Art Pepper - Promise Kept: The Artist House Recordings [4LP/ Boxed] (RSDBF 2021)

Four classic releases return in their original form for the first time in over 25 years.

”Art Pepper had had a brilliant career as a jazz soloist and band leader until the mid-1950s when he started using heroin. After that, incarcerations and treatments in prisons and hospitals, kept him off the stages and out of the studios. He was only able to record sporadically until he got (relatively) sober in Synanon in 1972, and married Laurie—me. Then, in the last ten years of his life, he composed, recorded, and toured more ambitiously than ever before, focused on securing his place among the true jazz greats—where he knew he belonged.”

 

—from the liner notes by Laurie Pepper

 

Producer John Snyder had always wanted to record Pepper and booked him into a week at the Village Vanguard in New York. At the time, Pepper was under contract to Contemporary Records and label head, Les Koenig, decided he would record the gigs, quashing any notion Snyder had of doing the same. However, Art promised Snyder that he’d record an album for Snyder’s label, Artists House, at some point down the road. Together they wound up making four.

Here again on vinyl for the first time in over 25 years are the original albums drawn from these sessions: So In Love, Artworks, New York Album, and Stardust. They have been lovingly recreated in their original form, remastered by Grammy®-winner Michael Graves and recut by Jeff Powell. All four releases are housed in a slipcase which includes a 16-page booklet with photos and updated liner notes from Art’s widow Laurie Pepper for Record Store Day Black Friday 2021.

“John and Art both kept their promises. John brought Art into the wider world; he put him on the road. Just as he said he would, he brought him to New York and to the Village Vanguard, got his picture in the papers, got him on the radio. From Art, John got his dearest wish. He made these recordings.”

 

—from the liner notes by Laurie Pepper

 

Straight, No Chaser
Blues For Blanc
So In Love
Diane
Stardust
Body And Soul
Anthropology
Desafinado
Donna Lee
You Go To My Head
Blues For Blanche
A Night In Tunisia
Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be)
Straight, No Chaser
Duo Blues
My Friend John
My Friend John
Tin Tin Deo
Stardust
In A Mellow Tone