Toots Thielemans: Yesterday & Today on 2 LPs

This double-LP may well contain the best Toots Thielemans you (n)ever heard. A stunning collection of both rare and great music, starting with his earliest recording as a soloist and ending with a memorable duet in the new millenium.

Producer Cees Schrama, a personal friend, selected all these treasures, looking for recordings that follow Toots’ long and impressive career and are hard or simply impossible to purchase on LP. Some of the tracks - for example the 1946 recording, initially made as a soundtrack for a cartoon - were never issued anywhere. Others - among them the tracks with George Shearing - were issued on singles and then dissapeared.

Toots started out as a Django-inspired guitarist but became instantly recognisable when he started whistling along with his guitar improvisations. More fame came when listeners, musicians and producers discoverd he was turning the chromatic harmonica into a serious jazz instrument.

Thielemans, nowadays, is almost universally loved as an harmonica-star. It took a while, though, before he became a household name. The first tracks on CD 1 follow his development in his first years as a professional musician.

The world’s most renowned musicians have participated with Toots Thielemans over the past 60 years. Among them in this package: Bob Brookmeyer, Ralph Burns, Ron Carter, Bruno Castellucci, Al Cohn, Louis van Dijk, Rob Franken, Urbie Green, Herbie Hancock, Shirley Horn, Dick Hyman, J. J. Johnson, Marc Johnson, Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, Quincy Jones, Niels Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Bucky Pizzarelli, Elis Regina, George Shearing, Zoot Sims, Ricardo Silvera, Sivuca, Reinhold Svensson, Grady Tate, Art Taylor, Clark Terry, Cal Tjader, McCoy Tyner, Doug Watkins, Kenny Werner and others.