November 2008

November 2008 Newsletter

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With Election Day a mere 8 days away here in the USA, we humbly ask once again for your vote as one of the jazz industry's leading retailers. We remind everyone how important it is to exercise your right to vote, regardless of your beliefs and politics, as everyone is surely entitled to their opinion and voice in our country. ejazzlines vows to continue the stance which we adhere to during every election cycle, as we always stay positive, and have never once employed a single word of negative campaigning against any of our esteemed colleagues and competitors. As November 4th approaches, we send the best of luck to whichever candidates may be favored by our wonderful customer base, and we also apologize to those of you in various parts of the world who have had to be subject to so many months of news regarding our never-ending election season. We thank you all once again, and while the folks at ejazzlines are very aware of all of the choices you have in the jazz retail world, we thank the very many of you who cast your vote for ejazzlines when it comes to your purchases!

We continue to expand our ever-growing catalog of Jazz Lines Publications, which now totals 29 arrangements. We have three brand new arrangements that will be shipping later this week and are available for pre-order, including Frank Sinatra's Goody Goody, Helen O'Connell's I Cried for You, and a fantastic (and very famous) Christmas chart of Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters' version of Mele Kalikimaka. We continue to try very seriously to add to the selection of existing arrangements, by publishing fantastic renditions of classic tunes, and we hope to soon be thought of right beside our friends at Hal Leonard, Alfred, Sierra, Kendor, Walrus, and the rest of the industry leaders in this area.

November's highlights include brand new live DVD releases from Sonny Rollins and The Crusaders. We also strongly encourage folks to take a look at Motown Hits, the latest play-along offered by Hal Leonard, and Jamey Aebersold's newest Pocket Book, Saxophone Workshop. We once again remind everyone of the recent release of Series 3 of the Jazz Icons DVDs, adding to their peerless collection of live performances from many of jazz's all-time greats, every one presented in beautiful quality, packaged with great photos and liner notes, and all of them are in stock and discounted from the retail price. Finer holiday gifts could not be found for lovers and connoisseurs of live jazz DVDs.

New Big Band Arrangements:

Well, it's time to start thinking about your holiday programming. To help fill out the bill, we just published the classic arrangement of Mele Kalikimaka. Anyone who's seen the Chevy Chase holiday classic movie 'Christmas Vacation' (which is a lot of people) knows this song and the scene that it comes from. Clark W. Griswold is gazing out the kitchen window dreaming of the swimming pool that he wants to install and this song is playing in the background. Mele Kalikimaka was written in 1946 by R. Alex Anderson and became a major hit for the unbeatable combination of Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in 1949. It was originally featured on a Crosby record simply titled 'Merry Christmas' released on Decca. This is not a technically demanding chart for the band. However, your singers need to be able to pull off this WWII-era vocal trio style, which sounds easier than it is. Plus, there is a male vocal part that needs to seemlessly blend in as well. The well-known Hawaiian slide guitar introduction has been scored into the ensemble as very few bands would have access to this instrument (or something that could approximate the sound). The vocal key starts in D for Bing and then modulates to E flat for the Andrews Sisters' entrance.

We also have Neal Hefti's arrangement of Goody Goody as recorded by Frank Sinatra for the 1962 album 'Sinatra and Swingin' Brass.' Hefti put together a steamrolling, brisk rendition to play off the song's melodic structure. This arrangement works so well against the melody, beginning with a repeated rock-type melodic figure in the reeds. From the first measure you know you're in for a ride. Lastly in the JLP series we have Helen O'Connell's I Cried for You as arranged by Marion Evans from her 1962 'Here's Helen' album. This is not a transcription, as the original manuscript has been used. This is just a great chart beginning with a bouncy swing figure in the reeds and drums on brushes. And, we also have a few new Gordon Goodwin charts to mention. Act Your Age is a funky, sassy and contemporary groove (just like the title suggests), and features solo space for alto, tenor and bari sax. El Macho Muchacho is an exciting and dynamic Samba that features soprano sax, Gumbo Street is in a New Orleans groove, and Maynard and Waynard was composed and arranged by Gordon Goodwin as a duet for Maynard Ferguson and Wayne Bergeron. Gordon adapted this one to feature only one trumpet soloist with written lines and some solo space. It swings hard!

New DVDs:
November's DVDs are led off by a brand new release of a 2006 live performance from Sonny Rollins at the Vienne, France Jazz Festival. Sonny is accompanied by a band including Bob Cranshaw and Victor Lewis. We also have a new release of The Crusaders performing live at Montreux in 2003. We have new live DVDs from Sheryl Bailey and Tommy Emmanuel, and another fantastic selection of instructional DVDs ranging from Jerry Barnes' funk bass to Manolo Badrena's Latin percussion to John Blackwell's R&B drumming to the guitar styles of Stevie Ray Vaughan, David Gilmour, Rev. Gary Davis, and more. We also once again mention several of October's most popular, including the new Jazz Icons Series 3, and DVDs from War, Mahalia Jackson, and Victor Wooten.

New Books:
November's books feature Motown Hits, a great new play-along from Hal Leonard. With songs from Motown legends ranging from the inimitable Marvin Gaye to Stevie Wonder, this book appears to be one of the best new ideas we have seen in a while. Improvising Blues Guitar takes one through many different styles of blues playing, and Jamey Aebersold's Saxophone Workshop is a budget-priced expert guide to many different sax-related topics. We also have the brand new Low Voice edition of The Real Vocal Book, Volume 2, and twelve different instrument editions in the Latin Themes play-along series. Among October's best, we highly recommend Chuck Sher's Best of Sher Music Co. Real Books. We also are proud to have the newest Mr. Goodchord book, Volume 3, and all of the books in the series, in stock. We also suggest the Big Band Christmas play-along series, and with the approach of the holidays, we continue to add new holiday items to our pages every week.

New Release Summary:
In our effort to present everything that is new and interesting, which truly crosses party lines and encompasses ideas from all areas of the political/musical spectrum, as of this newsletter we have added a total of 80 new CDs for the month of October 2008 and 90 for the month of September 2008; 16 new DVDs for November 2008 and 20 for October 2008; 24 new music books for November 2008 and 45 for October 2008; 3 new big band and combo arrangements for the month of November 2008 and 42 for the month of October 2008.

If you haven't visited our Imports and Rarities section lately, please check it out. We are now stocking more and more obscure, rare, and hard-to-find titles from Japan and Europe, including many titles that you may not be able to find elsewhere.

In our DVD section, we now carry nearly 1,700 jazz DVDs!

Please keep in mind that many of our new releases are available in limited quantities. We do our best to predict demand and fill orders as quickly as possible, but we do run out of new releases. Even if we run out of stock, almost everything featured in this newsletter should be available to ship within 5-7 days; some imports may take 2-3 weeks.

As always, we are here for all of you and we truly appreciate all of the support we continue to receive. While we know everyone has many choices in the jazz retail world, we aspire to provide the best one-stop source for jazz recordings, DVDs, charts, and educational materials. Please accept our continued gratitude for your support, and please let us know anytime what we are doing right and what we need to improve.

We are Rob and Doug at ejazzlines and we approved this message.