Verve Vinyl & CDs

Review: Following the extraordinary mainstream success of jazz legend Stan Getz's bossa nova era, he dropped this album produce by Creed Taylor. To this day, Sweet Rain stands out as an exceptional straight-ahead jazz album and it features an impressive young band including pianist Chick Corea, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Grady Tate. The album radiates vibrant energy that inspired Getz to reach new expressive heights and Verve's Acoustic Sounds Series presents this classic with analog tape transfers and remastered 180-gram vinyl, all packaged in deluxe gatefold format.

Review: The plainspoken title Previously Unheard Recordings was given to Stan Getz and Bill Evans' six-track set of rarities back in 1974. The result of a recording session completed over ten years earlier in 1963, all the pieces heard here shine bright lights on the pianist and saxophonist's synergistic powers, and come backed by auxiliary instrumental incantations from two bassists, Ron Carter and Richard Davis, as well as drumming by Elvin Jones. Emblematic of the cool jazz style, the overgirding mood is one of time-lapsed delight and lightness of being, but yet which is not fearful of life's downer moments; this loyalty to jazz's complexity of mood can be heard all the way from 'Night And Day' or the closing 'Grandfather's Waltz'.