‘Jazz Singers’ Survives Smithsonian Cuts

There’s good news and bad news from the Smithsonian Institution.

The bad news is that the Smithsonian Collection of Recordings--the source of a number of first-rate, beautifully produced jazz recordings--is being shut down, reportedly for budgetary reasons. The closure signals the loss of a division with a remarkable track record of releases in jazz, pop and country music. Eleven have received Grammy nominations, and two have received Grammy Awards. The six-album “Collection of Classic Jazz,” produced in 1973, has sold more than a million copies.

The good news is that a five-CD boxed set, “The Jazz Singers,” scheduled to be released May 19 by the Smithsonian, has managed to avoid the cost-cutters’ hatchet. The collection, with 100 tracks from more than 25 record labels, includes jazz, blues and gospel music from such obvious choices as Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughan, as well as some unexpected vocals from such instrumentalists as Lester Young and Ben Webster.

Will “The Jazz Singers” be the swan song for the Smithsonian’s recording activity? Not completely. According to Robert Schelin, acting managing director of Smithsonian Press/Smithsonian Productions, the Folkways Recording label will continue to release such products as the “Anthology of American Folk Music,” which won two Grammy Awards earlier this year.

The Folkways collection, which includes thousands of recordings from around the world, has been wholly owned by Smithsonian since it was acquired from founder Moses Asch in 1987. Which means that its various collections are not subject to the same costly rights clearances that have raised the cost of Smithsonian compilations--apparently to the point at which the collections program has been discontinued. So jazz fans can only hope that Schelin is correct in his assertion that some of the activities of the collections division may eventually be absorbed into the Folkways program.

Marsalis and Strings: Is Wynton Marsalis stretching himself too thin?

At first blush, the playing on the Pulitzer Prize-winning trumpeter-composer’s just-released “The Midnight Blues--Standard Time Vol. 5” (Columbia) might lead one to think so. Performing with a string orchestra laying down lush arrangements by Robert Freeman, Marsalis sounds laid back and minimalist, only occasionally breaking away from the melodies of such tunes as “You’re Blase,” “It Never Entered My Mind,” “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” and “My Man’s Gone Now.”

But musical perspective has always been essential to Marsalis’ creativity, and he clearly views these classic standards as works to be interpreted in lyrical, melodic renderings. Marsalis once asked, rhetorically, “When did pop songs stop being about romance and adult relationships?” And his goal in this collection has less to do with recapitulating the improvisationally oriented Charlie Parker or Clifford Brown with Strings template than with reviving that sense of romance--with expressing, in Marsalis’ view, “the hard-earned appreciation that comes with lost love.”

Remixing Miles: It may be that the remix plague is starting to impact the jazz world. The process is simple enough: Take an existing recording and reprocess it via edits, rebalancing and re-equalization of instruments, addition of supplemental sounds, etc., into a personalized transformation of the original.

Sound antithetical to the nature of jazz? You bet. But that hasn’t stopped producer Bill Laswell from taking on Miles Davis in “Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969-74” (Columbia). And, although Laswell’s rock and hip-hop perspective may result in hefty sales, Davis’ jazz fans may have a hard time swallowing this peculiar distortion of music from three of the trumpeter’s seminal albums, “In a Silent Way,” “On the Corner” and “Get Up With It.”

Laswell justifies his manipulations by pointing out that original producer Teo Macero took many liberties in editing and assembling the original materials. But the results in these versions, which have much more to do with Laswell than with Davis, are reminiscent of Stravinsky’s famous complaint asserting that contemporary recording technology produces “a super-glossy, chem-fab music substitute that was never heard on sea or land, including Philadelphia.”