Boxes Worth Wrapping Up for the Fans on Your List

The holiday season is roaring to a climax, but there’s still time to make that very special purchase for the jazz fan in your life. Here’s a selective list of some boxed sets to please the most diverse tastes. Consider them all, within their genres, four-star offerings.

“A Night Out With Verve” (Verve Records). Here’s one of the most diverse of all. Verve has assembled a four-CD collection of albums devoted to individual listening activities. “Wining,” for example, showcases Coleman Hawkins with “I Wished on the Moon,” George Benson with “What’s New” and Sonny Rollins with “You Are Too Beautiful.” The other CDs--titled “Dining,” “Dancing” and “Romancing”--include an impressive array of artists, including Art Blakey, Jim Hall, George Shearing, Stan Getz, Mel Torme, Lester Young, Ella Fitzgerald and Fred Astaire. It’s enough to give a fan of both football and jazz no alternative but to keep the headphones on while watching the bowl games.

Louis Armstrong, “The Ultimate Collection” (Verve) and “The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings” (Columbia Legacy). Two absolutely vital collections embracing much of Armstrong’s most significant work. The Verve set has an enormous reach, from 1924 to 1968, with Satchmo in the company of Bing Crosby, the Mills Brothers, Sidney Bechet, etc. And the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings are the chronicle of a great artist in the white heat of his most creative period--especially with pieces such as “Potato Head Blues” and “Wild Man Blues.” The collection also includes a number of rare alternate takes.

“Ken Burns Jazz: The Story of America’s Music” (Columbia Legacy/Verve). With Burns’ 19-hour-plus filmed odyssey through jazz history arriving in January, here’s the soundtrack in advance. Once again, Armstrong plays a prominent role, and there is some duplication of material from the above albums. But there is also a kind of aural, Reader’s Digest version of jazz history--from Armstrong and Bechet through Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and into John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis. As I’ve noted in past columns, the project pays far too little attention to post-’60s jazz, but there is no denying its value as a vital entry in anyone’s jazz collection.

Thelonious Monk, “The Complete Prestige Recordings” (Prestige/Fantasy). The iconoclastic pianist didn’t do a lot of recording for Prestige, but no fewer than 15 of his important pieces--”Monk’s Dream,” “Little Rootie Tootie,” “Blue Monk” and “Bye-Ya” among them--are represented in this three-CD collection. Equally important, there are sessions in which he plays with Coleman Hawkins (on Monk’s first album), Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis. Again, some fascinating alternate takes are also included.

Charlie Parker, “The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings” (Savoy). It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of this collection featuring Parker’s most important, breakthrough recordings. Mention a classic Parker performance--from “KoKo” and “Billie’s Bounce” to “Chasin’ the Bird” and “Embraceable You”--and it’s here. Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach and Miles Davis, among many others, are also present, laying down music that was to become the essential improvisational framework of jazz for the second half of the 20th century and beyond.

Bill Evans, “The Last Waltz” (Milestone). This was the last Bill Evans Trio--with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera accompanying the pianist--performing in a San Francisco club barely a week or two before Evans’ death. Eight CDs may seem like an expansive canvas, but not for Evans, who, especially in live performance, was capable of remarkable feats of improvisational prestidigitation. But what makes the performances even more telling, even more emotionally penetrating--especially in the case of the ballads--is the almost palpable shadow of Evans’ imminent passing. Among jazz documents, it is surely one of the most extraordinary examples of an artist managing to stay in touch with his creative core right up to the very end.

Michel Petrucciani, “Concerts Inedits” (Dreyfus Jazz). The French pianist passed away last year, making this three-CD collection even more valuable. Encompassing three live performances--a solo outing in France in 1993, a duo with bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen in Denmark in 1994, and a trio outing with brother Louis Petrucciani on bass and Lenny White on drums--it presents Petrucciani in his most advantageous setting. Always a masterful technician, his solo program, including standards such as “Autumn Leaves” and “In a Sentimental Mood,” offers an opportunity to hear his more lyrical qualities. The Orsted Pedersen set pairs two of Europe’s most unique jazz artists, and the trio CD allows Petrucciani to stretch out in full swinging fashion.

George Benson, “Anthology” (Rhino Archives). Benson’s long, often quixotic journey from first-rate jazz artist to crossover pop icon is captured in this two-CD box. His early, blues-tinged work with Jack McDuff and Lonnie Smith, and his hard-driving jazz soloing are represented in the earlier tracks, followed by such vocal hits as “This Masquerade” and “Nature Boy.” Most of the balance, however, concentrates on the pop Benson with occasional sidebar linkages with Jimmy Smith and the Count Basie Orchestra.

Oregon, “Oregon in Moscow” (Intuition). An Oregon recording with the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow isn’t quite as far-out an idea as it may seem. Although Oregon--a groundbreaking group in terms of linking jazz with world music and occasional New Age notions--has been performing with large symphonic ensembles for years, the material has never been documented. This two-CD set makes up for the absence with pieces by guitarist Ralph Towner, woodwind player Paul McCandless and bassist Glenn Moore. Recorded in Moscow in 1999 (with Mark Walker on drums and percussion), the collection, not surprisingly, comes across as an expanded perspective on the appealing, melodically intriguing music Oregon has always performed.

Freelancer Don Heckman writes about jazz for The Times. He can be reached at djh@earthlink.net.