It ain't necessarily so

This is quite brazen.

Fans of Christmas jazz might be tempted, at first blush, to pick up this MP3 EP collection of tunes by famed West Coast jazz pianist Pete Jolly and equally acclaimed jazz bassist Leroy Vinnegar.

Alas, this “collection” is nothing of the kind.

Some crook concealed behind the bogus identity of “SRI Jazz” has simply lifted six tracks from Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas album, in a few cases supplying sloppy new titles (“Bagatelle No. 25”???). 

On top of which — not that this matters much — the audio quality is dreadful.

This con job is readily available via both Amazon and Google Play ($5.94), and iTunes ($7.74), where you’ll immediately recognize Guaraldi’s work via the brief audio clips. The damn thing also pops up in Spotify, and at least one of the tracks (“The Christmas Song”) has been posted in YouTube by “Label Engine” (where, thankfully, it has been correctly identified by one commenter).

I left a “Buyer beware” review with Amazon, and also contacted them with a strong suggestion that the item be de-listed, as it’s fraudulent; unfortunately, Amazon is notoriously unhelpful (unconcerned?) about such things, so I’m not holding my breath.

SRI has a rather slapdash web site, although — given this example — I’d be wary of purchasing anything from them.

As the Internet constantly proves, there’s no shortage of hustlers hoping to take advantage of the unwary. Caveat emptor!