Verve Records to Celebrate 60th Anniversary With Series of Reissues

To celebrate its 60th anniversary this year, Verve Records plans to reissue several of its seminal of its releases throughout the decades of its existence. The list is a veritable who's who of jazz. Planned reissues.include such luminaries as Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Smith, Stan Getz and Ella Fitzgerald.

Among the notable releases that Verve will focus on is several in the Ella Fitzgerald catalogue. According to Jazz Times, " ...the Fitzgerald release, Jazz at the Philharmonic: The Ella Fitzgerald Set, is a new compilation bringing together all of the singer's Jazz at the Philharmonic performances previously issued by Verve on various albums, on a single collection for the first time ever. The collection-which includes concerts from 1949, 1953 and 1954 and features appearances by Parker, Lester Young and Hank Jones, among others-will feature newly remastered music and an essay by author Will Friedwald."

The first set that Verve is planning to release is Verve 60, a sixty year label retrospective featuring sixty different artists. Verve was founded in 1956 by Norman Granz. According PRNewsWire, "Granz also managed Ella Fitzgerald and launched the label in large part to create new opportunities worthy of the singer's immense talent, including her landmark series of Songbook recordings."

Not only CDs but digital downlaods and vinyl releases as well. The label sparked the Bossa Nova craze of 1964 with the Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto, Astrid Gilberto masterpiece Getz/Gilberto. Although the label is most associated with jazz, it also, in its existence has ventured into both rock and folk as well as comedy. In the 1990s, the label experienced a renaissance when it signed such new superstars as Chris Botti and Diana Krall.