Amoeba Music > Boxed In - Our Favorite Box Sets for 2008

Buy Used and Save for the Holidays!!
Please note the “Regular” prices listed are the prices these sets sell for New at Amoeba Music.

One of the many, many wonderful things about Amoeba Music is the constant stream of quality material that flows into the stores on an ongoing basis. The used sections are always full of unique finds; I’ve become convinced that all I have to do is wait, and anything that I’m searching for will show up at Amoeba in pre-owned form.

Holiday bargain hunters will be happy to learn that a bounty of tremendous used boxed sets is available right now. The few used titles I mention here – and they’re all fantastic, and all in stock in quantity – are merely the tip of the iceberg. There’s no reason you have to empty your bank account to give someone a deluxe musical gift this season. Check these out for starters...

Various Artists
Atlantic Blues
Rhino Handmade

Read Review

Frank Sinatra
Concepts
Capitol

Read Review

The Traveling Wilburys
Self Titled Collection
Rhino

Read Review

Willie Nelson
The Complete Atlantic Sessions
Rhino
Read Review

Bjork
Surround
Rhino
Read Review

Various Artists
Mosaic Records
Box Sets

Read Review

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Atlantic Blues (1949-1970)
Rhino Handmade

Today we know Atlantic Records as a great full-service label, and one of the major players in R&B and rock in the ‘50s and ‘60s. But the company was founded in 1947 by a pair of jazz and blues fans – Turkish diplomat’s son Ahmet Ertegun and former indie-label A&R man Herb Abramson -- and, as Billy Vera points out in his liner notes for this superior four-CD, 80-track limited edition box, at the beginning they recorded what they liked. For that we should be grateful.

Atlantic’s very first hit, in 1949, was a straight blues single, the well-lubricated “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” by Stick McGhee, brother of Brownie McGhee, the genial singer-guitarist partnered with blind harmonica player Sonny Terry. It wasn’t an original number – McGhee had cut it for the Harlem label, but, after wholesalers couldn’t meet the demand for the 78, Atlantic hired the singer to re-record it. Their better-distributed version put the company on the map.

Atlantic recorded an amazing variety of blues music. The company definitely favored piano players: Its roster included Little Brother Montgomery (who re-cut his classic “Vicksburg Blues”), Jimmy Yancey, and, later, Floyd Dixon, Champion Jack Dupree and the marvelous Chicagoan Little Johnny Jones. Though he was by no means strictly a blues pianist, Roy Byrd – Professor Longhair of New Orleans – is amply represented on this collection. So is Ray Charles, who began his career performing in the mold of Nat “King” Cole and Charles Brown.

Ertegun and Abramson also favored shouters who straddled the line between jazz and blues. Big Joe Turner, who helped establish the label (after a stint at National, the label where Abramson had previously labored), originally made his bones in the ‘30s in Kansas City’s jazz clubs; Jimmy Witherspoon worked very much in a similar mode.

But many of the great blues guitarists are also heard. Some of the earliest sides here are by Blind Willie McTell, the magnificent Atlanta 12-string player who emerged from obscurity to cut a single session for Atlantic under the name “Barrelhouse Sammy.” A remake of “Goodnight Irene” represents Leadbelly’s brief stay at the label. Some beautiful tracks by T-Bone Walker, who established the electric guitar in blues during the ‘40s, are included, as are a pair of numbers of Eddie “Guitar Slim” Jones, who arrived at the company after recording the searing “Things I Used to Do” for Specialty. The box wraps up with tough ‘60s sides by Freddie King and Otis Rush, two princes of Chicago’s West Side school.

And the ladies are not forgotten. LaVern Baker, Little Esther Phillips, and Aretha Franklin – all major R&B stars at Atlantic – show off their pure blues sides on some attractively anthologized selections; especially interesting are Baker’s versions of three Bessie Smith numbers and Aretha’s stormy rendition of St. Louis Jimmy’s “Going Down Slow.”

The compilation is seasoned with just enough obscurities – Lawyer Houston and Choker Campbell, anyone? – to keep even the most discerning connoisseur satisfied. Atlantic Blues is an entertaining smorgasbord that will reward any blues fan, and a knowing look at an important facet of this great label’s output.

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FRANK SINATRA
Concepts (14 Discs)
Capitol

Some music, like Frank Sinatra’s ‘50s recordings for Capitol Records, is evergreen. Yes, his ‘30s and ‘40s performances with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, and his first solo sides for Columbia Records, are essential listening for students of great singing and popular culture. And yes, he recorded many staggeringly fine mature works for Reprise Records, the label he founded in 1960. But Sinatra’s reputation rests on the records he made for Capitol. They brought his career back to life, and today they are universally recognized as enduring works of vocal art.

