Holiday Gift Guide 2012 [ box sets n the wake of the economic downturn, the days are gone when Sony Legacy would release such gorgeously packaged box sets as Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday On Columbia 1933–1944 (which came with a fat booklet of notes and photographs, its CDs ensconced in 78-like sleeves) or Miles Davis The Complete On The Corner Sessions (an allmetal case embossed with raised On The Corner cartoon figures). For Weather Report: The Columbia Albums 1971–1975, the jazz-rockelectronic innovators Weather Report are afforded an off-yellow cardboard case with secondhand graphics containing a measly if beautifully annotated booklet and six mini LPas-CD reproductions. Visually, The Columbia Albums takes its cue from the EU-only Sony/BMG Legacy 2007 release Weather Report Original Album Classics. Where the new set includes Weather Report’s first six albums, the EU collection was a greatest-hits package cherry-picking I Sing The Body Electric, Sweetnighter, Black Market, Mysterious Traveler and Night Passage. Both packages are similarly priced; how does the audio compare? Remastered by Grammy winner Mark Wilder, The Columbia Albums 1971–1975 was created using up-to-date, high-quality masters. Five of the six CD titles include bonus tracks culled from Live & Unreleased, a 2002 double-CD release; and 2006’s Forecast: Tomorrow. Freshly organized, the bonus material is finally contemporaneous with its original album release. The eponymous release Weather Report sounds utterly fantastic: detailed, warm, rich, exhilarating and as current sounding as the day it was released. In many ways, jazz and its offshoots have come full-circle, the practice of improvising within a democratic, collective-oriented stylistic palette a concept Weather Report pioneered and then exploited with inspired compositions and musicianship. Comparing the newly reissued I Sing The Body Electric to its EU counterpart, the differences are stark: greater musical detail from high to low registers, and an overall wider, deeper musical presentation. The bonus material is also a revelation. A studio version of “Directions” is an excellent companion piece to the original’s live version. DJ Logic’s forgettable remix of “125th Street Congress” closes Sweetnighter; live versions of “Cucumber Slumber” and “Nubian Sundance” complete Mysterious Traveler; “Man In The Green Shirt” and “Directions / Dr. Honoris Causa” close Tale Spinnin’. For Weather Report fans, completists and those who insist on the best possible audio reproduction, The Columbia Albums 1971–1975 is a must-have. —Ken Micallef Ordering info: legacyrecordings.com s a year of high-profile celebrations of Preservation Hall’s golden anniversary came to a close this fall, Artistic Director Ben Jaffe contemplated not just the Hall’s musical output, but also its meaning in both historical and personal terms. That exercise is clearly reflected in Preservation Hall Jazz Band: The 50th Anniversary Collection (Sony Legacy), a vast and carefully sequenced collection of 58 tracks. The initial inspiration for the project began when Jaffe visited the Katrina-ruined Sea-Saint Studios in 2006. As a child, he had watched his father, Preservation Hall founder Allan Jaffe, record and produce music there, with artists such as Percy and Willie Humphrey and James “Sing” Miller at his side. As an adult and second-generation director of the Hall, Jaffe had continued to record at Sea-Saint. He returned a few months after the storm, discovering that while the studio had flooded severely, the Preservation Hall master tapes had survived. Jaffe proceeded to restore five previously unissued recordings from those tapes—“I Get The Blues When It Rains” (1986), “In The Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)” (1967), “Nellie Grey” (1986), “C.C. Rider” (1981) and “Precious Lord” (1970)— which now appear on the anniversary collection. Like all the tracks in the set, these recordings are listed along with detailed explanations of their relevance to the band, New Orleans jazz or Jaffe himself. For example, “I’m Alone Because I Love You,” Jaffe explains, is included because the band has recorded it with three singers over the years: Sweet Emma Barrett, Harold Dejean and Clint Maedgen. “Part of our mission is to keep songs like this alive,” he writes. The intentionally non-chronological sequence helps highlight the value of reinterpreting songs from a canon, allowing them to develop differently for different generations: A 2008 King Britt remix of “St James Infirmary” plays up the rhythm of Carl LeBlanc’s banjo and Jaffe’s bass. A few tracks later, ’60s-era PHJB bandleaders De De and Billie Pierce’s version of the song is melancholy, with Billie’s haunting voice and De De’s mournful cornet overshadowing the beats held down in part by bassist Chester Zardis. Key PHJB leaders, from Barrett to Mark Braud, are also well-represented, with selections culled from different points in their careers. Meanwhile, Tom Waits, Pete Seeger and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James highlight the PHJB’s recent collaborative projects. As historian Bruce Raeburn observes in the liner notes, the collection is “kind of a family album” because of the musicians’ familial experience and the Jaffes’ actual bloodline. It seems fitting that the boxed set opens with a band introduction from Jaffe’s father, while its final song, “Precious Lord,” was played at Allan Jaffe’s funeral. When his own time comes, Jaffe writes, he wants the same song played at his. —Jennifer Odell Ordering info: legacyrecordings.com 68 DOWNBEAT DECEMBER 2012
DECEMBER 2012 DOWNBEAT 69