I’ve heard a lot of hype about Music Matters Jazz over the years, but I’ve never actually bought any of the records as they are very expensive, so when I heard that the new Tone Poet series by Blue Note Records sounds as good if not better than the Music Matters series I had to buy a couple to see and boy, was I not disappointed!
These records sound every bit as good as anything from MoFi or Analogue Productions. While the titles aren’t as coveted as the Music Matters titles in so far as the albums chosen for the series aren’t as legendary as say Blue Train by John Coltrane or A Night in Tunisia by Art Blakey, there are still tons of great titles by the likes of Dexter Gordon, Kenny Burrell, and Grant Green (speaking of Grant Green, I just listened to Born to be Blue and it’s the best jazz guitar album that I’ve heard since Movin’ Wes by Wes Montgomery 15 years ago!!!).
I’ve heard that the 80th anniversary reissue series sounds as good, but the packaging just isn’t as good (big whoop!), so I’m going to have to check out a few of those too.