The 14 albums Sinatra made for Capitol are compiled on the 14-CD box The Concept Albums. This compact package reissues his LP output for the label (minus his Christmas record – which you should grab separately -- and the instrumental set Tone Poems of Color), spiffily remastered and nicely presented in jazzy little cardboard sleeves with the original notes and artwork. It contains 189 songs that are the cornerstone of any pop music collection. And boy, the price is right!

In 1953, when Sinatra arrived at Capitol, he was damaged goods. “Sinatra had hit bottom, and I mean bottom,” said Alan Livingston, the A&R executive who signed him. The singer had suffered a hemorrhage of his vocal cords that had scuttled his Columbia sessions. He couldn’t get nightclub dates. He was washed up in Hollywood and on radio. His marriage to movie star Ava Gardner had gone down in flames. He needed another chance, and at Capitol he got it. In a happy confluence of events, his stint at the label began just as he revitalized his film career with his Oscar-winning performance in From Here to Eternity.

The label paired Sinatra with some peerless arrangers – Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, and Billy May – whose charts sympathetically shaped the vocalist’s interpretations of standards from the Great American Songbook and custom-tooled material by writers like Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. Sinatra’s voice had deepened, his sense of swing had ripened, and his song readings had deepened. At Capitol, he reached the height of his powers.

He had pioneered the idea of the “concept album” at Columbia with 1946’s The Voice, and his conceptualizations took full flight at Capitol. It’s hard to select the pick of this very rich harvest. Some prefer the ballad albums In the Wee Small Hours and Frank Sinatra Sings For Only the Lonely, or the tough, finger-poppin’ Songs For Swingin’ Lovers and A Swingin’ Affair, all arranged by Riddle; others dig the thematic Come Fly With Me and Come Dance With Me, with charts by May. The deeply blue Jenkins entries Where Are You? and No One Cares have their supporters, too.
All of these magnificent albums and more are included on The Concept Albums. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live without any of this material. Sinatra taught several generations what singing is all about, and here he is at the peak of his artistry. This box is one for the ages.

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THE TRAVELING WILBURYS
The Traveling WIlbury's Collection
Rhino

In 1969, when supergroups like Crosby, Stills & Nash and Blind Faith were the rage, Rolling Stone ran a review of an album by a pseudonymous band called the Masked Marauders, whose members were purportedly Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, and John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison of the Beatles. The review was bogus, of course, but a lot of readers believed it; a fake Marauders album, with lesser-knowns imitating those major stars, was even released.

Fast forward 19 years later: A pseudonymous band called the Traveling Wilburys releases an album. This time, life imitated faux art, and the Wilburys – Dylan, Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne -- were real.

Unsurprisingly, considering the talent involved, the two Wilburys albums, Volume One (1988) and Volume 3 (1990) were huge hits in their day. But they also proved quite elusive on compact disc: After their initial release, they disappeared from the marketplace until Rhino Records finally reissued them in 2007. The original release of The Traveling Wilburys Collection is highly recommended: The boxed compilation includes both CDs and a DVD featuring the group’s videos and a documentary, plus a spiffy hardbound book.

Like a lot of wonderful music, the Wilburys’ debut came together in pretty offhand fashion. Lynne had produced Harrison’s 1987 album Cloud Nine; the pair had been hanging out at Dylan’s recording studio with Petty and Orbison. As former Warner Bros. chairman Mo Ostin tells it, Harrison brought in the first Wilburys recording, “Handle With Care,” with the intention of using it as the B side of a single. Knowing something special when they heard it, the label executives urged Harrison to turn the single into an all-star collaborative album, and all hands happily complied.

The Grammy-winning Volume One is a rare superstar project. It’s relaxed without being slovenly, entertaining without over-reaching, unassuming and often shaggily funny, and well written, performed, and produced. “Handle With Care” was a deserving radio hit, with warm contributions by all the players. But the album had plenty more to offer. I’m personally very fond of Orbison’s ballad feature “Not Alone Any More” (which would have been perfectly at home on his final studio album Mystery Girl), Dylan’s top-liners “Congratulations” and “Tweeter and the Monkey Man,” and the bouncy set closer “End of the Line.”

Orbison – “Lefty Wilbury” -- died suddenly in late 1988, but the rest of the group reconvened, with new fake monikers, for Volume 3. If there was any doubt the Wilburys would be any less committed the second time around, it was swiftly dispelled by “She’s My Baby,” the amped-up rocker that opened the album. “New Blue Moon” was another fine group effort. Dylan brought some of his drollest material to the table – “If You Belonged to Me” and the doo-wop-styled “7 Deadly Sins,” and Petty showed off his wackier side on “The Devil’s Been Busy” and “Cool, Dark Place.” As he did on Volume One, the unassuming Harrison supplied the glue with bursts of delectable lead guitar.

