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Customer Rating:  
Summary: A useful compilation but check the tracks
Comment: This is a very useful compilation of tracks that date from what was for many of us a golden era. Many of the tracks gave me that 'Ah!' of nostalgic recognition that reminded me of setting out for the evening with a 'cool' short haircut and a fresh pack of cigarettes in my pocket! However, listening to the whole album I found that the mix of jazz styles became, well, sort of indigestible. I have never found that with the 'pop' albums in this series so perhaps its just a jazz thing. I would certainly suggest that you check whether there are enough tracks that you really want before you buy because I am finding that the unwanted tracks do not 'grow on me'.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Cool as a mountain stream
Comment: Until now there's never been a comprehensive collection of what were the singles hits in Jazz in the 60s.It's a fascinating backwater of American popular music which began with the Dave Brubeck Quartet who put 5 titles on the top 100 with Take 5 as the biggest-and with music already about 3 years old.
Possibly it began with the British-Chris Barber had a couple of hit singles in 1959 and was followed up to 1962 with Kenny Ball,Acker Bilk and Victor Feldman-whose groovy version of A taste of honey has never been made available on CD until now-this was recorded in the States at the same time as the vocal version by Lenny Welch.
Another British item here is Johnny Dankworth's African Waltz which only bubbled under but other versions did nothing.
The 1958 Swingin' Shepherd Blues by the Moe Koffman Quartet is a one off classic which was covered in the U K by the Ted Heath Band and this track is also on one of the Golden Age of Instrumentals so it passes as either jazz or rock'n'roll.
Also from 1958-and another repeat from the G A of Is is Cozy Cole's Topsy,the first drums hit just before Sandy Nelson took the entire field over.
1962 was the Bossa Nova era which saw Stan Getz with a hit single in Desafinado and 2 years later backing Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto on The girl from Ipanema.And the year of the Vince Guaraldi Trio whose Cast your fate to the wind was to become even bigger with the British version by Sounds Orchestral in the mid 60s.
As this collection is called The Jazz Hits its not all instrumental as it includes Mel Torme's version of Comin' Home Baby but its only jazz because the tune started off as a jazz instrumental-its equally R & B as well.
The Ramsey Lewis Trio began as straight ahead jazzmen until the era of Trini Lopez and Johnny Rivers saw a change of direction and a series of instrumentals of current chart hits.After it was over they splintered into the Young-Holt Trio and hit with Wack Wack in 1966 just about when the jazz instrumental hit came to a halt.
There's plenty of organ led instrumentals here like Jimmy Smith's Walk on the wild side-which is nothing to do with Lou Reed-and Richard Grrove Holmes version of Misty.There's the vibes led Soul Sauce by the Cal Tjader Quintet,the sax led version of Exodus by Eddie Harris,a pre Georgie Fame version of Yeh Yeh by Mongo Santamaria and the famous Watermelon Man which only bubbled under-by future hitmaker Herbie Hancock.
A great CD-a real Desert Island Disc
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