A very fresh look at the music of Verve Records – that legendary jazz imprint that's made wonderful sounds from the late 40s onwards! Verve is well-known as a label for classic jazz albums – work by Stan Getz, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, and many others – but during the company's initial wave of releases, they also issued a fair number of singles, too – offering different mixes and versions of tracks than appeared on the full length records! This sweet 5CD set is a marvelous overview of that era – and is especially strong on music from Verve's big years of the 50s and 60s – a time when the label was really helping shape American musical tastes, and was getting a lot of these singles out there on the charts, on the radios, and in the jukeboxes too. The set features 100 rare singles, served up on five differently-themed CDs – Just Friends (1947 to 1956), Stairway To The Stars (1956/
1957), Bossa Nova (1958 to 1963), Goldfinger (1963 to 1965), and Bumpin On Sunset (1965 to 2001). The Stairway To The Stars CD features work from Verve's big wave of vocal recordings in the mid 50s – songs by Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby,
Fred Astaire, and others – and Goldfinger has some ultra-cool bits from Verve's mod years – including work by Jimmy Smith, Donald Byrd, Lalo Schifrin, Stan Getz, and Bill Evans. The Bossa Nova material is great, and more than stands for itself – and the Bumpin On Sunset CD features some overlooked gems from the late 60s and early 70s – with really only one later track. 100 songs in all, 5CDs, and a nice booklet with notes and players for each single.
(Out of print and in great shape!)