Acoustic Sounds Announces Major Pablo Records Reissue Series!
15 titles, 33 1/3, all-analog mastering, hand picked by Chad Kassem
Acoustic Sounds just announced a fifteen Pablo titles reissue series, cut from the original master tapes and pressed at Quality Record Pressings. Mastering engineers include Doug Sax, Kevin Gray and Stan Ricker (obviously these are from existing metal parts). Pablo Records was the great producer Norman Granz's "swan song". Granz (1918-2001) created Clef, Norgran, Verve and finally Pablo. He was also Ella Fitzgerald's manager for decades until her career ended.
Granz, yet another son a Jewish immigrants to get involved in the record business was also instrumental in desegregating music venues, and like Benny Goodman, in putting Black and white performers on stage together. Granz put his money where his beliefs were and cancelled segregated shows. His activism on behalf of racial equality is legendary. Today it's difficult to believe, but his decision to pay musicians equal pay regardless of race was at the time a revolutionary idea. Granz's "Jazz at the Philharmonic" series included world tours that brought American jazz to Europe and elsewhere following World War II.
He founded Pablo in 1973 at age fifty five (Granz was an art collector and friend of Picasso), and made the label a home for older, more traditional jazz musicians supposedly past their prime. The covers were black and white and that plus the "over the hill" musicians probably contributed to the sense that this was a "budget" label, but Granz used the best recording studios and engineers and achieve spectacular studio sound. And of course these musicians were anything but "over the hill" and the more time that passed, the more music lovers came to value these recordings, especially the free-wheeling jam sessions. Granz sold Pablo to Fantasy in 1987.
The records, some of which Acoustic Sounds has previously released, will roll out between now and October 25th, 2024, with The Alternate Blues now shipping. Retail is $40. The first 250 will be numbered and sold as a subscription series group for $650.00.
The Pablo catalog was among the best kept "little secrets" in jazz vinyl history with records until very recently going for ridiculously low dollars but that all changed about a decade ago and now they've become more difficult to find and the prices have dramatically risen.
