tinpanalley

Well, Rita Hayworth wasn't a real redhead. She had dark hair for a lot of the start of her career. But, yeah, I guess people know her as a redhead.

I thought Rudy Vallee was a redhead but apparently not.

Just a silly question that came up recently and couldn't think of any early 20th century jazz or popular musicians (big band, band leaders, pop vocalists, etc) that were redheads. Is this a thing? I mean, even adding classic Hollywood all I can think of is Cagney, Spencer Tracy, and Leslie Howard! Any suggestions on this? I figured the brains here would have the right database for this.

Thank you, and no nothing in particular, I just have been recommended this here before and I'm seeing it for an amazing price and thinking that every year there are new vocalists I listen to that I didn't know about last year that are invariably in this book and as time passes I've seen my Penguin Jazz on CD and Rust Big Band and Jazz books get increasingly more expensive and rare. I just figure why not get this now but I wanted to have a good sense of what was in it. By the way, if you're interested, with an archive.org account, you can "borrow" it here for 2 weeks at a time. But there's nothing like paper in your hands.

I was recommended Brian Rust's "The complete entertainment discography, from the mid-1890s to 1942" here some time ago and have found a really good price on it online but I'm struggling to find any website that can give me a good description of what exactly I can expect in it.

Are the early penguin guides that reference LPs worth having for LP references? I know some would argue that anything on LP available on CD would be "better" to have in the latter format but nostalgia, deleted tracks in digitising, reordering of tracks, etc are all things that becomes issues often on CD. I've got the 4th version and I'm just wondering if I should bother looking for a 9th edition or just get the earlier ones to help with my record collecting? Thanks!

Ok, thanks folks. That book had caught my eye on Amazon but you know, asking a community in the know is always better. It's how I found Brian Rust. I'm impressed that it mentions people like Bowlly (a personal favourite). So, on the discography front? Something like the Penguin Guide for Jazz but for Singers? Does that exist?

Does anyone know of a book that covers Pop Vocalists and singers of standards from the 30, 40s and 50s? Something like the Mojo Collection for Pop/Rock that focuses on the most important recordings or otherwise a full encyclopedic collection of singers with discographies? I used to have those MusicHound guides years ago but looked at one again and couldn't believe how thin and superficial the information was. Ideally, if it were compiled by some kind of reputable journalist or group of them, that would be great. Yes, I do realise I'm probably asking for something nobody has probably ever cared to print.

I just wanted to thank you all for all the input and help. Without the advice I'd have struggled to make a decision on these books which are now among the most valued in my library. Thanks again!

Don't know how much anyone here will be able to help me, but I don't know another forum with the same kind of knowledgable members. I love several singers from Bowlly's era but his work, in particular, I enjoy a great deal. I'm trying to get myself a complete collection of all his recordings. It seems clear that nobody is ever going to bother creating a complete box of his work as you might find with other artists of the same era (Fletcher Henderson, Django Reinhardt, etc etc etc) because unfortunately, Bowlly isn't remembered enough despite being one of the pioneers of the whole crooner era. So, what I'm asking is whether anyone happens to already know of a set or a bunch of CDs that happen to create a complete discography when all put together. I have a three disc set that I thought was complete until I heard a few tracks that don't appear there. These aren't the tracks where he appears as an instrumentalist, just vocal recordings that I don't seem to have anywhere. I know how to dig up old recordings, CDs, etc but I thought I'd eliminate one giant variable by asking here first. If nobody can help then I guess I'll do the best I can by digging around online. Surely those 78s must appear on CD somewhere, be it on Bowlly CDs, Roy Fox CDs, Ray Noble CDs, or elsewhere. Thank you for any and all input and help.

