Black Saint and Soul Note Complete Remastered Recordings

This might be covered in the Rolling Reissues thread, but here´s a separate thread on those BS&SN boxes. There are already quite a lot of those cheap white boxes with rare jazz records and Amazon mentions some more for november (among them Andrew Hill, Kenny Wheeler and Max Roach). Having started with the Paul Motian box (for the Bill Frisell collabs), which one should I get next? What are the highlights of the series?

wow, these looks excellent. i'd be interested in checking out the braxton box. the only one i really know out of there is birth and rebirth with max roach but it's a whole lot of fun.

I have three of them: Bill Dixon, Henry Threadgill, and the David Murray Octets box. All three are great. I've been looking at the Julius Hemphill one, too. I bought the Muhal Richard Abrams one, without ever having heard any of his music. Turned out I didn't like him much, so I got rid of it.

I love the George Russell. 9 albums for $25 was an insane deal for great hard to find music. I might have to look into the David Murray.

The Bill Dixon box is essential -- Soul Note was the only label he recorded for during that period, so it's a comprehensive document of probably his most prolific years.

And the Jimmy Lyons box was finally compiled/released late last year. Can't recommend it highly enough.

I've been eyeing the Russell, may pick that up.

Bill Dixon, George Russell and Henry Threadgill boxes seconded. I can also recommend: Anthony Braxton (although I can't quite get into *Composition No- 173* mostly because of the spoken bits - but that's only 1 of 8 CDs), Andrew Cyrille and Cecil Taylor. Oddly, I thought I'd like the Taylor one the best, but it's probably my least favorite of the bunch (but don't get me wrong - it's still great and recommended). It really depends on your tastes, but if pressed, I'd say go with Braxton or Threadgill next.

Taylor didn't do his best work for these labels, is the problem. The duos with Max Roach are amazing, but the rest of the music isn't as good as his work on FMP, for example.

Bill Dixon is the least familiar of those---describe contents of box and/or his signature sound, please.

Dixon is a very free, but not at all blaring or aggressive, trumpet player. His music has a lot of space to it, and a lot of low-end rumble (he frequently has two bassists, and one album, Thoughts, has three bassists and a tuba player). There are two discs of duos with percussionist Tony Oxley in the box, as well as two discs (Vade Mecum I and II) featuring Oxley and bassists Barry Guy and William Parker. Those are my favorites, but I also love Thoughts and Son of Sisyphus. Basically, all this music is really abstract in a painterly way rather than an everybody-screaming-at-once way; it's often breathtakingly beautiful.

誤訳侮辱 otm, and just to add, there's a couple of these up on youtube...Vade Mecum is my favorite, and was something of a game-changer in the music:
https://youtu.be/Ir8Q9pYe1NE

Dixon often said that one of his goals was to explore/play the register that's off the trumpet -- in addition to his full, warm, soft-around-the-edges tone, there are many excursions into multiphonics and a distinctly smearing quality. "Liquid" is an adjective he often used to describe the feeling the two-bass format allowed, and he was always a proponent of percussionists who didn't play like percussionists (he would instruct drummers in his classes, "Play something. Nothing percussive") -- of which Oxley is probably the best.

But the earlier records (In Italy, November 1981) have more traditionally recognizable signposts (often pulsative time, occasionally metric time, unison ensemble figures).

FYI, I wrote a big feature on Dixon for The Wire back in 2008; I'd thought it would be a cover story, but they put Mark Stewart on the cover 'cause he's from England.

That was a great feature, and yeah, it was annoying that Bill wasn't on the cover.

Thanks for the recommendations everyone. I saw David Murray with Henry Grimes and Sunny Murray once and it was fantastic. So I might get the David Murray one. A cheap introduction to Anthony Braxton might be a good idea too. Strangely it was Mary Halvorson that got me interested to delve into his work as she namedrops him in every interview she gives (curious to hear her solo record, two songs are already online on her bandcamp page).

I would not recommend this box as a Braxton starting point. If you can find cheap copies of his Arista albums, particularly New York, Fall 1974 and Five Pieces, 1975 and maybe The Montreux/Berlin Concerts, those are better entry points. (They're anthologized in a Mosaic box with a bunch of other great stuff, but that's expensive.)

Thanks, guys, will check out Dixon. Speaking of Murray, really enjoyed him with Geri Allen and Terri Lyne Carrington on a recent rerun of Jazz Night In America's Murray special, still hope they'll get around to making an album at some point.

Mosaic boxes are expensive yes. Still eyeing on that Woody Shaw Mosaic box too. I guess it´s a great supplement to the Columbia box (which is quite cheap).

I have both those Shaw boxes, and yeah, they rule. I just got into his solo work when those were released; what an amazing player he was.

Shaw is great on Hank Mobley's "Thinking of Home" too.

So some of CAMJAZZ boxes are no longer available. Today I got the Kenny Wheeler and George Lewis boxes after reading there were few copies left in the DMG newsletter. Amazon has some boxes too but I guess they will be OOP soon.

I wound up buying a bunch of these. I have the Braxton, the Dixon, the second Muhal Richard Abrams box (more duo and small group stuff rather than the large ensembles, which didn't do much for me), the Julius Hemphill, the Henry Threadgill, one by tenor saxophonist George Adams, one by the World Saxophone Quartet, all three David Murray boxes, and two by Max Roach.