oh my................!

Available now for pre-order:

http://www.mosaicrecords.com/genres.asp?dept=50

No clue where the $'s are coming from, but I'd love to own this one.

Dig deep. Gonna be a good 'un!

As if that weren't enough, there's an all-day Coleman Hawkins birthday broadcast on WKCR on Nov.21. Streaming at WKCR.org.

It's been pushed back to mid December, give me a few extra weeks to try to save.

January now.

March now.

Maybe I'll have the $'s by March..............

From Mosaic today:


We thank you for supporting our upcoming Coleman Hawkins set, a project filled with great new transfers and a handful of amazing discoveries. And we thank you for your patience which deserves some explanation.

As many of you know, the recording industry is in economic turmoil and the major labels in particular have slashed their staffs repeatedly over the past 12 years. That has caused a slowdown in almost every facet of what it is they do and that includes the legal clearance process to greenlight archival material for licensing purposes (to us in this case).

Our Coleman Hawkins set, which has been ready to go for months in terms of both music and artwork, is a particularly thorny situation for clearance as it involves very old material from multiple labels. We are still awaiting clearance and our hope is that it will be cleared in the near future and we will have sets by March…But we also thought we'd have sets in time for the holiday season.

Unfortunately we cannot finalize a release date as this kind of delay is completely out of our control and we can only be politely persistent in pushing the good-to-go signal. We apologize for this delay, but can assure you that this set will be well worth the wait!

Regards,
Mosaic Records

That's so ironic............... they're saying the bad economy is causing the delays............ i would think in this bad economy the rights holders would want the $'s asap!!!

The "rights holders" also need to remember that this ENTIRE SET is public domain everywhere in the world except the USA & possibly Canada. If the set leaks, ANY company outside of North America can duplicate it & the "rights holders" will get NOTHING.

Idiots.

April/May now.

I'm still on the fence on the Lunceford box. The free shipping ends Monday night, so I have to decide. Has anyone heard it?

Re the Hawkins: I sure hope it makes it out. I still don't get the "rights holder" issues in this economy; they should be grateful that Mosaic is going to generate any revenue for them.

I have it and love it. Not an audiophile so can't add anything more than that.

I bit on the Lunceford. Hope I like it! I'm more concerned about the ratio of jazz to pop than the sound. From the Lunceford in my collection, he seems to vary from almost Ellingtonian jazz to horrid sugar coated pop.

The only bad sounding Mosaic set I've ever heard is the most recent Ellington Big band box. While that pissed me off to no end, I assume it was an aberration.

May/June.

It may be just as well. I posted in a couple places yesterday regarding my unhappiness with the bright sound of the last Ellington box. I received the following copy of an email that a professional jazz writer had recently sent to Mosaic. It was forwarded to me (& others) by a knowledgeable retired major jazz producer (I'm not naming anyone because I haven't asked permission to do so, though this was posted semi publicly on the Duke Ellington list)

"I wrote a rather scathing review of the sound (and other deficiencies) of
Mosaic's Artie Shaw set. It was published in the IAJRC Journal. The man
responsible for the sound on the later Mosaic reissues is Andreas Meyer.
Why Scott Wenzel has not done something about the shrill sound Mr. Meyer
continues to produce is a mystery to me. As someone who continuously
remasters vintage recordings, I can tell you that this type of distortion
of is completely unnecessary given the digital tools available today."

From Mosaic a few days ago:

"We are finally heading to the finish line for the Coleman Hawkins set. We are in production and expect to ship the set late May/early June.
We thank you for supporting the Coleman Hawkins set, a project filled with great new transfers and a handful of amazing discoveries. And we thank you for your patience.

Regards,
Mosaic Records"

delete

FYI, the person mastering this box is Andreas Meyer.

The jazz producer I mentioned above did state that in his opinion Meyer was THE cause of the screechy sound quality of the last few Mosaic releases.

As such, I will be holding off on this one until & unless at least a couple very positive reviews are written on the sound.

While I do think Mosaic is a tremendous company with amazing exclusive releases & great customer service, there is no need for loudness wars mastering in classic jazz, & I will not pay top $ for it.