Mosaic Selects Brookmeyer, Shank and Cooper

Trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and reedists Bud Shank and Bob Cooper are the latest artists featured in Mosaic Records’ Select series of archival box sets. Brookmeyer gets a Select set all to himself, while Shank and Cooper, who worked together in Stan Kenton’s band and other groups, are featured together in the series’ tenth installment. The theme for both of these sets is West Coast jazz-much of the music in these sets comes from sessions made for the Pacific Jazz label.

The Brookmeyer set includes a bunch of 1950s material that has never before been released on CD, including a 1954 Pacific session recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio featuring Red Mitchell and a unique 1957 meeting between Brookmeyer and guitarists Jim Hall and Jimmy Raney, originally issued on the LP Street Swingers. The rest of the set comes from sessions for the Brookmeyer albums Traditionalism Revisited, Kansas City Revisited and Stretching Out. These are star-studded sessions with players like Zoot Sims, Hank Jones, Freddie Green and Sweets Edison celebrating early jazz music by Count Basie, Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller, as well as some Tin Pan Alley classics. To view the full track and personnel lists for this set, click here.

The Bud Shank and Bob Cooper set includes most of the recorded work the two reedmen did together in the 1950s, including Shank’s first sessions. Released as Bud Shank and Three Trombones, these 1954 sessions feature Shank and three valve trombonists playing a number of tunes arranged Cooper. The set also includes the 1956 Shank quartet concert recording Jazz at Cal-Tech, which Cooper sat in on, as well as the follow-up, Flute ‘N Oboe, with Howard Roberts, Don Prell and Chuck Flores. Mosaic also saw fit to include a Shank/Brookmeyer session with string quintet (even though Cooper wasn’t on the session) simply because it’s rare. The remainder of the Shank/Cooper set comes from the albums The Swing’s To TV, Jazz Swings Broadway and Blowin’ Country. A full list of tracks and personnel for this set is available here.

Originally Published February 2, 2004