The Memphis Jug Band are generally primarily associated with the blues, but in truth they were a more broad-based musical agglomeration, whose music was designed to be danceable, humorous and out-and out entertaining. Their line-up varied across the years, but the essential jug band sound and instrumentation of guitar, jug, kazoo, harmonica, and occasional banjo, mandolin, washboard and woodblocks, remained at the core of their sound, which has provided a template for skiffle groups and modern jug bands ever since, with many of their songs also still being performed by such bands. This great-value 72-track 3-CD set comprises most of their recordings for Victor and Okeh during this era, including recordings as The Memphis Sheikhs and The Carolina Peanut Boys. It features some of those jug band classics which have passed into later bands' repertoires, including "He's In The Jailhouse Now", "Move That Thing", "On The Road Again", and "Bottle It Up And Go". It's a comprehensive overview of their career, and a highly entertaining showcase for their rough-edged but finely-honed skill as entertainers.

Of all the pianists in the annals of jazz, Art Tatum is the one who is most often cited by the great pianists of the post-war era as a key influence and inspiration, his remarkable speed, dexterity, fluency and sheer relaxed mastery of the keyboard in his prolific interpretations of the standards from the Great American Songbook setting him apart from just about all of his peers. Developing his skill despite his blindness, he astounded observers, who marvelled at his technique, often saying that he sounded like two people playing. This great-value 93-track 4-CD set comprises a significant proportion of his recordings from his studio debut in 1932 through to 1947 - at that point he began recording for Capitol, and after that had a second substantial career phase recording for Norman Granz's labels during the '50s. It primarily features solo recordings on the Brunswick, Decca, Asch and ARA labels as well as V-Disc recordings, plus trio and small band recordings for those labels as well as Comet, and recordings with the Barney Bigard Sextet for Black & White and other bonus offerings. It does not purport to be a complete or definitive cross-section of this first significant era of his career, but it's certainly a substantial and representative showcase for one of the great piano stylists of the genre.

William "Count" Basie was one of the most important, innovative and influential personalities in jazz during the middle decades of the 20th century, both as pianist, composer and bandleader, his music transcending the worlds of small group jazz, big band music, swing and R&B, and with many future stars of the genre coming to prominence playing with his orchestra. Having honed his skills with Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, he formed his own orchestra in 1936 after Moten's death and after a lengthy engagement in Chicago signed to Decca, recording for them until almost the end of the decade. This 63-track 3-CD set comprises his releases for Decca during those years, which laid down a marker as to the talent and style of his bands, and constitute a significant and satisfying body of work. The collection features many of his well-known compositions like "One O'Clock Jump", "Blue And Sentimental", Blues In The Dark", along with some of the classic standards of the era. A number of the tracks feature vocals by the great singers Jimmy Rushing and Helen Humes, and among the predominantly big band recordings are some by Basie with a trio comprising Fred Green, Walter Page and Jo Jones. Among the other musicians in his line-up were Buck Clayton, Lester Young, Harry Edison and Dickie Wells. It's a substantial, entertaining and enlightening overview of this key era of Basie's career.

Rosemary Clooney, well-known in recent years as the aunt of movie star George Clooney, was one of the most popular and successful pop singers of the immediate post-war decades, racking up a remarkable string of hits in the early '50s. She called herself "a sweet singer with a big band sensibility"

Arthur 'Blind' Blake was a blues and ragtime guitarist, singer and songwriter who was a leading pioneer and member of what became known as the Piedmont school of bluesmen, performing in a style that was associated with the south-eastern states of the USA, mainly around Georgia

