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I've always been a big fan of Shaw's playing (and I mean for 50 years), but I am no collector of his ouevre, much less a completist, so I'll simply explain what led me to buy this collection. A friend of mine, excellent musician, mentioned he had heard "Inuendo" on the air and wanted to know if Shaw had (ironically, it seems) Claude Thornhill doing any arranging for him? I said I had only the vaguest familiarity with Shaw's very late stuff and couldn't imagine (aside from a Musicraft issue I own) where the station had gotten the recording. So, once I found this, my curiosity was killing me, and I bought it. Really interesting listening. My first reaction was that Shaw's tone sounded noticeably thinner on a couple of the tracks, to the point where I wondered if he wasn't having problems with his chops. After reading some of the other reviews, I wonder whether or not maybe the issue is with the transfer and not with Shaw--especially since the change is only discernible on a few tracks, and then he seems to recover his customary timbre. Hmm? I'm also surprised at the band--great musicians by and large, including a killer lead trumpet I had never heard before (Don Paladino), but you know, Shaw's bands were always really tight--like "I hear a chord" from that section tight-- which seems, at least to my ears, not to be inevitably the case on some of the tracks. But anyway, it's a kick to hear Shaw throw in the occasional bop cliche, and who's really going to complain about a band with Al Cohn, Zoot Sims and Don Fagerquist (a barely audible solo on "Krazy Kat," for one). Some of the rehashes (especially "Stardust," where the bone player won't make you forget Jack Jenney) aren't compelling, but I have to admit, I even bought a CD of the movie "Second Chorus" just to watch Shaw "act". My guess is that most casual fans of Shaw (are there ANY casual fans of this man?) will enjoy listening to this later stuff. I often think that BG stopped in 1937. Shaw, for all his faults (now chronicled in nearly relentless fashion by any number of biographers and reviewers) moved on. Not a nice man, by all accounts, but one Hell of an instrumentalist.
PS Looking into Don Paladino on the Internet, one trumpet forum poster makes the claim that Harry James considered him the "greatest lead trumpet" he had ever heard. Well, if that's true, that puts him above Conrad Gozzo, about whom James said similar things, or so I am told. Really, if you are a brass player, listen to this guy. I can't get over how good he is.
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