Ko-Ko

The Glory of '40 in the Best Sound Ever:
Savage Music With Modern Comfort

I find it splendid that wonderful Ellington reissues have continued past the 1999 centennial celebration. We have the massive Duke Ellington Treasury Series progressing nicely with a new double CD set coming out every three months or so. In the case of the album Ko-Ko, none of the material is previously unreleased on CD, but the sound is so fantastic any Ellington fan should own it.

I had a devil of a time finding this French import, but it was worth all the trouble. Never have I heard these recordings, some of Ellington's best, in such great sound. Wow! The back of the CD cover says "Distribution Sony Music France." Why are Dreyfus Jazz CDs impossible to find in the United States? I obtained my copy from netbeat.com in the U.K. (but I don't know if they are still around, my browser no longer finds them).

It seems the credit for the sound on this release belongs to Francis Dreyfus. Here is what he has to say about his series of reissues:

"Since my early childood, I've been crazy about jazz. This childhood craze of mine is what inspired me to create Dreyfus Jazz ten years ago. Today, in order to discover, through another perspective, these master pieces of the lively and flawless language of jazz, I am releasing a collection of the most beautiful tracks ever recorded before 1950 (78, LP, or mono) by the biggest and most renowned creators. From Armstrong to Parker, Duke to Count Basie, Django to Dizzy Gillespie. Let's not forget the "geniuses" who are perhaps less reconciliating but nevertheless essential ... Charlie Christian, Nat King Cole, Woody Herman, and Don Byas.

"For whom, then have I imagined doing this 30 volume anthology? For all of those who already love jazz, and for those who will find great pleasure in re-discovering it, thanks to sound quality that is unexpected and unequaled. But also for those, namely the younger generation, who don't yet realize that they are going to love this music that burnt down from its creative violence and its jubilant swing, the entire twentieth century.

"First, I have to do the near impossible: Break the wall of sound in order to enhace the already sublime tracks of yesteryear ... to make them sound as though they'd been recorded yesterday. Thanks to technological information Storage and resoluted research by an exceptional sound engineer, Rene Ameline, it was possible, with never ending passion and patience, including the best sources, (the best songs and the best documents, no second [i.e. alternate] takes and no false starts) to give a new youth to the voice of Ella and Billie, to offer an unheard of freshness to formidable improvisations by Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins.

"My idea was to start from the original signals inscribed deeply in the wax, to enlarge and enrich the entire sound spectrum until inaudible and mute, to rediscover the best of classic jazz and be-bop. It was necesary to clean each carefully chosen song, meaning that every useless scratch and annoying click had to be wiped from each band without stripping away the grainy original sound. In order for the music to have a more spacious sound ... in order to invent stereo subtly balanced neither shocking nor forced. In order to offer a quality that has been unknown until the present, a richness of relief and a deep, full sound not yet achieved with the 78 record collection. The result is really spectacular!

"The collection is really unique. By the will of a passioned perfectionist who animated his conception like his childbirth; by the personality of his record jackets inspried by a Dutch painter named Mark Brusse; by a contest of a team of specialists that are jazz lovers in all its dimensions, Claude Carriere, Noel Nerve, and Daniel Nevers. To really define the spirit of this adventure that lasted almost two years, I cannot think of a better way but to quote Claude Debussy: "Finally a savage music with modern comfort!"

- from the liner notes.