Chick Webb was a jazz and swing drummer and bandleader who enjoyed huge success and popularity during the 1930s before his career was tragically cut short by his death from spinal tuberculosis in 1939 at the age of 34. He was renowned for introducing the teenaged Ella Fitzgerald to the scene as his featured vocalist. With a much-admired powerful virtuoso drumming technique, he was a highly influential figure, paving the way for the likes of Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson. This 98-track 4-CD collection comprises most of his releases under his own name on the Brunswick, Vocalion, Columbia, Okeh and Decca labels, plus early recordings with the Jungle Band. It contains a significant number of recordings featuring Ella Fitzgerald, who performed on several of his 17 career hits, all of which are included here, most notably the No. 1 A-Tisket, A-Tasket.

Strictly Jive is the Hep label's 25-track salute to Chick Webb, a formidable percussionist who led one of the toughest big bands of the 1930s. Strictly Jive concentrates upon the years 1935-1940, a period of time that represents the second half of the ten-year Webb dynasty. The Chick Webb orchestra was a jazz incubator from which emerged seasoned instrumentalists like Taft Jordan, Sandy Williams, Garvin Bushell, Hilton Jefferson, and Eddie Barefield, as well as future bandleaders John Kirby and Louis Jordan, and renowned composer and arranger Edgar Sampson. Saxophonist Wayman Carver, one of the few flutists in jazz during the 1930s, was a featured soloist with Chick Webb and may be heard piping away in front of the band on Wilbur Sweatman's "Down Home Rag." Most people who have heard of Webb associate him with his star vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, a dynamic woman who assumed leadership of the band after 30-year-old Chick Webb succumbed to spinal tuberculosis on June 16, 1939 in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland.