Recording Review

Fats Waller: The 1935 Transcriptions. Transfers and production by -David Lennick. Liner notes by Peter Dempsey. 2001. Naxos Jazz Legends 8.120577.

Despite aficionados’ frequent lament that jazz in America has become marginalized by contemporary popular culture, classic performances continue to be reissued on CD. The contents of these discs range from the eclectic and obscure to the mainstream, sometimes encompassing large chunks of an individual artist’s output (e.g., Louis Armstrong: The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings on Columbia, reviewed by Charles Hiroshi Garrett in this journal, 22, no. 2 [Summer 2004]: 331–37). Often the reissued material appears on European labels, perhaps because such labels can take advantage of the fifty-year limit on copyright protection that applies throughout most of Europe. Indeed, since there are no permissions fees and only fixed production and duplicating expenses, the prospect of certain profits, even if small, apparently offers the economic incentive necessary to induce a variety of labels to bring out CDs of earlier jazz.