All supergroups should be this much fun.

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WILLIE NELSON
The Complete Atlantic Sessions
Rhino

When did Willie Nelson really become “Willie?” Probably around the time in the early ‘70s that he pulled up stakes and moved from Nashville to Austin, Texas. And also around the time that he began recording for Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records. The two incredible studio albums included in Rhino’s estimable The Complete Atlantic Sessions – Shotgun Willie (1973) and Phases and Stages (1974) – opened a new chapter in Nelson’s career.

He had made his name in Music City as a songwriter first, penning hits for Patsy Cline, Ray Price, Faron Young, and Billy Walker. Through the ‘60s, he had labored in the country mills at RCA Records, where he could never quite reconcile himself to the highly manicured sound favored by the head of the label’s Nashville division, guitarist-producer Chet Atkins. So, after his Nashville home burned down, Willie headed for Austin, where the burgeoning “cosmic cowboy” scene welcomed him with open arms. The cardigan sweaters that Nelson had favored in Tennessee were soon replaced by overalls, and his red hair began to inch towards his waist.

Atlantic was attempting to kick-start a country music division of its own, and Wexler, the imaginative, hard-nosed producer of countless great R&B sides, recognized Nelson’s off-center brilliance and brought him into the fold. It was somehow fitting that this maverick performer’s first album for the company, Shotgun Willie, was produced in New York by Wexler and Arif Mardin. The album – recorded with Nelson’s sister Bobbie on piano, Bee Spears on bass, Paul English on drums, and Jimmy Day on steel guitar, all mainstays of Willie’s working band – included appearances by ringers like Doug Sahm of the rambunctious Sir Douglas Quintet and former Texas Playboy Johnny Gimble on fiddle. The album included a couple of Bob Wills covers, the first recorded version of Johnny Bush’s “Whiskey River” (Willie’s longtime concert opener), and the sublime “Sad Songs and Waltzes.” Not a big seller nationally, Shotgun Willie was an icon-making LP in the Lone Star State.

Phases and Stages upped the artistic ante. It’s still one of Nelson’s very finest albums. Wexler produced it at Muscle Shoals Sound in Alabama with the studio’s peerless crew of soul session men. Willie and the band wrung every drop of emotion out of an ambitious song cycle that surveyed the end of a relationship from the points of view of the ex-lovers – the woman on Side A of the LP, the man on Side B. Masterful in the totality of its concept, the album included such outstanding individual songs as “Bloody Mary Morning,” “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way” (later covered by Waylon Jennings), and “I Still Can’t Believe You’re Gone.” Again, it failed to become a hit – effectively marking the end of Atlantic’s Nashville adventure – but rock listeners began paying attention to this eccentric Texan.

The Complete Atlantic Sessions includes a bonus disc recorded live at the Texas Opry House in 1974; most of these sides went unreleased for nearly two decades. Like the studio records, it summons up the sound of what became known as “outlaw country” in the first quiverings of its birth. Within a year, America at large would know the sound, after Red Headed Stranger became a crossover smash. But these earlier Atlantic sides are every bit as extraordinary.

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BJORK
Surround
Rhino

At first it seems a little odd to write about a boxed set by a performer who started her solo career a mere 15 years ago. But if there’s anyone deserving of such an honor, it’s Bjork. Listening to Surrounded in its entirety is a real revelation.

The title of this collection, issued by Rhino two years ago, is a droll comment on its contents. Bjork’s first five studio albums – Debut, Post, Homogenic, Vespertine, and Medulla – are included, along with two semi-soundtrack albums, Selmasongs (the companion to the 2000 Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark, in which Bjork starred) and Drawing Restraint 9 (containing music for the film by her significant other, director Matthew Barney). All seven titles appear on DualDiscs, the two-layered CD/DVD hybrid; the albums appear in stereo, Dolby 5.1, and DTS Surround Sound mixes. The studio albums also include all their accompanying videos on the DVD side.

Taken together, these albums offer a remarkable picture of an artist whose massive ambitions and long creative reach have become more apparent with each successive release. When Bjork first appeared in the late ‘80s as the lead singer for Iceland’s post-punky Sugarcubes, could anyone have foreseen the wild directions her career would take? I think not.

The most immediately accessible material here is on Debut (1993) and Post (1995); at the outset, Bjork worked with the Bristol-bred producer Nellee Hooper, who was so significant in the early successes of Massive Attack, and the Bristol star Tricky, so those two albums have a markedly trip-hop flavor to them. Like all of the records that followed, they show off her broad vocal ranger and her considerable virtuosity.

