Time Life Swing Era 10 Boxed Sets with Books Benny Goodman Carnegie Harry James

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Time Life Swing Era 10 Boxed Sets with Books plus Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert & Harry James Longines Symphonette boxed sets. A total of 8 Time Life Swing Era starting with 1936 through 1942, 1944-1945 and Postwar Years all are complete with the matching hardcover books. Plus the extra 2 boxed sets of Benny Goodman and Harry James for a total of 10 boxed record sets. All the records are very fine or more likely near mint - most look to have never been played! The boxes are fine with a few scuffs and some edge wear - check my many photos. Almost 34 pounds of LP boxed sets. Everything you see in my photos is included. 

Time Life Swing Era: Actually, this was one of Time- Life's most popular sets, having been reissued at least three times since its introduction in the early 1970s. This may be surprising to some, since the music on these box sets is not the original big band masters heard on the radio or purchased on record in the 1930s and 1940s. Instead, the music here is a recreation of big band songs, performed by Billy May & His Orchestra and the Glen Gray Casa Loma Orchestra recording for Capitol Records in the 1960s and early 1970s. What the sets do have going for them, however, is that these new recordings are in modern high quality stereo sound, unlike the pre-CD scratchy mono low-fidelity 78s that were used for mastering most compilations in the 1970s and 1980s. And the stereo remakes were fairly faithful to the original sounds. Actually, these recordings are much closer to what one actually heard and experienced being at a dance in the 1930s and 1940s with a big band, since the 1930s/1940s vintage recordings did not do the bands justice. 

But Artie Shaw, for one, was not amused at these offerings, which purported to include "Artie Shaw Versions" although he had not played a note on them, and consequently he would receive no royalties. He sued Time-Life for foisting fake versions off on the public, supposedly damaging his reputation and causing him great pain and humiliation, but he eventually lost the court case. Later, perhaps as part of a peace offering, Time-Life put out a Big Band series, which DID have the original versions, including Shaw's original recordings, from which he would collect royalties. 

The first covers to the box sets were black and white. Boxes were issued through a subscription, with one volume being issued per quarter or so. After the initial issue, Time-Life redesigned the cover to make them more modern and lively. Time-Life reissued all the volumes with the new color covers starting in the mid-1970s. These box sets were also originally released in Canada and the UK with an "STA-" prefix and same catalog numbers as the "STL-" prefix boxes issued in the U.S. The series was manufactured by Capitol Records' Special Markets Division, so the vinyl was also first rate. 

The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert by Benny Goodman, Columbia Records catalogue item SL-160, is a two-disc LP of Swing music first issued in 1950. The program it captured has been described as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's "coming out" party to the world of "respectable" music.

The first ever double album,[citation needed] it was one of the first records of Benny Goodman music issued on the new long-playing format, and one of the first to sell over a million copies. A landmark recording, it was the premiere performance given by a jazz orchestra in the famed Carnegie Hall in New York City. This album was also sold in a set of nine 45 rpm records in the same year by Columbia.