RVG

For the Past few months, I have been cultivating an addiction, and I might now be powerless to stop myself from buying CD's in the Rudy Van Gelder Remasters series. It all started (strangely enough) one year ago today when I purchased Coleman Hawkins' The Hawk Relaxes. Ever since, I've kinda become obsessed with getting CD's in this series. Rudy Van Gelder is a producer/recording engineer who has recorded a lot of undeniably great jazz players over the last 5 decades, and while the merits of his production have been debated online and such, I'm a big fan of his stuff. So far, I've been focusing on tenor sax quartets and quintets recorded between 1957 and 1962. I especially love quintets that have a tenor sax and a trombone. I will now, for no particular reason, list my Favorite Tenor Sax players:

1. Coleman Hawkins
2. Hank Mobley
3. Sonny Rollins
4. John Coltrane

Not a big fan of the alto sax, but I do like Paul Desmond.

I got into jazz by listening to Miles Davis, but now I generally hate the way a trumpet sounds.

Anyway, there are apparently like 170 CD's in the series, of which I own maybe 12-15. So my knowledge is pretty tiny at this point. But I've been buying a CD every couple of weeks, so maybe by 2010 I'll have the whole series. Christmas, anyone?

Next purchase on the list: JJ Johnson, The Eminent, Vol. 2