The Complete Atomic Basie

Album Review

One of the reasons that some major labels love to license big chunks of their catalogs to smaller independent outfits for box set reissues is that they never know that those licensees will turn up in putting those sets together, and it all becomes fair game for the parent company. Thus, in 1994, a year after Mosaic unearthed five previously unissued tracks from the October 1957 sessions that yielded The Atomic Mr. Basie on Roulette, Capitol Records (which had acquired the Roulette library) issued this expanded version of the original album. The original 11 songs are here, remastered into proper mono (there was an impossible to listen to duophonic stereo master made at the time of release that was in circulation on LP for a time), along with five outtakes consisting of material written and arranged by Jimmy Mundy: the instrumentals "Silks and Satins," "Sleepwalker's Serenade" (two different takes), and "The Late Late Show" and a vocal version of the latter featuring Joe Williams. These were apparently part of a proposed Jimmy Mundy album that never got completed, and were forgotten; they fit in surprisingly well with the Neal Hefti arrangements comprised the original recording, and Joe Williams turns in some of the best work of his career on the vocal version of "The Late Late Show," a sultry, richly intoned performance that positively seduces the listener, with the band blowing beautifully behind him.