Teddy Wilson - Hall of Fame [Box Set]

All Music Guide

Past Perfect is an imprint of TIM The International Music Company AG, a German company that specializes in multidisc sets of unlicensed recordings by vintage artists, taking advantage of the 50year copyright limit on recordings in Europe. Past Perfect's Hall of Fame series presents fiveCD box sets that, as the cover note claims, “incl. 40 page booklet." Thus, here we have more than five hours of early Teddy Wilson, recordings made between 1934 and 1946. The material has been transferred from records originally released by such labels as Brunswick, Columbia, and Musicraft. The selections include tracks by the Wilsonled studio band of the 1930s that backed Billie Holiday, as well as material by Wilson's big band of the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, solo piano performances, and small groups later in the ‘40s. In addition to Holiday, the guest vocalists include Lena Horne, Helen Ward, and Sarah Vaughan, and the musicians are a who's who of swing stars, among them Dave Barbour, Chu Berry, Don B...yas, Benny Carter, Doc Cheatham, Buck Clayton, Cozy Cole, Roy Eldridge, Benny Goodman, Freddy Green, Bobby Hackett, Johnny Hodges, Jo Jones, Benny Morton, Red Norvo, Walter Page, Pee Wee Russell, Charlie Shavers, Ben Webster, and Lester Young. The booklet does indeed run 40 pages, and the 30 of those pages devoted to prose are closely printed. But the unsigned essay, like that for other Hall of Fame boxes, is an odd one, and not only because the phrasing is sometimes stilted (as if it had been written in a language other than English and then translated), but also because the essay contains factual errors, and the text and other credits are littered with typos, misspellings, and other minor errors (song titles and songwriting credits have been corrected for the All Music Guide listing). Needless to say, a jazz fan looking for a comprehensive box set of Wilson's work with coherent commentary should look elsewhere, but a casual fan interested in obtaining a big chunk of Wilson music at a modest price (which is what this set was selling for on release in American mailorder catalogs) could do worse. - William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Read more Less