950…

This recent gospel compilation from Swedish producer and collector Per Notini is a three disc, 84 track set focused exclusively on a capella singing without any instrumental accompaniment. Featuring many well-known quartets such as the Fairfield Four and Soul Stirrers as well as lesser known artists, the set traces stylistic changes over a thirty year period, concluding in 1969 before the ‘contemporary’ gospel era. These groups created some of the most inventive and progressive African American vocal music of the post-war period, which had a profound effect on later R&B and soul artists, not to mention artists across all other genres.

Although my title seems to refer that the 1940's were happy, I meant that those were the days when I grew up hearing the music my parents & grandparents were playing on the old record player. The songs in this album are all sung or played by the original artists. It is a treasure to have if you were born in the 1940's or even the early 1950's. The songs remind me of wonderful memories being with my family on a Sunday afternoon, listening to the songs while my grandfather was in the kitchen making homemade chocolate cake & frosting. Days when we had nothing to worry about but licking that bowl when he was done.I love the 40's music & know if you listen to some of the tracks you will appreciate the music too. Hope you all enjoy as much as I do. - Amazon Review by Lorraine Latimer

Milton "Bags" Jackson (January 1, 1923 – October 9, 1999) was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms. He is especially remembered for his cool swinging solos as a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet and his penchant for collaborating with hard bop and post-bop players…

You know it's about time somebody took all the little records that Big Joe Turner managed to make back in the day and brought them out in sequence the way they appear in the Classics Chronological Series. Nobody in the world ever sounded quite like Joe Turner and nobody ever will. There is a magical quality that makes his blues performances feel like rituals full of clarity and grace. Each and every Joe Turner record is as beautiful as a massive stand of tiger lilies growing up through the middle of a brickyard, silent, solid, and dignified under the dew in the first light of dawn. Incredibly, despite his enormous popularity during the Second World War, by 1949 this gifted vocalist was scuffling to get recording gigs. Ten tasty sides were cut in Los Angeles for the MGM label with a solid band fairly bursting with hot horns and driven by Pete Johnson's piano. Joe Turner closed out the year by waxing two sides for Rouge Records in Baton Rouge, LA, and four for the Freedom label in Houston, TX. In April of 1950, Joe Turner made a fistful of records in New Orleans backed by Dave Bartholomew & His Orchestra with Fats Domino at the piano.

Mezz Mezzrow was a jazz musician better known for writing his exaggerated autobiography Really the Blues in 1946 than for his clarinet playing. This Classics disc highlights the year 1947 when Mezzrow was recording for his own King Jazz label. Even on up-tempo hot numbers, a hazy laid back approach was consistently maintained, which may have had something to do with Mezzrow's fondness for marijuana. However, these are highly enjoyable recordings that feature vocalist Coot Grant on six of the discs 20 tracks along with top New Orleans jazzmen including Sidney Bechet, Pops Foster, and Baby Dodds.

One of the last of the old country bluesmen to record, the diminutive Tommy McClennan delivered 40-some tracks to Bluebird Records between 1939 and 1942 before vanishing into the haze of blues history. Although small in stature, McClennan had a strong, raspy voice that brought a lively exuberance to his often generic lyrics, and his habit of tossing in spoken interjections - he literally talked to himself as he sang - give his songs the feel of intimate dialogues. This collection is the second, and final, installment of McClennan's Bluebird sessions to be released by Document Records. Unfortunately, the first one, 1939-1940 Whiskey Head Woman, Vol. 1, has most of his essential recordings on it. McClennan was a limited guitarist, and his singing approach, while exciting, was essentially shouting, and he had obviously run out of fresh ideas by the time of these final recordings…

Tommy McClennan would work in the cotton fields by day and in the evenings he would play on the streets of Greenwood, MS. Later he worked in juke joints and for dance parties, playing both the guitar and the piano. McClennan was a small man, standing just 4 feet 10, but this in no way negated the powerful voice that he possessed. His guitar playing is typical of the Mississippi style; simple, dominant, solid rhythms from the bass end with dashes of spikey treble riffs interjected between the vocal choruses. His voice was rough, hoarse and loud. Loud enough to be heard over the hubbub in a Mississippi juke joint on a Saturday night. Honey Boy Edwards tells of Tommy’s habit of standing in front of a mirror talking to himself…

20 Original Recordings Series Collection from 1930 to 1990!

Barret Eugene "Barry" Hansen (born April 2, 1941) better known as Dr. Demento, is an American radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present. Hansen created the Demento persona in 1970 while working at Los Angeles station KPPC-FM. He played "Transfusion" by Nervous Norvus on the radio, and DJ "The Obscene" Steven Clean said that Hansen had to be "demented" to play it, and the name stuck. His weekly show went into syndication in 1974] and was syndicated by the Westwood One Radio Network from 1978 to 1992. Broadcast syndication of the show ended on June 6, 2010, but the show continues to be produced weekly in an online version.
Hansen has a degree in ethnomusicology and has written magazine articles and liner notes on recording artists outside of the novelty genre. He is credited with introducing new generations of listeners to artists of the early and middle 20th century whom they might not have otherwise discovered, such as Harry McClintock, Spike Jones, Benny Bell, Yogi Yorgesson, Stan Freberg, and Tom Lehrer, as well as with bringing parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic to national attention