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Fantasy Box Set League
Joe Henderson
saxophone1937 - 2001
In these later days, when the audience for such extravagance is both smaller and crazier than that in the CD's heyday, sets tend to take two approaches. "Beyond Exhaustive" is for those boomers and Gen Xers who cannot get enough of a favorite popular artist—or album—of their youth.
Bob Dylan
guitar and vocalsb.1941
The Police
band / ensemble / orchestrab.1977
Jeff Beck
guitar1944 - 2023
"The Same But Nicer" is the (slightly) saner approach: just bundle together several catalog recordings by an artist, spiffed up with new remasters or all analogue pressings. In contrast to box sets of old (which loved to pull apart and reconstitute albums based on chronology, or stick a series of alternate takes right after the master), box sets today tend to treat the original albums as more or less sacred. And good for them.
Compact disc sets are still with us, and in some cases the only practical way to present a large swath of music, especially material that first appeared as a jumble of singles, EP's, outtakes and albums. But collectors of physical media have turned in large numbers to vinyl. The plastic resurgence encourages fairly conservative presentations of original LP's by vetted artists, as the financial commitment when buying several 180 gram platters in a box is substantial. Plus, it's just plain space intensive. Collectors don't want large-format renditions of third-rate material cluttering their shelves.
The jazz world has gingerly stepped into the fray. Blue Note offered a six LP Tone Poet set of
Ornette Coleman
saxophone, alto1930 - 2015
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis
saxophone, tenor1922 - 1986
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
But collectors are never satisfied. Here are elevator pitches for four box sets that would be as artistically satisfying as most of the current offerings, if not more so. The only catch? They feature less well-known musicians. Please feel free to suggest your own fantasy sets in the comments section below.
The Complete Riverside Recordings of
George Russell
composer / conductor1923 - 2009
Serious students of jazz history know George Russell as the author of The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization. The less ambitious souls among us will be relieved to hear that along with being jazz's preeminent theorist, Russell was also a decent pianist and percussionist, an amazing composer/arranger, and a gifted bandleader. His most accessible and arguably best-realized work was done from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties. During this period, he recorded several albums with a sextet featuring rotating personnel. Notable guest appearances include
Eric Dolphy
woodwinds1928 - 1964
Sheila Jordan
vocals1928 - 2025
Put these elements together, and you get four challenging but entertaining discs full of bright moments. The albums in question—Stratusphunk, Ezz-thetics, The Stratus Seekers, and The Outer View—admittedly have egghead titles and abstract artwork that signals "serious business afoot." But the actual music on offer is more fun, engaging, and downright entertaining than the packaging implies. Russell may be ambitious, but his ambitions pay off in delightful music, left of hard bop orthodoxy but never abstract or abrasive just to make a point.
In a perfect word, the set would comprise all of Russell's small group efforts of the era, which would pull in albums on Decca, Verve, and most crucially his brilliant debut on RCA records, the Jazz Workshop release featuring Bill ("the kid") Evans on piano. But label politics being what they are, we can settle for his four wonderful Riverside albums. If Craft can put out four discs of Eddie Lockjaw Davis cookbook sessions (and they did, and admittedly the results were a gas), surely they can release these discs by one of jazz's greatest unknowns.
The Complete 1970's Muse Recordings of
Pat Martino
guitar1944 - 2021
Guitarist Pat Martino has one of the more fascinating biographies in jazz. He lost his memory, including his mastery of the guitar, due to a stroke in 1980 and had to rebuild his technique from scratch. Some consider his post-recovery recordings as his deepest efforts, but let's plump instead for the amazing series of records he made for the Muse label before his stroke: Footprints (a reissue of The Visit! on Cobblestone but too good to pass up), Live!, Consciousness, We'll Be Together Again, and Exit.
Martino's profile suffers from his status as a stylist rather than an innovator, a stylist whose most characteristic work appeared in a decade many jazz purists like to repress in their memories. He dabbled in fusion (on two seventies Warner Bros. albums which have their own charms) but mostly stuck to intense post-bop note-slinging. He's not going to head a chapter in any jazz textbooks, but in the seventies he made nothing but wonderful records. The man can just plain play, he had a good head for picking tunes, and his recordings sound great. In physical form, at least, these albums can be tough to track down, which is all the more reason a set will fill a gap for modern collectors. It's time for jazz fanatics to get over their seventies-phobia. A lot of great stuff was recorded that decade—it just didn't get much love at the time.
