Books, Arts & Manners: Toward a Jazz CD Collection

The advent of the compact disc has brought about such an outpouring of digitalized versions of the classic jazz shellacs that the average record buyer needs an Alpine guide to make his way through it. Here, merely as suggestions, are a dozen or so CD recordings with which both the new collector and the collector switching over to this great new medium can start a jazz CD library.

Bessie Smith (BBC, distributed by Mobile Fidelity Sound, 1280 Holm Road, Petaluma, Calif. 94952): The Columbia collection of the “Empress of the Blues” has long been out of print. But here on one CD are among the best of the 160 sides this throw-’em-down blues singer recorded. A powerful voice and a moving delivery add to the poignancy of the songs Bessie sings.

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The advent of the compact disc has brought about such an outpouring of digitalized versions of the classic jazz shellacs that the average record buyer needs an Alpine guide to make his way through it. Here, merely as suggestions, are a dozen or so CD recordings with which both the new collector and the collector switching over to this great new medium can start a jazz CD library.

Bessie Smith (BBC, distributed by Mobile Fidelity Sound, 1280 Holm Road, Petaluma, Calif. 94952): The Columbia collection of the “Empress of the Blues” has long been out of print. But here on one CD are among the best of the 160 sides this throw-’em-down blues singer recorded. A powerful voice and a moving delivery add to the poignancy of the songs Bessie sings.