Joe,

About the booklet that accompanies the set, let me quote Richard Nevins in the liner notes - "the entire orientation of this project has been purely entertainment, not academics, and we hope you'll find it both enjoyable and gratifying."

The booklet contains some very beautiful pictures of the artists that I find fascinating. The quality of the art is superb. The notes in the booklet are typical of liner notes, it is more of a commentary or history if you will as opposed to a text book source. An interesting read that gives you an idea of the sessions, the artists and the music - but it will not be considered a source document for learning tunes.

The track listing booklet does not get bogged down with recording dates, although you can find MOST of that information by reading the commentary. There are no lyrics included, but you will find the sound quality surprising good and very listenable. This is not like many of the other collections I have heard. A great deal of time has been spent on re-mastering.   Nevins says in the notes that the approach was to highlight the dynamics and tone of the performances and supress the inherent noise as much as possible without detracting from the music.   On many of the originals, the performers were too far away from the mic, but the remastering has done a great service to "repair" the sound.

Ron