Search - Dizzy Gillespie :: Quadromania

Wrong disc enclosed

Matthew Watters | Vietnam | 05/10/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"What a disaster. My experience with this set brought to a quick end my flirtation with these amazingly inexpensive but beautifully packaged Quadromania sets from the German label Membran. Many of them have rushed in and out of print so quickly that I rather suspect Membran was playing fast-and-loose with licensing, adding music to their compilations that they may not have had rights to. This Dizzy Gillespie set was erased so thoroughly from their website, I suspect they got their fingers burned on this one, and my experience with it suggests that the problem was with Disc Three here, which purported to reproduce in its entirety the famous Jazz at Massey Hall set from 1953, with Diz, Bird, Bud Powell, Max Roach and Charlie Mingus. When I realised it was supposed to be in here, I bought this set with a quickness, only to take it home, tear it open, and find that Disc Three had been replaced with Disc Three from the Billie Holiday Quadromania set. Hmmmmm. While all the other music here is five-star, documenting Dizzy's important big band recordings from 1948-50, and including the small-group album The Champ, which is really lovely, this set deserves the lowest possible rating for the poor quality control, which extends to the accompanying booklet, which is rife with misspellings and errors, becoming virtually useless by the time you reach Disc Four. No wonder Membran wants to erase this bad memory. As for me, I consider myself warned..... (I live in Viet Nam, where shops don't have a return policy, so I am stuck with three-fourths of a Quadromania.)"