Tony Pastor was a jazz and big band saxophonist, singer and bandleader who was with Artie Shaw's orchestra during the '30s before launching his own band in 1940, subsequently enjoying a highly successful chart career through the 1940s with a distinctive style of upbeat and entertaining middle-of-the-road music, including the novelty-flavoured material popular in that era. In the later years of the decade, he provided an early career opportunity for Rosemary Clooney and her sister Betty, who recorded with Pastor through 1948-49, and who are featured on a dozen or more titles here. This 72-track 3-CD set comprises selected A and B sides from his singles on the Bluebird, RCA-Victor, Cosmo and Columbia labels during this era, and features all his fifteen US chart entries, including the Top 10 hits "Maria Elena", "Dance With A Dolly", "Bell Bottom Trousers", Sioux City Sue", "Red Silk Stockings And Green Perfume" and "The Lady From Twenty-Nine Palms". It features at least one side of a significant proportion of his releases during these years. Along with Tony Pastor himself and The Clooney Sisters, featured vocalists include Johnny McAfee, Eugenie Baird, Dorsey Anderson, Kay Little, Elisse Cooper, Kay Foster, Rita McCullough and Virginia Maxey. It's a substantial and enjoyable showcase for the music of an artist who is not much talked about these days but who made a significant contribution to the popular music of this primary decade and more of his career.

The music of Glenn Miller's orchestra was central to the style and atmosphere of the Swing Era and is inextricably associated with the Allied victory in WWII, his hits keeping people's spirits up on both sides of the Atlantic, with Miller himself becoming part of the war effort until his mysterious disappearance in 1944. Such was his popularity that in the period of less than a decade from his launching his orchestra in the mid-30s through to his demise, he had over 120 hits, both with his instrumental classics and with the new songs of the time. This great value124-track 5-CD set comprises just about all of recordings on the Columbia, Brunswick, Bluebird, Victor and RCA-Victor labels which are listed as hits in standard industry sources, many from the era after the launch of the Billboard record sales charts in 1940. It features an extraordinary tally of 21 No. 1s, including "A String of Pearls", "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", "Moonlight Cocktail", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Tuxedo Junction", "In the Mood", "Blueberry Hill", "Fools Rush In" and many more. The featured vocalists include Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton, Tex Beneke, Kathleen Lane, Jack Lathrop, Dorothy Claire, Paula Kelly, Skip Nelson and The Modernaires. It's a substantial and entertaining showcase for one of the most important orchestras of the times, and an enormously evocative journey through the popular music landscape of a remarkable era in modern history.

Born in Mississippi in 1915, Al Hibbler, who was blind from birth, was a baritone vocalist whose career transcended the divide between big band jazz, rhythm and blues and sophisticated pop. Starting with the band of Jay McShann, he became the vocalist with Duke Ellington's orchestra in 1943, recording memorable hits with him and staying with Ellington until 1951, but along the way also forging a career as a solo recording artist, enjoying a string of R&B and pop hits, both in the USA and the UK. This 75-track 3-CD set comprises most of his A and B sides on the Aladdin, Sunrise/Miracle, Chess, Atlantic, Mercury/Clef/Norgran and Decca labels during this era. It includes all his career chart entries, most notably his US No. 3, R&B No. 1 and UK No. 2 in 1955 with "Unchained Melody" and his US pop Top 10 hits with "He" and "After The Lights Go Down Low", plus Top 10 R&B hits with "Trees", "Lover Come Back To Me", "Danny Boy" and "What Will I Tell My Heart". It includes a couple of fine recordings with the Count Basie Orchestra. Al Hibbler occupies a unique place in American popular music, and this substantial and comprehensive overview of his primary career as a chart-focused artist provides an enjoyable showcase for his smooth and distinctive vocal style.

Larry Clinton was a trumpeter, trombonist and clarinettist who, when in his twenties, became a successful arranger for Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Gay's Casa Loma Orchestra and Bunny Berigan during the mid-1930s before starting his own orchestra in 1937. Playing a mixture of current pop in the "sweet" style, ambitious jazz-styled instrumentals and swing arrangements of classical pieces, he had a string of nearly 40 hits through into the early '40s, and when he picked up the threads after service during WWII. Most of his hits featured the fine voice of his star vocalist Bea Wain, whose contributions were a key element of his success. This excellent-value 48-track 2-CD set comprises all his 38 hits plus other selected releases on the Victor, Bluebird and Decca labels, many featuring Bea Wain, and features the No. 1s "Cry, Baby, Cry", "Heart And Soul", "My Reverie", and "Deep Purple", along with sixteen other Top 10 hits, with many examples of the early commercial recordings of some of the landmark compositions of the Great American Songbook era. Along with Bea Wain, other featured vocalists are Dick Todd, Ford Leary, Mary Dugan, Helen Southern, Peggy Mann and Butch Stone. The collection provides not only a thoroughly entertaining showcase for a top class orchestra about which not much is heard these days, as well as for the vocal talents of Bea Wain, but also an enlightening overview of some of the most popular music of those years.

