All About Jazz Celebrates The Beatles

All About Jazz is celebrating our own brand of Beatlemania with a 14-CD contest giveaway (expires October 10th), a comprehensive review of the recently reissued stereo box set, plus two articles: "Jazz Honors the Beatles" and "How Jazz May Have Influenced The Beatles."

"Jazz Honors the Beatles" includes nearly 80 quotes about the Fab Four by jazz musicians ranging from Christian Scott to John Scofield. Simon Jay Harper delves deep into The Beatles' music-making and postulates how jazz played an influential role, particularly on their early-recorded material.

And finally, we're featuring guitarist Chuck Anderson's "Eleanor Rigby / Norweigian Wood Medley" as today's featured MP3. Download it now.

The Beatles: Masterful in 2009

The Beatles
Catalog Remasters
EMI-Apple
2009

As with most news concerning The Beatles, the announcement of the release of remastered and repackaged CDs of the group's entire discography seemed at first something to celebrate. Second thoughts arose when details of the exercise were divulged. But over-cerebralization gets in the way of enjoying the music. The nature of the marketplace, and diversities of personal preference, are perhaps more productively viewed as different ways to enjoy the work of a band that has exerted more influence than any other in the history of pop music.

The first batch of Beatles CDs issued in 1987 presented the titles in their original British track sequences. This was in contrast to the hodgepodge created at the time of the original American releases when Capitol cobbled together what amounted to extra LPs to satisfy the demands of Beatlemania--by mixing album tracks and singles. (Those titles have themselves since been reissued, indicating that interest in the Beatles' work really knows no bounds).

As digital technology and archiving expertise evolved over a quarter century, virtually nothing was done with the Beatles' catalog with the exception of The Anthology (Capitol-Apple, 1995-6), a mammoth work on its own terms, plus the isolated revision of Yellow Submarine, as soundtrack to the 1999 DVD reissue, and Let It Be... Naked (Capitol-Apple, 2003), more about which later. In contrast to the forward thinking that earmarked the Beatles career, the modernization of their recorded legacy was left to languish.

Continue...

Enter The Beatles 14-CD Giveaway Contest!

All About Jazz members are invited to enter The Beatles remastered and rediscovered CD giveaway contest starting today. 7 winners will receive 2 of the 14 CDs listed below. We'll announce the winners on October 10th.

Click here to enter the contest

(Following The Beatles at AAJ automatically enters you in the contest.)

Good luck!
Your Friends at EMI Music

The Beatles' Entire Original Recorded Catalogue Remastered
By Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music Will Be Available September 9

The Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music have announced the release of the original Beatles catalogue, which has been digitally remastered for the first time, for worldwide CD release on September 9, the same date as the release of the widely anticipated The Beatles: Rock Band video game. Each of the CDs is packaged with replicated original U.K. album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited period, each CD will also be embedded with a brief documentary film about the album. On the same date, two new Beatles boxed CD collections will also be released.

The albums have been remastered by a dedicated team of engineers at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London over a four year period utilizing state of the art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment, carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings. The result of this painstaking process is the highest fidelity the catalogue has seen since its original release.

This will mark the first time that the first four Beatles albums will be available in stereo in their entirety on compact disc. The 14 albums, along with a DVD collection of the documentaries, will also be available for purchase together in a stereo boxed set.

Within each CD's new packaging, booklets include detailed historical notes along with informative recording notes. With the exception of the Past Masters' set, newly produced mini-documentaries on the making of each album, directed by Bob Smeaton, are included as QuickTime files on each album. The documentaries contain archival footage, rare photographs and never-before-heard studio chat from The Beatles, offering a unique and very personal insight into the studio atmosphere.

A second boxed set has been created with the collector in mind. The Beatles in Mono gathers together, in one place, all of The Beatles recordings that were mixed for a mono release. It will contain 10 of the albums with their original mono mixes, plus two further discs of mono masters (covering similar ground to the stereo tracks on Past Masters). As an added bonus, the mono Help! and Rubber Soul discs also include the original 1965 stereo mixes, which have not been previously released on CD. These albums will be packaged in mini-vinyl CD replicas of the original sleeves with all original inserts and label designs retained.

Remastered Releases

1. Please Please Me (CD debut in stereo)
2. With The Beatles (CD debut in stereo)
3. A Hard Day's Night (CD debut in stereo)
4. Beatles For Sale (CD debut in stereo)
5. Help!
6. Rubber Soul
7. Revolver
8. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
9. Magical Mystery Tour
10. The Beatles
11. Yellow Submarine
12. Abbey Road
13. Let It Be
14. Past Masters