Basie, Young Featured on New ‘Savory Collection’

By DownBeat I Dec. 5, 2016

Lester Young (left, with saxophone) and Count Basie (at piano) are featured on *The Savory Collection, Volume 2—Jumpin’ At The Woodside: The Count Basie Orchestra Featuring Lester Young*, a new set of recordings from the National Jazz Museum In Harlem
(Photo: Courtesy NJMIH)

The National Jazz Museum In Harlem has announced the release of The Savory Collection, Volume 2—Jumpin’ At The Woodside: The Count Basie Orchestra Featuring Lester Young, which will be available exclusively on Apple Music and iTunes Dec. 9, with pre-order on Dec. 2.

The museum has partnered with Apple Music to launch the multi-volume collection, a historical archive featuring Swing Era artists in their prime. The collection documents inspired and extended performances of previously unreleased material recorded by sound engineer Bill Savory.

 The collection includes 22 rare tracks recorded between 1938 and ’40, further defining Count Basie’s Swing Era legacy with tenor saxophonist Lester Young.

Savory, who worked a day job recording radio commercials for off-air transcription, captured the Jumpin’ At The Woodside audio from in-studio lines coming directly from the radio networks on professional equipment. His collection was widely rumored to exist but never confirmed, until Loren Schoenberg, Founding Director and Senior Scholar of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, connected with Savory’s son Eugene Desavouret, and discovered 975 discs and hundreds of hours of music. The museum immediately acquired the collection.

The first volume of the Savory recordings, The Savory Collection, Volume 1—Body And Soul: Coleman Hawkins And Friends, was released Oct. 14, 2016, and reached the No. 1 position on iTunes Jazz. The collection is available to stream at AppleMusic.com/SavoryCollection, and to buy at iTunes.com/SavoryCollection.

“All of us at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem are immensely proud at the tremendous reaction to Volume 1 of the Savory Collection,” said Schoenberg. “To think that there is such a large and enthusiastic audience for these classics sounds is … music to our ears! And it’s in that mode that we are ready to release more than an hour’s worth of music from the greatest band that Count Basie ever led—fresh out of Kansas City with Lester Young at the helm.”

Doug Pomeroy, a Grammy Award-winning audio restoration specialist, restored and mastered the material over a six-year period. The project was produced by Schoenberg and Ken Druker. Jonathan Scheuer and Daryl Libow serve as executive producers. Subsequent volumes will follow in 2017.

All pre-orders come with an instant download of the song “Bugle Call Rag.” For more information visit the National Jazz Museum In Harlem’s website. DB