Composer and conductor Dimitri Tiomkin, born in Russia in 1894, but who emigrated to the USA after the First World War, is one of the most successful and celebrated composers of film music in the history of cinema. Nominated for 22 Academy Awards, he won four of them, for Best Original Score for "High Noon", "The High And The Mighty" and "The Old Man And The Sea" and for Best Original Song for "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me". In the process of writing songs and themes for dozens of movies, he had more than 25 chart entries with his compositions when recorded as singles by other artists. This great-value 55-track 2-CD set comprises themes and music from original soundtrack compositions, along with recordings of his movie songs and music by other artists from the first and highly significant first quarter-century of his career. It includes music from all the films for which he won Academy Awards, and a significant proportion of those for which he was nominated. It also features 27 records which made either US or UK charts, including Top 5 hits with Frankie Laine's "High Noon" and "Blowing Wild", Les Baxter's "The High And The Mighty", and Pat Boone's "Friendly Persuasion", as well recordings by many major artists like Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Dean Martin and Gene Pitney. It offers a substantial and varied insight into the work of one of the legendary, but sometime unheralded, figures in the world of movie music via some compositions which are veritable masterpieces of their kind.

Frankie Newton was a much-admired trumpeter whose recording career spanned two highly significant decades from the 1920s through to the 1940s during which time his adaptable, mellow swinging style made him a popular sideman in many different leaders' bands while he also led his own orchestras and small bands in sessions that produced some marvellously entertaining recordings. The fact that he somewhat lost interest in music in favour of other interests, resulting in him fading from the scene as bebop developed, meant that his influence and legacy has been sadly ignored over the years. This great-value 69-track 3-CD set comprises recordings from across his active career, and features recordings with a startling variety of top names, ranging from Bessie Smith in the 1920s, through the likes of Mezz Mezzrow, Teddy Wilson Willie "The Lion" Smith, Maxine Sullivan and Billie Holiday in the '30s, to Art Tatum, Mary Lou Williams, and Big Joe Turner in the '40s, as well as his own bands such as the Uptown Serenaders and Caf� Society Orchestra. It encompasses a highly entertaining range of jazz styles, showcasing him in a variety of different musical environments, both in the studio and 'live', as a powerful and inventive soloist and sensitive accompanist and ensemble player as well as a leader. It provides a substantial tribute to a musician who merits much more

Blossom Dearie was a jazz pianist and vocalist with a style and technique which skilfully interwove her piano and voice as she accompanied herself. Her approach to piano was distinctive, using chord voicings which inspired the likes of Bill Evans who named her as one of his models of piano playing, while her voice was also highly personal, with a light and airy flavour. Born in 1924, she spent some of her early career in France during the early '50s, which helped shape her style. This great-value 96-track 2-CD set comprises early recordings with Dave Lambert, Stan Getz & Kai Winding and King Pleasure, plus recordings in France with Les Blue Stars, who became The Swingle Singers, and then the complete content of her album Jazz Sweet for Barclay in France, followed by her albums for Verve between 1956 and 1962 Blossom Dearie, Give Him The Ooh-La-La, Once Upon A Summertime, Sings Comden And Green, My Gentleman Friend and Soubrette: Blossom Dearie Sings Broadway Hit Songs. It features recordings in small groups alongside top musicians of the day, including Ray Brown, Jo Jones, Herb Ellis, Mundell Lowe, Ed Thigpen, Cy Coleman Kenny Burrell, Bobby Jaspar, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke. It's a feast of top quality, highly listenable jazz, and a great showcase for her talents both as instrumentalist and vocalist.

