In 1978, Time-Life initiated an ambitious project to commemorate ‘Giants of Jazz’, many of whom had been recording, (78 rpm shellac discs), since the early days of acoustic record-making.  The project eventually included 28 volumes, each containing 3 LPs and a 50-page booklet. The volumes were offered as a subscription series that stretched over 5 years! Critics have long argued about the individual artists included, (and omitted), but there is no disputing the effort and resources that Time-Life put into producing the series. Artists who didn’t get their very own box set are also liberally represented throughout the volumes on recordings under the ‘big’ names, making the series an excellent anthology of early American jazz. Time-Life hired respected jazz author/historians to bolster their own excellent research and writing staff. They located and documented original 78 discs to create an aural biography of each artist’s work on the new vinyl LP sets - even uncovering some rare recordings from private and public collections that had never been issued in North America.

Working with tape, (before sophisticated digital tools were available), the recording engineers at Columbia Special Products did their best to capture as much sonic detail as possible from the old 78's. The files presented here, (ripped from my collection of sealed/mint LP’s), have been further treated with some modern DSP processing, (level adjustments, DC restoration, light de-clicking etc.), and are in true, single-channel, mono format - to get them as close as possible to the sound of the original recordings.

The 6 sides of each original LP set are presented as ‘2 CDs’, together with a searchable .pdf of the original Time-Life booklet and the publisher’s “Dear Subscriber” note that was included with each original boxed set.

Total Content:  1135 tracks. Over 60 hours playing time. Over 1500 pages of reference material !!

You’re welcome.