Search - Artie Shaw :: 20 Best of Artie Shaw (Dig)

You get what you pay for

Johnny Boy | Hockessin, DE | 06/15/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Artie Shaw is a legend. He is considered one of the kings of big band music, and it's not hard to see why. During his life, he recorded some of the finest jazz songs ever.



Madacy cashed in on Artie's name and released '20 Best of Artie Shaw,' a cheap way to buy Artie's music. It seems pretty good right? They took 20 of Artie's best songs and put them on one CD. How bad could it possibly be?



Oh, it's bad. REALLY BAD. The sound quality, as is the case on many other Madacy discs is terrible! The previous reviewer was spot on with that one! I have strong ears that can tolerate just about anything, but this is almost unbearable.



Buy 'Greatest Hits.' Buy 'The Essential Artie Shaw.' Buy any other collection besides this. But stay far, far away from this one. Avoid this at all costs.



NOT RECOMMENDED."

Great music. Poor mastering.

Michael Alan Rose | Los Angeles, CA | 03/01/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Is it possible to ruin music while trying to improve it? The answer is most definitely "yes!" I was looking for a clean copy of "My Heart Stood Still" and ordered "20 Best of Artie Shaw." The price was right but these classic Shaw tunes have annoying "digital artifact" throughout. Subtle audio "bumps," "squiggles" and single channel drop outs become very apparent with headphones. The only "liner notes" in this CD is a paragraph touting "...ground-breaking, high resolution 24-bit/96-KHz mastering technology." "Hooey" I say. Anyone familiar with Shaw's "Perfidia" will notice a few notes spliced out of the intro as well. In short, if you have a "tin ear" this CD may sound fine, but otherwise, save your money."

An Abomination AND Hoax. 5 Selections aren't even by Artie..

K. Ritter | Boston, MA | 05/05/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"... or any of the various bands he ever led or recorded with.



Artie Shaw's entire career as a bandleader in his own name was from the rather brief period of 1936-1954, or perhaps as late as 1955, when he made his last recordings. As for the four selections he did record in 1955 he did not play a single note of his brilliant clarinet on any of them. He served strictly as a recording session conductor of a studio orchestra, specifically assembled to record the four songs.



NOW, as far as THIS particular CD is concerned, four of the 20 selections on this CD are cheap low-budget re-makes of the great Shaw recordings of "Stardust", "Frenesi", "Temptation", and "Moonglow" that were originally recorded by Artie and his band (with strings) in 1940. THESE re-makes are performed by some second or probably third-rate clarinetist whose sound is obviously nothing comparable to Artie's own sound on the instrument and whoever this FAKE is, he is certainly NOT competent to record anything as a clarinetist in the Shaw repertoire. As for the "arrangements" of these four selections, they are obviously the work of some "hack" writer who tried to transcribe the original arrangements from the original recordings by Shaw and it is obvious to a trained ear that whoever this arranger was, he out-and-out took liberties with his own writing because careful listening will reveal that the arrangements are not even close to identical to Shaw's original arrangements. It should be noted that even today, almost 70 years after the four arrangements were written, all four of them complete with Full Scores and Parts exist in the collection of manuscripts that made up the *real* library of arrangements that were Artie's own personal property.



In this regard then, the recordings are at best, poorly created arrangemts and sub-standard performances of what is a blatant COUNTERFEIT of what was definitively defined by Artie himself on his own recordings many years before these abortions were committed to tape probably sometime in the 1960s or maybe 1970s.



Continuing in this vein, the selection "La Paloma" was never even recorded by Shaw during his career as a bandleader and not surprisingly, no arrangement of the tune exists in the files of the Artie Shaw band library of manuscripts that were the work of Artie and the arrangers Artie employed during his career as a bandleader. "La Paloma" is nothing but an adaptation of the tune "La Paloma" into an arrangement in the same style and manner of Shaw's greatest hit "Begin The Beguine". Unfortunately, the arrangement of "La Paloma" is a complete musical failure in that just does not work, sounds like a cheap imitation of the classic "Beguine" arrangement and again unfortunately, the clarinet part is performed by someone who should have considered selling his instruments and finding some other way to make a living; so bad is the clarinet playing on that tune.



If you are still reading this review, the other 15 tracks of this CD are of Shaw's band and therefore do feature his own clarinet playing of course, but the fake "tinny" sound of simulated stereo that has been over-equalized and applied to the 15 selections make this CD a candidate for being one of the worst possible releases of any kind of music by any record label. Anyone with half an ear should be able to discern how awful these tracks sound when you listen to the same exact recordings that have been released by reputable record labels who know what they are doing when it comes to sound reproduction.



This CD is not worth the disk it's burned on. It's a blatant forgery at worst, and a total failure of studio production on virtually all the other tracks. If you want to hear the REAL brilliance of Shaw's playing and the perfection of the ensembled he himself fronted and was responsible for, do yourself a favor and by a Shaw CD that is remastered from the original source recordings and re-issued on the original labels for whom Artie recorded (principally, RCA Victor, which is now BMG). As for broadcast recordings, there are MANY sources of high-quality CD issues of airchecks and transcription recordings of Artie and his various bands on other labels such as Hindsight, Phontastic, Jazz Guild, and Hep among others.



Only an ignorant fool who hates music or someone who is just plain deaf would waste a nickel on this CD. In one word this CD is a total abomination. And I'm only giving it 1 star because I have to give it something just to write this review, which is more of a warning to any prospective buyer to NOT buy this utterly awful disc. NEGATIVE 10 (-10) stars would still be too high a rating for this piece of crap."