Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band was one of the most influential Dixieland groups of all time. With Watters and Bob Scobey on trumpets, trombonist Turk Murphy, clarinetist Bob Helm, and Wally Rose on piano, banjo, tuba (or bass), and drums, this band had a lot of power and enthusiasm. At a time when swing dominated jazz and bebop was ready to take over, Watters' successful extension of 1920s jazz was a major force in fueling the Dixieland revival movement. This four-CD set has all of the group's studio recordings plus live broadcasts from 1946-1947 and six rare performances by the wartime version of the YBJB featuring the talented but ill-fated trumpeter Benny Strickler. This reissue is absolutely essential for all traditional jazz fans and historians. The heated ensembles and joyous solos are great fun to hear.

The 4-CD compilation The Jazz Selection (catalogue number VAR020) was released by Tring International PLC in the European Union. This set features a curated collection of jazz classics, showcasing performances by legendary artists such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington .​

Trumpeter Jonah Jones was a hot property in late 1957 due to his hit rendition of "On the Street Where You Live." This follow-up LP had an equally big hit in "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," making Jones a household name for a decade. With shuffling support from pianist George Rhodes, bassist John Brown and drummer Harold Austin, Jones was able to make a lucrative living playing and singing music that did not differ much from what he would have been performing anyway. Other highlights of the LP (which consists of 12 songs from plays) include "The Surrey With the Fringe On Top," "Just In Time" and "I Could Have Danced All Night."

Bud Freeman - Newport News (1955) is a significant album by one of the great early pioneers of the tenor saxophone in jazz, Bud Freeman. Released in 1955, Newport News highlights Freeman’s distinctive sound and his mastery in the world of swing and mainstream jazz.

Big Charlie Thomas was one of many cornetists who recorded as sideman and accompanist during the 1920s, and have since drifted to the margins of jazz history. Like Ed Allen, he worked in groups that often had something or other to do with pianist and music publisher Clarence Williams. If Thomas' brief recording career is mapped out in discographical relief, the details are sketchy but fascinating. During the years 1925-1926 he is believed to have recorded with vocalists Rosa Henderson, Bessie Brown, Sara Martin, Mandy Lee, and Clarence Williams' wife Eva Taylor. In addition to various backing units, he blew his horn with the Dixie Washboard Band, the OKeh Melody Stars, Thomas Morris & His Seven Hot Babies, Buddy Christian's Jazz Rippers, and of course Clarence Williams' Blue Five. His involvement with this last ensemble places Thomas in the same circle as Morris, Sidney Bechet, and Louis Armstrong. So elusive are the recordings of Big Charlie Thomas that were it not for an album of rarities assembled and released during the '90s by the Timeless label, it would be difficult to access his legacy at all.

Firehouse Five Plus Two – At Disneyland (1992) is a live album by the Firehouse Five Plus Two, a jazz band composed of Disney animators and artists who played traditional Dixieland jazz. The group was formed in the 1940s and became quite popular for their performances, often infused with a sense of fun and nostalgia, capturing the spirit of early jazz.

Jelly Roll Morton Realized By Artis Wodehouse - The Piano Rolls (1997) is a fascinating album that brings the legendary jazz pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton into the modern era, reimagined through the efforts of pianist Artis Wodehouse. This album is part of a broader movement to bring Morton’s influential piano rolls back to life, preserving and interpreting his early 20th-century piano compositions. The 1997 release features Artis Wodehouse’s own performances based on the original piano rolls recorded by Morton in the 1920s and 1930s.

This expansive four-disc anthology essentially covers the recorded history of the guitar in the 20th century, beginning with the ragtime banjo that set the table for the role of the guitar in a jazz setting in the early 1900s, and then touching all the bases clear through to the post-postmodern possibilities of the instrument in the 21st century. Don't let the subtitle throw you, though, because Progressions: 100 Years of Jazz Guitar interprets jazz guitar in the broadest of strokes, as it includes not only pantheon jazz players like Eddie Lang, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Les Paul, Wes Montgomery, and John McLaughlin but also provides an uncommon sweep by featuring Hawaiian stylists Roy Smeck and Sol Hoopii; Western swing aces Leon McAuliffe and Eldon Shamblin; country jazzman Hank Garland; rock virtuosos Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, and Jeff Beck; fusion funksters Larry Carlton, Al DiMeola, and Mike Stein; and hard to classify avant-garde players like Derek Bailey, Sonny Sharrock, James Blood Ulmer, and Marc Ribot.

Sugar was the fourth album recorded by Nancy Sinatra in 1966, an uncanny feat considering The Beatles were recording around two albums a year at the time. The iconic Ron Joy cover photo of Nancy in a pink bikini (the first on an album cover!) was a daring move in 1967 that helped propel the album to #18 on the charts (Nancy's second highest charting album after Boots). It is a peculiar record that pairs one of Nancy's biggest songs, "Sugar Town," with mostly 1920s compositions recorded in a contemporary Dixieland jazz pop fusion style that could have only been concocted by producer Lee Hazlewood. Equal parts strong, sultry, and savvy, Nancy Sinatra has long been ahead of her time-both in her choices as an artist and as a businesswoman. Unapologetically, she established her own path early on and paved the way for decades of female artists to come-all while firmly maintaining control over her career, her image, and her music. In 1965, Nancy Sinatra changed the face of music, fashion, and culture.

