Ed Blackwell

Seven albums on eight discs with Ed Blackwell at the drums, recorded between October 1976 and February 1992 and first issued by Black Saint. Few are under his name alone. The box follows the drummer through the quartet Old And New Dreams, a duo and a trio with Dewey Redman, a trio with Karl Berger and Dave Holland, a David Murray quartet date and The American Jazz Quintet, and ends with a concert by his own trio. Each album comes in a card sleeve with its original artwork.

Old And New Dreams, recorded at Generation Sound Studios in New York in October 1976 and released in 1977, brings together Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Redman on tenor and musette, Charlie Haden on bass and Blackwell, here also on gong. The same four were taped at the Ed Blackwell Festival in Atlanta on November 7, 1987 for A Tribute To Blackwell. The night before, at the same festival, the drummer played with The American Jazz Quintet: Alvin Batiste on clarinet, Harold Battiste and Earl Turbinton on saxophones, Ellis Marsalis on piano and Richard Payne on bass, issued in 1991 as From Bad To Badder. Red And Black In Willisau is a duo with Redman from the Willisau festival on August 31, 1980. Transit, cut at Grog Kill Studio in Willow, New York, in August 1986, has Berger on vibraphone and piano and Holland on bass, and includes a piece titled Ornette. Morning Song, from September 1983, is Murray's quartet with John Hicks and Reggie Workman. Walls-Bridges was recorded live at the Hampden Theatre of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst on February 27, 1992, by Blackwell with Redman and bassist Cameron Brown. First released on one CD in 1996, it fills two discs here, with Half Nelson, Dewey Square, Take The "A" Train and the title piece.

The Complete Remastered Recordings On Black Saint & Soul Note, CAM Jazz box BXS 1030 from 2014: eight remastered CDs reissuing Black Saint albums first released between 1977 and 1996.