She moved into expansive, elliptical, and suggestive territory with Homogenic (1997), and maintained her course on Selmasongs (2000) and the more subdued Vespertine (2001). On these albums, Bjork stretched the boundaries of her music, delving into deep sampling on the one hand and ladling on full-blown orchestration and choral arrangements on the other. These are really startling records; their daring has kept them fresh over the course of nearly a decade. Medulla (2004) may be the most striking set in Surrounded. The emphasis is on Bjork’s singing, and at times instrumentation is entirely eschewed in favor of layers of vocalizing.

Even if you don’t have a surround set-up at home, the DVD sides of the DualDiscs yield up delights of their own, in the form of 26 full-length song videos. Bjork is as much a visual artist as she is a musical one, and her videos are conceived as sometimes highly abstract mini-movies. She’s an engrossing on-camera personality, and it’s easy to see why she collected an award as best actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her first feature role in Dancer in the Dark.

It’s all impressive stuff. Bjork has made some especially fearless music that works on an non-literal, experimental, dreamlike level that one doesn’t often encounter in pure popular music – and she has always styled herself as a pop artist, and has the platinum albums to back it up. Surrounded is one of the best bargains you’ll find among Amoeba’s boxed bonanza.

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The Glory of Mosaic Records
Mosaic Records

Labels where virtually every release is a work of art are few, but Mosaic Records has been distinguishing itself for a quarter of a century. If you’re a jazz lover, you have no doubt drooled a little while contemplating an array of out-of-print Mosaic boxed sets on Amoeba’s jazz room wall.

Based today in Stamford, Conn., Mosaic was the brainchild of producer and jazz authority Michael Cuscuna. For year, Cuscuna had longed to probe the vaults of Blue Note Records and get some of the unreleased treasures in its catalog released. With the support of Charlie Lourie, Blue Note’s head of marketing, Cuscuna managed to get a number of unheard sessions released. But these projects progressed sporadically, so Cuscuna and Lourie founded a company that would lease classic jazz from the majors and reissue it in top-flight, comprehensive, handsomely designed and intelligently annotated limited-edition collections.

Mosaic made its debut in June1983 with a collection of Thelonious Monk’s complete Blue Note recordings. While the company’s initial efforts focused on the Blue Note catalog, offerings soon branched into projects drawn from other labels’ material – Columbia, Candid, Verve, etc. Mosaic made the transition from LPs to CDs – often offering its sets in both formats – but its packages have remained consistent over the years. Each collection comes in a sturdy black-and-white 12-by-12 box with a densely illustrated and annotated full-size booklet. (Its “Select” series and single-CD reissues lack the bells and whistles, but are just as worthy of attention, by the way.)

The label’s stuff is manufactured in editions of 10,000 copies or less, and sold on a “when-they’re-gone-they’re-gone” basis. To date more than 100 Mosaic boxes have gone out of print. A number of these rare and delightful packages pop up on Amoeba’s walls with regularity, and I can’t think of a jazz fan I know who wouldn’t be delighted to find one of them under the tree.

Over the years, I’ve bought 19 Mosaic boxes – beginning with that 1983 Monk set -- and most of them have gone out of print. A few stand out. The monumental 18-CD collection of the complete Capitol Records Nat “King” Cole trios may be the company’s greatest achievement. I’m a freak for hard bop trumpeter Lee Morgan, so the four-CD set of his ‘50s Blue Note sides and the six-CD collation of his work with Art Blakey’s 1960 Jazz Messengers (also featuring Wayne Shorter) are hard to beat.

I was introduced to pianist Herbie Nichols via Mosaic’s three-CD collection of his work; likewise tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks, one of the great forgotten hard bop musicians, whose complete Blue Note output was released on four LPs. Another Blue Note fave is the way-out organist Larry Young, whose visionary material was unleashed on a six-CD set. And I’d like to thank my accountant for laying Mosaic’s compilation of tenor man Illinois Jacquet’s complete sides on me for my birthday many years ago. Oh, and I can’t forget the gals – singers Mildred Bailey and Anita O’Day, whose swinging work for Columbia and Verve, respectively, was issued by the label.

I’m scratching the surface: Every Mosaic gives up its treasures, and I wouldn’t mind having them all. Hell, I don’t even mind – much -- that Loren Schoenberg’s notes for the label’s Woody Herman box beat out my notes for No Thanks! The ‘70s Punk Rebellion for a Grammy four years ago. If it’s Mosaic, it’s gotta be good, really.

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