"…there are so many classics included in this deluxe set that this box deserves the highest rating anyway. Beiderbecke was at the peak of his powers in 1927. His cornet playing was simply beautiful and he had a very original tone, full of inner heat and thoughtful beauty. His playing … were among the top moments of 1920s jazz. These include such classics as "Clarinet Marmalade," "I'm Coming Virginia," his piano solo "In a Mist," and "Royal Garden Blues." … A master of the soon-to-be-extinct C-melody sax, Trumbauer was one of jazz's first great saxophone soloists and an influence on both Benny Carter and Lester Young. His sessions gradually evolve from classic jazz to swing, and even with a few novelty numbers, the post-Beiderbecke dates are mostly of strong interest. Teagarden, whose arrival in New York in 1928 found him immediately being recognized as jazz's top trombone soloist in addition to being considered a fine blues-oriented vocalist, is heard with Rodin and leading dates of his own during 1930-1934, before he became a sideman in Trumbauer's later sessions (during a period when they were both regularly employed with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra). In addition to the principals, along the way such major performers as clarinetist Jimmy Dorsey, guitarist Eddie Lang, violinist Joe Venuti, bass saxophonist Adrian Rollini, clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, Bing Crosby (on his most jazz-oriented sides), Johnny Mercer, tenors Eddie Miller and Bud Freeman, pianist Fats Waller, Benny Goodman, and trumpeter Charlie Teagarden (Jack's younger brother) make significant contributions to the music. Listeners who do not already own this music and want a large slice of late-'20s/early-'30s jazz history should acquire this valuable box while they can."

Jazz at Preservation Hall: The Eureka Brass Band features New Orleans street parade jazz with bristling horns, sousaphone, and two marching drummers. Trumpeter Percy Humphrey leads an ensemble notable for the presence of saxophonist Emanuel Paul and Percy's brother, Willie, who blows some of the best clarinet he ever recorded. What makes this an unforgettable listening experience is the dual trombone action supplied by Albert Warner and Oscar "Chicken" Henry. Tailgate trombone is almost always fun, but these two seem to have discovered some sort of harmonic convergence, as two trombones, in unison glissando with a slight burr, deliver an almost intoxicating thrill. The best example of this effect occurs in "Take Your Burden to the Lord," while "Panama" allows the 'bones to interact with the saxophone in marvelous ways. A gem of an album, certainly among the finest extant examples of classic Crescent City jazz as played in the early '60s.

Original 4 CD box set issued by The Smithsonian Collection of Recordings encompassing 1924 - 1968, including recordings from Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Earl Hines, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock.

The Columbia/RCA live package includes nearly 163 tracks of Pops' most popular songs along with many that are far less familiar; 75 tracks are being released for the first time. The set begins with 20 tracks from Armstrong's1947 concert at New York's Town Hall with his small group dubbed the All Stars: Jack Teagarden on trombone, clarinetist Peanuts Hucko, pianist Dick Cary, bassist Bob Haggart and two alternating drummers, George Wettling and "Big" Sid Catlett. Also included is Armstrong's 1947 Carnegie Hall concert, which sat improperly labeled in RCA's vaults for over half a century and is issued here for the very first time. Some 90 minutes of material was preserved—18 tracks, also featuring Teagarden, Cary and Catlett, but this time with Barney Bigard on clarinet, bassist Arvell Shaw and the vocalist Velma Middleton.

"The Hot Record Society, a New York-based group of jazz recording enthusiasts organized in 1937 by Stephen W. Smith, quickly evolved from a clearinghouse and auction outlet for collectors into a real recording organization. … HRS recorded such outfits as Pee Wee Russell's Rhythmakers (an ad hoc group formed by members of Count Basie's and Eddie Condon's bands), Sidney Bechet and Muggsy Spanier, Rex Stewart's Big Seven, Brick Fleagle's Orchestra, Sandy Williams' Big Eight, Jimmy Jones, J.C. Higginbotham, Joe Thomas, Harry Carney, Buck Clayton, Trummy Young, the Billy Taylor Quartet, Russell Procope, Dicky Wells, Babe Mathews and Joe Thomas, and Billy Kyle. It's all here, 124 tracks encompassing everything from prewar New Orleans jazz to the early bop period of the mid-'40s, and while there are gaps … it's a good account of what happened with jazz over the decade represented here. Some of the selected material is a little odd, owing to choices made based on copyright accessibility (or nonexistence), and there are perhaps too many alternate takes for the novice listener. On the other hand, the sources are excellent, the recording venue was very fine, and the Mosaic people have done their usual excellent remastering job, so that, say, Budd Johnson's tenor sax and Jimmy Jones' piano on "Sunny Side Up" and "Strollin' Easy" sound incredibly clean and close, and Freddie Green's guitar gets one of its better showcases of the era. And the Brick Fleagle sides, starting with the extraordinary "Brick's Boogie," are almost worth the price of admission by themselves, just to hear what this overlooked, prodigiously talented musician had to offer in his prime, 60 years earlier."

Hot Jazz on Blue Note is a four-disc, 72-song box set that boasts a cross-section of classic traditional jazz and jump blues from the Blue Note vaults. All of the material on the set is from the '40s, when the label was just beginning to establish themselves as a force in jazz. Among the leaders on the set include George Lewis, Sidney Bechet, Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Nicholas, while Charlie Christian, Ray Conniff, Red Norvo and many others are sidemen. Though it's not designed to appeal to purists, several of the tracks on the set have not been released on compact disc before, so hardcore collectors will find much of this set intriguing. However, Hot Jazz on Blue Note is targeted at the novice, who will find this sampler both educational and entertaining.