Joe Gordon was a Boston trumpeter whose talent was never in doubt and whose career was cut tragically short. A hard bop voice with a clean, burning tone, Gordon came up alongside Charlie Mariano and Herb Pomeroy in the fertile Boston scene before later working with Dizzy Gillespie and Shelly Manne. His 1954 EmArcy debut sounds like a fully formed artist — direct, swinging, and technically assured from the first note.

This Verve Record Club exclusive gives the long-rare session its first proper vinyl reissue. We open the month with a record most people have never encountered — and you’ll understand immediately why that’s a shame.

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Gabor Szabo was a Hungarian guitarist who fled Budapest during the 1956 uprising and built a sound unlike anyone else in jazz — a hypnotic, modal tangle of Eastern-European folk, Latin percussion, and pop melody. He made his name in Chico Hamilton‘s chamber-jazz quintet before stepping out on his own, and his playing would go on to shape a young Carlos Santana.

Spellbinder, recorded in May 1966 at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio with Ron Carter on bass and Chico Hamilton on drums, is his masterpiece — and the home of “Gypsy Queen,” the original that Santana folded into “Black Magic Woman” four years later. The all-analog Verve Vault reissue, mastered from the original tapes and pressed to 180-gram vinyl, brings every shimmering string back to life.

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Between 1956 and 1964, Ella Fitzgerald and producer Norman Granz recorded eight volumes devoted to the great American composers — the Song Book series, the project that lifted Ella from beloved jazz singer to the definitive interpreter of American popular song. Tonight we pair two of them back to back.

The Rodgers & Hart Song Book (1956) was the series’ second volume; the Cole Porter Song Book (1956) was the very first — and the first album Verve Records ever released, the record that launched the whole catalog. The Cole Porter set returns June 26 as a 180-gram Acoustic Sounds mono reissue mastered from the original tapes, which makes June 15 an early listen ahead of its wide release. Two Songbooks, one evening, the most important vocal series in jazz.

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Classically trained at Juilliard and crowned the “High Priestess of Soul,” Nina Simone moved between jazz, blues, classical, gospel, and folk with a sovereignty no one else could claim — and by 1964 her music had become inseparable from the civil rights movement. Few records capture that fusion of artistry and conviction more completely than this one.

Drawn from three 1964 concerts at Carnegie Hall, Nina Simone in Concert was her Philips debut — a catalog now held by Verve — and the album that introduced “Mississippi Goddam,” alongside the searing “Pirate Jenny” and “Old Jim Crow.” The Verve Acoustic Sounds reissue, cut from the original analog tapes and pressed to 180-gram vinyl, restores all the heat of the room. June 22 is an evening for one of the most fearless live recordings ever made.

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Two giants of the tenor saxophone, two completely different approaches to the same horn. Coleman Hawkins invented the instrument as a serious jazz voice — vertical, harmonically aggressive, the architect of “Body and Soul.” Ben Webster, Duke Ellington’s great soloist, played the other side of it: breathy, vocalized, tender on a ballad and growling on a blues. Putting them in one room was producer Norman Granz’s idea of a summit, and he was right.

Recorded in October 1957 and backed by the peerless rhythm team of Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, and Ray Brown, the date glows brightest on “Blues for Yolande,” where the two tenors trade phrases like old friends. The Verve Acoustic Sounds reissue, mastered by Bernie Grundman from the original tapes on 180-gram vinyl, closes June with two of the warmest sounds in all of jazz.

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