Jelly Roll Morton - Vol. III

Jelly Roll Morton - Vol. III
by Jelly-Roll Morton & His Red Hot Peppers



By A Customer

Jelly Roll Morton made a lot of exaggerated claims in his life, taking credit for the birth of jazz. No one really believes these claims, but it's amazing how much truth there is to them. For one thing, Jelly Roll Morton revolutionized the form, more than Charlie Parker did and maybe even Louis Armstrong. His early RCA Victor recordings laid much of the music's foundation, particularly the Chicago "Red Hot Peppers" recordings, and Morton himself has been hailed as the first great jazz composer in a long tradition of composers that include Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Wayne Shorter. Simply put, you can't say enough about the greatness and the importance of Morton's music.

This collection by JSP is an absolute godsend. Originally a British import that received poor circulation in the U.S., it went out of print for many years when JSP was bought by another company that went on to re-issue all of their CD's. As any jazz collector can tell you, these CD's are famous for the meticulous remastering done by jazz archivist/sound expert, John T. R. Davies, and this Jelly Roll Morton box set is one of THE gems of the JSP catalog. It covers pretty much the same recording as the RCA Victor box set, "Centennial," including every track of Morton's best and most famous work with his Red Hot Peppers. JSP's box set is much more preferable than the RCA Victor set for many reasons. First, alternate takes are place on separate discs (RCA stacks them on top of the master take), which makes for better listening. Second, the JSP box is much less expensive. Third and most important of all is sound quality. RCA's box set was released in 1990, and like all it's reissues of that era, it was heavily processed with NoNoise, leaving a squeaky clean sound, but with the high and low end frequencies lopped off. Furthermore, good sources weren't always secured by RCA, so many tracks on their set were taken from analogue tape copies of old source material. The overall result was a muffled, heavily compressed sound that squeezed the life out of the music. It was all the more depressing considering that the music was recorded extraordinarily well for their time. With this JSP box set, Davies secured superior sources, including some rare 78 rpm records from private collections. Furthermore, noise reduction was very minimal, which means there's more surface noise on these CD's, but the liveliness of the sound is simply amazing. Simply put, there's absolutely no reason to buy "The Centennial" box set when you have this beauty available.

Much of this music is essential to any jazz collection, and this box set from JSP is absolutely the best way to attain it. Great music, amazing sound quality, and a great bargain.

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