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I only recently discovered Herbie Nichols when I heard one of his Blue Note recordings on the radio. I was stunned by his originality. At first, I thought he sounded a lot like Thelonious Monk, but that was only a superficial assessment, I think. Upon closer listening to these excellent 1955-1957 recordings on the Blue Note and Bethlehem labels (and three bonus tracks from 1952), I've now concluded that he developed separately from Monk and was influenced at least as much by the music of classical composers like Bartok and Stravinsky. Herbie had a sound that was uniquely his own, and what a sound it is! I wholeheartedly recommend this multi-label set to those who enjoy great jazz piano trios. You don't get the unreleased and alternate Blue Note tracks that you would get on the "Complete Blue Note Recordings," but here you get the excellent Bethlehem LP "Love, Gloom, Cash, Love," and this set is easier on the wallet. This set contains four complete LPs on two CDs in excellent packaging and with good liner notes, although there are a number of annoying typos.
The music here is worth five stars for sure, but I've taken away one star because track 17 on disc 2 ("Nichols and Dimes") wouldn't play or rip on two of my Windows computers (a desktop and a laptop), and it also wouldn't play on one of my CD players. I returned the first copy I received to the Marketplace seller as defective and bought another copy, only to discover that the second copy has the exact same problem. Thank goodness, that track finally ripped correctly on a third computer with a different kind of optical drive, and it plays on my main Sony console CD player just fine. I don't blame the Marketplace seller at all for the hassle. There's apparently something odd about how this disc was manufactured.
