Verve Reissues Classic Jazz Albums for 60th Anniversary

News, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong

By Brian Zimmerman I Mar. 7, 2016

Ella Fitzgerald is one of the classic jazz artists whose albums will be reissued by Verve in 2016.
(Photo: Verve/ellafitzgerald.com)

Verve Records will celebrate its 60th anniversary throughout 2016 with a series of historic reissues and new collections from its archives. The forthcoming albums include titles by Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Smith, Stan Getz and others.

Fitzgerald will be honored with the release of Jazz At the Philharmonic: The Ella Fitzgerald Set, a compilation that assembles all of the singer’s Jazz at the Philharmonic performances previously issued by Verve on a single collection for the first time. The collection—which includes concerts from 1949, 1953 and 1954 and features appearances by Parker, Lester Young and Hank Jones—will feature newly remastered music and an essay by author Will Friedwald.

The first set of albums, due out in March 2016, will accompany the release of the digital collection Verve 60, featuring 60 tracks by 60 different artists from throughout the label’s history, spanning from Fitzgerald and Peterson through Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall and Christian McBride.

In addition, five albums from the Verve catalog will be reissued on vinyl: Ella & Louis, the first pairing for the label of Fitzgerald and Armstrong; Holiday’s Lady Sings The Blues; Parker’s innovative Charlie Parker With Strings; Peterson’s Night Train; and Count Basie’s April In Paris.

Several classics will also make their debuts in HD digital audio and iTunes, including titles by Fitzgerald, Evans, Parker, Wynton Kelly and Stan Getz. Organ master Jimmy Smith’s classic singles for the label will be compiled into a digital box set.

The release schedule continues in May and June with more vinyl and digital reissues, including Stan Getz and João Gilberto’s Grammy-winning bossa nova classic Getz/Gilberto, as well as albums by Wes Montgomery, Blossom Dearie, Coleman Hawkins and Anita O’Day.

A new CD collection will compile unreleased music by Charlie Parker, while Louis Armstrong’s complete studio recordings for the label will be collected in a multi-disc set.

Verve was founded in 1956 by Norman Granz, the impresario behind the popular Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts, which brought the music to new audiences.

In November 2015, Verve released D-Stringz, an acoustic album featuring Stanley Clarke on double bass, Biréli Lagrène on guitar and Jean-Luc Ponty on violin.