AMG EXPERT REVIEW: Originally issued as six LPs in the 1983 by producer Henri Renaud and engineer Frank Abbey, this series was remastered and revised for CD in 1989 and reissued in a new edition by Sony Music of France in its "Jazz Originals" series. The results are not only impressive, but downright overpowering at times, and the fact that virtually none of this material is available at present in the United States, nine years after it showed up in Sony French catalog, is nothing less than astonishing. The usual perception is that Ellington was an underutilized resource at Columbia after he signed with the label in 1947, following his exit from RCA and a brief stay on an independent label. In point of fact, the label only recorded three LPs with Ellington during those five years, and was a bit reticent to push him in the long-playing format. But that's not to say that they didn't keep him busy, apart from the Musicians Union strike for all of 1948, cutting singles — the four CDs include a total of 77 numbers, none of them off of the three LPs that Ellington cut during this period with Columbia, and all of it a match for the best material off of those albums (only two of which are currently in print, in any case). The accompanying booklets, identical in each volume, are very chintzy — more extensive commentary would have been nice, although the presence of a good discography and musicians' lists for each session are enough to keep the listener busy, marveling at a band that, until the final period of this series, was one of the best in the history of jazz. Precious few of these 77 tracks, cut as singles between 1947 and 1952, have appeared on CD in the US, making this perhaps the largest single body of Ellington's work that is not easy to find. Since they were done as singles, and aimed at a popular audience, there is a pretty high percentage of vocal numbers among them, variously featuring Kay Davis, Al Hibbler, Dolores Parker, and, especially, Ray Nance as singers, but the instrumental soloists, including Nance, Billy Strayhorn, Harry Carney, Harold Baker, Tyree Glenn, Lawrence Brown, Russell Procope, and, of course, Johnny Hodges, are showcased just as prominently. Included is one previously unissued outtake ("Maybe I Should Change My Ways"), but considering how obscure some of this stuff is, there's plenty that's effectively "new" to anyone not an extremely serious collector. The material is arranged Bear Family style, which is to say, in session order between the four volumes, with clear reference to the departure and arrival of key members, so it's easy to trace the history of the band. — Bruce Eder