JazzIcons.com — '9 live concert DVD videos from the pioneers and legends of jazz'

Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Chet Baker, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, Thelonius Monk and Buddy Rich.

Iconic enough for you?

$159.99.

Nat Hentoff raved about these DVDs in his review in yesterday's Wall Street Journal; he wrote, "To this jazz enthusiast, this is like the discovery of a bonanza of previously unknown manuscripts of plays by William Shakespeare."

Here's Hentoff's piece.

Jazz Concerts of the '50s to '70s, Now Seen as Well as Heard

For years, jazz musicians coming back from Europe have told me of being part of concerts — televised live by state-owned stations in Europe — that have been among the most deeply satisfying of their musical lives. Uninterrupted by commercials and produced without concern for competitive audience ratings, these gigs freed the musicians from time constraints. I've long regretted not having been able to see any of these performances, but now the first nine "Jazz Icons" DVDs have resoundingly arrived — produced by Reelin' in the Years Productions on the international TDK label, distributed in North America by Naxos America.

Filmed in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland from the 1950s into the 1970s, "none of these performances" — say the ceaseless explorers of Reelin' in the Years, David Pack and Phillip Galloway — "has ever been officially released, and in many cases, the material was never originally broadcast."

To this jazz enthusiast, this is like the discovery of a bonanza of previously unknown manuscripts of plays by William Shakespeare. Among the international icons and their sidemen are Louis Armstrong; Dizzy Gillespie; Count Basie; Thelonious Monk; Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers; Buddy Rich; Quincy Jones; Ella Fitzgerald; and Chet Baker.

My recommendations among them begin with the DVD of the 1960 Quincy Jones ensemble, which Mr. Jones understandably called his "dream band." In the brass section (whose élan reminded me of Duke Ellington's "Braggin' in Brass" tribute to his horn men) are trumpeters Clark Terry and Benny Bailey and trombonists Quentin Jackson and Melba Liston (the latter long ago having proved that jazzwomen do have "chops"). And always going for a home run, there is Phil Woods on alto saxophone.

Also of historic and present joy are the 1958 Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with the thrilling (I mean the term denotatively) trumpet of Lee Morgan — with Mr. Blakey, as usual, on fire on drums. Also, the full presence of Thelonious Monk in a 1966 concert bears out what I tell listeners too young to have ever seen Monk — that he was almost as mesmerizing to watch as to hear.

On the Ella Fitzgerald DVD, there are two concerts (1957 and 1963) in which Ella, reveling in her incomparable mastery of jazz time and swiftly inventive wit, is backed on the earlier set by my choice of a "dream rhythm section": Jo Jones, Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson.

Dizzy Gillespie, too, was best seen as well as heard to get the full, flavorful impact of his delight in continually surprising himself during his 1958 and 1970 concerts.

Louis Armstrong, as Wynton Marsalis says of Satchmo's 1959 "Jazz Icon" concert, "is the most modern trumpet player we've ever heard and the most ancient at the same time... this DVD captures that intangible power and allows us to gaze upon it in wonder."

The Count Basie band of 1962 brings me back to that time when, going down the stairs into New York's Birdland, the swinging gusts from the bandstand below almost blew me against the wall. And Buddy Rich, who could have swung a military band, bursts into view with his 1978 big band, which he called, with manifest pride, the "Killer Force."

Also among these first nine "Icons," with more to come, are 1964 and 1979 performances by Chet Baker, whose trumpet playing and singing have, for me, been an acquired taste that I've not been able to master. But many have, and still do.

Not only are these performances previously unavailable — to most of us, unknown to have existed — and invaluable contributions to the history of the music, but they also serve as a much needed model of economic justice to jazz sidemen. Uniquely, in my experience, each sideman in these concerts, as producers Peck and Galloway note, is being paid directly — or if they're dead — via the American Federation of Musicians, through the musicians' estates. The reason that so many jazz sidemen who have been sidelined — for reasons of health or changing fashions — are often hard put to pay their rent is that sidemen do not get royalty payments from sales of recordings, and relatively few of them ever become leaders of bands or combos.

Also part of the care Messrs. Peck and Galloway have taken with these DVD additions to the jazz heritage is the quality of the sound in the remastering and the knowledgeable liner notes, which include both the commentary of jazz critics and some of the reminiscences of colleagues and family members of the icons.

In the Thelonious Monk booklet, Don Sickler — long associated with Monk and his family, and himself a trumpet player and an arranger of Monk's music — has this illuminating passage, quoting drummer Ben Riley, who's on the DVD:

"Monk lets the music breathe. He doesn't clutter anything up. He leaves space for you to create. John Coltrane said that playing with Thelonious Monk was like opening a door and stepping into a room, and there was no floor. So now you have to figure how to stand up on your own." (Duke Ellington, a major influence on Monk, used to say to a sideman asking for instructions on how to solo on a wholly new piece of Duke's music: "Listen, sweetie, listen!")

Having opened doors to a pantheon of jazz creators with this first series of "Jazz Icons," Messrs. Peck and Galloway are trying to make arrangements to get artists' and other clearances to release "an incredible 60-minute concert from 1966 with Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington; various concerts of John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan and (Rahsaan) Roland Kirk; and 90 minutes of live and in-studio concerts from 1964 with Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy, filmed a few months before Dolphy passed away."

I heard about that Dolphy concert from one of Mingus's sidemen, who told me knowing that I had had the privilege of recording the often astonishing Dolphy: "Eric that day went beyond anything he's ever done before!"

Reelin' in the Years Productions does not focus solely on jazz. Messrs. Peck and Galloway have a library of more than 10,000 filmed performances from, they note, "over 30 TV stations that we exclusively represent from Europe, Japan and Australia." Among their previous releases are "American Folk Blues Festival 1962-69" and three James Brown "soul" concerts from 1966 to 1971.

Who knows? Maybe somewhere there is a recording of the legendary New Orleans trumpet player Buddy Bolden, whose horn on the streets could be heard for 10 miles — or so I was told by musicians there remembering tales of their boyhoods. If such a recording exists, Messrs. Peck and Galloway will find it.