Hmm... What a shame about the coverage of black bands. I hate to call it a sign of the times but 1978 seems inexcusably late for blatant ignoring of an entire essential part of that era just because of skin colour. Is there a book that is less... biased? Or at this point, do we just have what we have and must we simply be thankful to have anything at all? I don't see many people making a career out of writing Big Band anthologies, discographies, etc anymore. I have some film books that, while written in the 70s, still can't be touched by ANYthing published today in terms of information offered. I have Rudy Vallee and Django Reinhardt book discographies that also can't be parallelled in their depth of information in any info in print or online that I've ever seen. As far as film goes, which is admittedly getting a little off topic, Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide is the only thing that comes close to cataloguing every classic English language film in one place, at least that I know of. Indispensable. I imagine music, especially from this era we're talking about is infinitely harder though. There must be countless more sides recorded by one-off labels and bands than films produced even in the silent era when they were dished out in the bucketloads every month. I totally understand what you mean about Lombardo. I just think that for me, liking him, Rudy Vallee, Jackie Gleason Orchestra, Helen Forrest, and all that stuff often considered schmaltzy means I have a soft spot for the very poppy stuff as much as for the genuine jazz groups. Heck, my wife and I named the cat we adopted this year 'Bowlly' for crying out loud. I just don't think, for me, that Lombardo is the same thing as Mitch Miller which I often feel people want to group him in with. It was shocking to me when I started reading this in books because I grew up thinking he was just as relevant as any other big band/dance band leader.

What exactly is the deal with Guy Lombardo getting such a hard time all the time? Ok, so as a fellow Canadian and only one of a few Canadians that contributed to this era of music I'm protective of him. But really, I feel like he's never given enough credit. One of my faves anyway. And no, I don't know those other writers? What are the books? Well, I guess I can look them up online.

What's actually most important to me in terms of jazz artists is chronogical listings of 78s and full album releases. I use these to put my music in order and to tag and catalogue those I have converted to files. With dance band, I know most of their releases are 78s and those I'd like in Chronological order as well. But with the jazz artists, if there's only a listing of all recordings but no reference to how the music was commercially released then maybe the Rust isn't what I want? I've only seen very few pages of the Rust book online. Basically what I'd like is something like what jazzdisco does, for example here with my favourite pianist, Erroll Garner: http://www.jazzdisco.org/erroll-garner/discography/ But I'd prefer to have it in book form because who knows how long any of these sites will be up. I've seen great online catalogues go silent too often. So, is that more or less what I can expect in the Rust Jazz book? I'm 38.

Yes, of course. I know the latter parts of my interests chronologically speaking aren't jazz. I was trying to say that with respect to the Rust books, where early American music is concerned, my interests were those two things (big band and vocals, and 20s-40s jazz). But I guess more as a matter of continued conversation I mentioned the stuff from 1940s onwards. I should have been clear that I didn't consider those jazz. To be honest, in my personal opinion, the dance band era isn't really jazz either. Yes, several jazz greats came from that era (Ben Webster, Teddy Wilson, etc etc) and went from being band members to being important jazz solo artists, but the majority of that dance band era was just pop music at the time, some of which contributed to jazz. To me there's very little "jazz" about Tommy Dorsey for example. Anyway, this gets into the territory of what constitutes "art". Perhaps not as tempestuous a topic, but close. So the Rust Dance Band book that I just got and this 5th Jazz edition I can get are both worth having, right? Fantastic. I use thes kinds of books for discographies of artists I like. Places like amg, discogs, even fan sites, only list junk compilation CDs and disregard original releases completely. That's no way to fill a collection. Now, if there was a book dedicated to amassing the works of orchestrators/arrangers and pop vocalists of the 40s and 50s, I'd be in heaven. It just seems that Capitol and other smaller labels like VSOP in the 50s go completely unnoticed despite having produced some of the most important recordings in American Popular Music history (Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, etc..). Cole is an interesting one because most guides will mention his trio and then completely ignore his vocal Capitol years. Even with instrumentalists, Bobby Hackett gets thoroughly covered for his recordings with Miller and Goodman but he seems to disappear from any guides for his gorgeous work with Gleason and his solo Capitol records in the 50s. But as he himself said, "It's funny, isn't it, how you go right into the wastebasket with some critics the minute you become successful" Thanks to everyone here helping me out. I'm the only person in my age group that is into these things so I rely on communities like this to help me out. If there are recommendations of other sites or books, I'm all ears.

Well, I imagine that for anyone on this forum that's a tough question... But I'd say that with respect to the two Rust books we're talking about my interests lie mainly in two areas: 1) big bands and early vocalists and vocal groups and 2) jazz from the 20s-40s, solo artists, small groups, etc. Then from there, my next major interest is vocalists from the 40s/50s (Helen Forrest, June Christy, Jeri Southern, Beverly Kenney, Helen Merrill, etc) which can be tough to find discographical info for and composer/arrangers (Jenkins, Riddle, May, Gleason, etc) and that stuff becomes really hard to find info for.