The outstanding albums in the set include Live!—where Martino uncorks a performance on "Sunny" for the ages—and We'll Be Together Again—a duet with keyboardist
Gil Goldstein
pianoThe Complete Concord Recordings of
Emily Remler
guitar1957 - 1990
Remler could be seen as the next exemplar of mainstream,
Wes Montgomery
guitar1923 - 1968
She made only one record after leaving Concord, and it was foray into fusion. For now, let's focus on the more traditional efforts made for a label that celebrated tradition. Firefly, Take Two, Transitions, Catwalk, Together, and East to Wes form the bulk of her recorded legacy. Concord has not kept this set of albums in print as it should. The availability of physical releases is spotty and even Remler's streaming presence is not exhaustive. It is far too difficult to track down what should be easily accessible recordings. Surely dubbing masters from the 1980s is no daunting archeological task.
Remler, like Martino, suffered from being seen as a stylist playing in a somewhat "old-fashioned' idiom. The eighties jazz scene was shadowed by titanic struggles between the "young lions" (who had major label backing and really nice suits) and the avant-traditionalists (who recorded on Black Saint and similar labels, wore more colorful threads, and made a lot less dough). Remler—white, female, and Jewish—didn't fit into either camp. Her gender was a novelty in the jazz world of the cocaine decade, and while it led to a certain amount of press attention, it is not clear that the write-ups helped her sales or reputation.
In current times, when women musicians are more widely accepted in jazz, Remler's gender should be an asset in the marketplace rather than a liability. The recent Resonance Records issue of two live dates from Las Vegas (the second of which absolutely cooks) will, with luck, remind lovers of the jazz mainstream what a talented and charismatic player she was. But it does little good to heighten awareness of a musician's talent when her recorded legacy is not readily available. Remler made six fantastic-sounding records for an admittedly sometimes stodgy label. They should get the deluxe treatment as vinyl-fetish objects pronto, before her profile begins to sink again.
Concord has been quiet on the reissue front, and admittedly a lot of their product changes hands at bargain prices in second-hand markets. But they should make an exception for Remler, a young artist who was peaking during her stay with the label, and who deserves a second hearing from jazz listeners who may have overlooked her during the heat of neo-con ascendance. A set of her recordings should be a low-effort no-brainer for Concord.
JoAnne Brackeen
pianob.1938
All of these box sets are big asks, but here we truly enter the realm of fantasy. Brackeen, born 1938, was an almost exact contemporary of
McCoy Tyner
piano1938 - 2020
Herbie Hancock
pianob.1940
Chick Corea
piano1941 - 2021
Keith Jarrett
pianob.1945
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Art Blakey
drums1919 - 1990
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
Joe Henderson
saxophone1937 - 2001
Her powerful, percussive touch on the piano has led to comparisons with
McCoy Tyner
piano1938 - 2020
Brackeen's albums from her first six years as a leader saw her working mostly in smaller formats. Mythical Magic is a solo outing; New True Illusion, Trinkets and Things, and Prism are duet sessions; Snooze, Invitation, Aft, Keyed In, and Special Identity are trios; Tring-a-ling and Ancient Dynasty feature guest tenor sax players. Her recordings feature excellent musicians—
Clint Houston
bassb.1946
Cecil McBee
bassb.1935
Eddie Gomez
bassb.1944
Michael Brecker
saxophone, tenor1949 - 2007
Joe Henderson
saxophone1937 - 2001
She cut eleven albums in six years—1981 was chosen as a stopping point because she didn't record again for a few years after that. Those albums were on a handful of different labels, and it is difficult to imagine how the rights could be sorted out for a single box. Given the number of recordings involved, a vinyl release might be impractical. Could Mosaic or a similar enterprise put together, say, a 7 or 8-CD set covering the period? It certainly would be challenging, but the real question is whether an audience could be found for it.
That question, though, is a bit circular. We love boxes of our favorite artists, but when we come across a box set featuring an unfamiliar name we are perhaps a little more willing to assume the music is worth exploring since it received such an expensive tribute. A recent example of this treatment would be the lavish set devote to harpist
Dorothy Ashby
harp1932 - 1996
All the sets described above are fantasies, Brackeen's most of all. But it someone had told me ten years ago that Dorothy Ashby was getting a six LP set dedicated to her leader dates, I would have recommended psychiatric help. Fingers crossed at least one of these gets wished into existence. If not, there are always streaming services, used record stores, and online merchants to search for access to outstanding recordings by these lesser-known but excellent musicians.
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Highly Opinionated
Joanne Brackeen
Patrick Burnette
Joe Henderson
Bob Dylan
Police
jeff beck
Ornette Coleman
Sonny Rollins
Eddie Lockjaw Davis
Miles Davis
George Russell
Eric Dolphy
Pat Martino
Gil Goldstein
Emily Remler
Wes Montgomery
McCoy Tyner
Herbie Hancock
Chick Corea
Keith Jarrett
John Coltrane
Art Blakey
Stan Getz
Clint Houston
cecil mcbee
eddie gomez
Michael Brecker
Dorothy Ashby
Sheila Jordan
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