Count Basie at the Piano: with Fred Green, guitar; Walter Page, bass; Joe Jones, drums.
First available as a five-record album Decca Album No. 152 with blue labels, consisting of records no. 2355, 2498, 2722, 2780, and 3071.
Reissued in 1948 as four-record album Decca A-152 with black labels, consisting of records no. 2355, 2498, 2722, 4461 (two tracks "Red Wagon" and "Fare Thee Honey, Fare Thee Well" were removed)
Sides A, B, C, E, F recorded Nov. 9, 1938 in New York, New York
Sides D, G, H, I, J recorded Jan. 26, 1939 in New York, New York
A mx (64735)
B mx (64731)
C mx (64732)
D mx (64957)
E mx (64733)
F mx (64734)
G mx (64954)
H mx (64955) - removed on 4-record album
I mx (64956) - H (Side 8) on 4-record album
J mx (64958) - removed on 4-record album
Discogs defines Fair Use as:
"Fair Use – any image representing a physical or digital product in the Discogs Database for the purpose of critical commentary or for the purpose of reselling the work under the First Sale Doctrine" (my bold font).
By the way, the font style on the older (1940) cover with the hand-drawn Decca logo reminds me of the font on earlier red & gold-label Decca Personality records that were issued as part of these albums. So my guess would be that the original discs had these red labels with gold text. The differences in the inside pages are also interesting. The older photo montage looks like a LIFE magazine photo feature - maybe that's what people expected when they bought a "Personality-Series" album. I have a Carmen Miranda album that does the same thing. The later repress, in contrast, offers the kind of text discussion of the music that I'd have expected to see on the back of an LP cover.
Here is a current eBay offer for the original 5-record album with great images of the item (including a photograph of the recording unit) that need to be photoshopped though. Maybe you can do that, Keith?
For the moment I have uploaded the inside photograph as distorted as it is pictured there.
There are many sets that look as though they just chucked in anything available..even seen red labels and even Decca Gold mixed in..here's a few
35 Deanna Durbin 1097, 1471 and 2274
140 Bing Crosby 886,1175, 1616, 2275, 1518 and 1845
A152 Count Basie 2355, 2498, 2722, 4461
153 Woody Herman 1801, 2508, 2582, 2629, 3500 and 3501
181 Bing Crosby 2374, 1044, 3540, 3541, 3542 and 3543
190 Al Kealoha Perry 3412, 3457, 3484 and 3534
191 Ray Kinney 3095, 3264, 3402, 3535 and 3536
192 Al Kealoha Perry 3411, 3439, 3537 and 3538 first two unmarked
193 Various Artists 1265, 3299, 3046, 3047 and 3048
194 Clara Inter 3361, 3430 and 3475
and those are just out of my list of the first 200 album numbers
There were several earlier Decca albums that included nonconsecutive record numbers, e.g. Album No. 140, and already Album No. 10 had one.
But besides that, this was not the first issue of the Basie album anyway. Your four-record album with the boxed Decca logo is from 1948, the first one with the Decca letters drawn by the cover artist had an additional fifth record to include "Fare Thee Honey, Fare Thee Well" and "Red Wagon", and was released in 1940 (cat# Album No. 140, not A-140), see here.
The original album contained:
Disc # 2355 A/B Boogie Woogie b/w How Long How Long Blues
Disc # 2498 A/B The Dirty Dozen b/w When The Sun Goes Down
Disc # 2722 A/B Hey Lawdy Mama b/w The Fives
Disc # 2780 A/B Oh! Red b/w Fare Thee Honey Fare Thee Well
Disc # 3071 A/B Dupree Blues b/w Red Wagon
see here.
This is the first album that I have seen that does not use consecutive cat. #.'s. There may be others, I don't know. It appears like Decca just threw together a few former issues and put them in this album without any attempt to make it look like a new or re-issue album. Most albums that I have seen have the catalogue numbers on the labels in consecutive order.