Jazz drummer Buddy Rich is famous as one of the most extrovert and impressive instrumentalists of his day, known for his virtuoso technique, power and speed, and one of the most influential drummers in the genre. Born in 1917, the son of a vaudevillian couple, he was immersed in the drums from a very early age, as well as being a singer and tap dancer. Having played with Artie Shaw, Bunny Berigan and Tommy Dorsey from the late 1930s, he served in WWII, he was with Dorsey until Frank Sinatra helped finance Rich to form his own orchestra in 1946. This 59-track 3-CD set comprises most of his studio recordings with his own band through 1946-47 for Mercury and on V-Disc, plus selected recordings through to 1955 with his own groups and with bands and small groups led by Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips, Count Basie, Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, Roy Eldridge and Harry James, variously appearing on the Mercury, Clef, Norgran, Verve, Pablo and Columbia labels. It features performances alongside many notable musicians of the era, including Nat King Cole, Buck Clayton, Hank Jones, Clark Terry, Harry 'Sweets' Edison, Benny Carter, Barney Kessel, Buddy de Franco, Herb Ellis, Ben Webster, Art Tatum, Illinois Jacquet and many more. Featuring Rich performing in a variety of musical environments, including some of Buddy's vocal outings, it's an entertaining showcase for his legendary versatility and prowess.

Hudson Whittaker, better known as Tampa Red, was a hugely prolific and influential blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, an innovative slide guitarist and the first black musician to play a National steel-bodied guitar. Moving from Florida to Chicago in the 1920s, he started recording in 1928 with Thomas Dorsey, playing in a hokum style as well as blues, over the years incorporating a pop-oriented style with The Chicago Five. Playing electric guitar from the 1940s working with Big Maceo Merriweather, he influenced musicians like Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters and Elmore James, as his Chicago home became a centre for the blues community. This great-value 121-track 5-CD set comprises selected recordings from the 300 and more titles he released during this era on the Vocalion, Bluebird & RCA-Victor labels, as Tampa Red, Tampa Red & Georgia Tom, Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band and Tampa Red And The Chicago Five, referred to on many of his record labels as "The Guitar Wizard". It features his R&B Top 10 hits "It Hurts Me Too/When Things Go Wrong With You", "Pretty Baby Blues", "Let Me Play With Your Poodle", and "Detroit Blues", and many well-known songs that were precursors of rock 'n' roll. It features performances with Black Bob, Sonny Boy Williamson, Joe Williams, Big Maceo Merriweather, Blind John Davis, Ransom Knowling, Walter Horton, Sonny Boy Williamson II and others. It's a substantial overview of a key quarter-century of his career, and an entertaining showcase for one of the most significant personalities in the genre.

Pianist, singer and songwriter Ivory Joe Hunter was a blues balladeer extraordinaire, specialising in a unique brand of highly tuneful and soulful blues songs that bucked the trend for more raucous and extrovert blues in the 1940s and early '50s, although he could rock and boogie with the best of them as well. Born in Texas in 1914 - "Ivory Joe" were his given names and not a nickname - he made his first recordings as a talented youngster for the Library of Congress in 1933. He worked on radio in Texas in the early '40s before moving to Los Angeles, and joining Johnny Moore's Three Blazers for a while before making his first solo records in 1945. He had a string of hits in the late '40s which appear on Acrobat's existing product "Ivory Joe Hunter - Jukebox Hits 1945-50" (ACMCD4208), registering a landmark No. 1 with "I Almost Lost My Mind" in 1950. This great value 51-track 2-CD set picks up the story from that point and comprises selected A & B sides from his releases on the MGM, Atlantic & Dot labels during the 1950s - by the end of the decade his chart career was over. It features all his twelve R&B and pop chart entries from this era, including the R&B No. 1s "I Almost Lost My Mind", "I Need You So" and "Since I Met My Baby", plus the Top 5 hits "Guess Who", "Jealous Heart", "Waiting In Vain", "I Quit My Pretty Mama" and "Empty Arms". The selections in the set include some great grooving instrumentals and rock 'n' roll flavoured material alongside the trademark ballads, and it's a fine showcase for an artist with one of the most distinctive styles in blues