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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/arts/music/savory-collection-apple-music-coleman-hawkins.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160923
‘The Savory Collection,’ a Mythical Trove of Jazz Recordings, Will Get a Digital Release
By NATE CHINEN SEPT. 23, 2016
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This series of archival recordings from the 1930s and early ’40s has been restored and digitized.
A major jazz discovery will finally be commercially accessible to the public, courtesy of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and Apple Music, which have partnered to release “The Savory Collection” in digital form. A series of archival recordings from the 1930s and early ’40s, from radio broadcasts taped by the pioneering sound engineer Bill Savory, it’s a revelatory body of music that had been cloaked in myth and obscurity for many years.
The National Jazz Museum in Harlem announced its acquisition of the Savory Collection — hundreds of hours of music on nearly 1,000 discs — in 2010. Loren Schoenberg, a jazz musician and historian who serves as the founding director and senior scholar at the museum, had spent more than 30 years attempting to track down the collection. The quest led him to Mr. Savory’s son, Eugene Desavouret, who agreed to sell the material to the museum.
What followed was an intensive restoration and digitization effort, along with the process of cataloging the music. One obvious prize — “the pièce de résistance,” said Mr. Schoenberg and others — is a live recording of “Body and Soul” by the tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. It will be the centerpiece of “The Savory Collection, Volume 1 — Body and Soul: Coleman Hawkins and Friends,” available on iTunes and from Apple Music on Oct. 14.
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The National Jazz Museum in Harlem
Coleman Hawkins and his Orchestra – Body And Soul
Made in May 1940, seven months after Mr. Hawkins’s canonical studio recording of the song, this version of “Body and Soul” is remarkable for the expansive breadth and daring of his solo improvisation, which occupies most of the six-minute track. (Mr. Savory recorded on larger discs and at slower speeds than the industry-standard 78 r.p.m., enabling him to capture performances at greater length.)
“It’s remarkable, this recording,” Ben Ratliff wrote in The New York Times in 2010. “It’s not just nice. It’s not just helpful to the historical record. It might be better than the one we feel obligated to compare it with.”
Along with its title track, “The Savory Collection, Volume 1 — Body and Soul: Coleman Hawkins and Friends” will feature Mr. Hawkins and his band playing “Basin Street Blues” and “Lazy Butterfly” from the same date in 1940. It will also include some tracks by Fats Waller and His Rhythm, and one track each by far-lesser-known figures, the violinist Emilio Caceres and the guitarist Carl Kress. A jam session led by the vibraphonist Lionel Hampton provides five tracks, including a version of “Stardust” featuring the tenor saxophonist Herschel Evans. And Ella Fitzgerald turns up singing “A-Tisket, a-Tasket” in 1938, with Chick Webb and a CBS studio orchestra.
The Savory Collection has been produced by Mr. Schoenberg and Ken Druker, with restoration and mastering by Doug Pomeroy. A second volume, due later this year, will feature more than an hour’s worth of broadcast recordings by the Count Basie band featuring Lester Young on tenor saxophone, unheard since they were broadcast in the late 1930s. More installments in the series are planned for 2017.
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