Big Beat Steve

O.K., explanation understood. So although I for the life of it cannot remember which recordings/artists it exactly were that combined to shape and define my music preferences at the age of 14 or so and thereby got me on the track of both (real, i.e. 50s) rock'n'roll (and rockabilly) on the one hand and jazz (at first primarily swing and some classic/oldtime jazz) on the other, all this DID change my life plan. Because thanks to my contacts with and presence in these subcultures I not only got into collecting of "large quantities of records" (oh yeah ... ), researching musicians and the music etc. (plus getting a feel for contemporary history and historical research in general), and meeting extremely interesting people but also eventually met my future wife in the rockabilly scene (though she admittedly wasn't as deeply into this as I was). So yes - this music exposure did "direct my life plan" in a bigger way than it would have seemed at first glance.

Probably the ones like the character a local record shop owner told me about years ago: An interior designer had been called in to furnish a client's newly refurbished home in a sort of "updated" Mid-Century Modern style and then dropped by that shop to have the owner compile him a set of Blue Note LPs for his client.

The first one of these two is a compilation reissue of the Second Herd on Capitol (1948-50). Basically it is a reissue of the Woody Herman volume in the early 50s Capitol "Classics in Jazz" series, with the contents expanded from 8 to 12 tracks (Music to Dance to, Not Really the Blues, That's Right, and Lollypop were added). All these 12 tracks (+ The Nearness of You and The Great Lie) also are on (Japanese) Capitol ECJ-40012, and all 12 (plus The Great Lie) also are on the "Early Autumn" LP (Capitol Jazz Classics Vol. 9) that BillF showed in July and that is most frequently available as the Dutch pressing in our regions but also came as a US pressing. So these "Capitol Greatest Hits" have been around in various guises. As the for the "Hey! Heard the Herd?" LP - this at first sight this looks interesting ... But the track listing made me wonder ... And a check in the discography confirmed my hunch: These are reissues of recordings by the Herman band done for Woody's short-lived MARS label in the earlier 50s. Mars then came under control of MGM, as did Verve somewhat later. And then MGM slyly recycled these Mars recordings on its Verve "subsidiary" - with cover artwork that, seen at a glance, seemed to fit in with the contemporary NEW recordings by the early 60s Herman band on Philips. These Mars records are a headache for vinylists. Their reissues have been scattered in all directions through the years so you end up with tons of duplicates but still don't have all of them (if you - very likely - cannot find the Mars originals). So at any rate anyone considering this Verve LP should check first what he has on other LPs covering the Mars period.

A check on Discogs might trigger your memory.

Byas'd opinion, then?

Yes, that's very annoying. Particularly so if the omission is not even because the musician featured elsewhere is not present at all but only because he does not SOLO. And in this case here it sometimes says "Limited solo participation" by Byas. Pity ... But I guess, with space constraints being what they are you cannot have 'em all. 🤨 Ah, long gone are the days when fans and reissuers drooled about a recording of a run-of-the-mill dance band just because it included 8 bars of solo by Bix or Tram.

I did not feel like checking all the LPs where these recordings will hide, but unless my memory fails me gravely on this, I think I have something like 95% of the above on vinyl so I am cool with these omissions. One more reason in favor of that set.

Another one that has me on the fence ... I think I have most of the Don Byas recordings of the mid-40s on all those indie labels, but the Timme Rosenkrantz apartment sessions alone make this more than tempting anyway.

No doubt such cases/lives exist. But IMO this misses the point of the "survey". Or to put it another way: I understood this to mean that those who speak of their musical preferences do so in positive and "happy" terms and exude happiness. I.e. how they feel about their music and how thier music makes them feel. And according to this "survey" these positive vibes seem to happen more frequently with jazz fans than with fans of most other music styles. And according to the report this seems also seems to be true for with Heavy Metal fans - not exactly a segment that typically leads the same kind of everyday life as the average jazz fan. Quote from the comment: " New research courtesy of online marketplace OnBuy.com (no, we're not sure why they're researching this, either) has found that metal is home to music's second happiest fan base, thanks to the high level of positivity the community shows online. The rigorous and absolutely definitely scientifically-sound research was compiled through the analysis of more than two million Reddit comments from the subreddits of 27 different music genres. The number of times positive words were used within the subreddits was calculated to reveal the hierarchy of fan base happiness, revealing that jazz listeners are the most positive, followed by metallers. At the more negative end of the spectrum were drill, grime, and drum and bass fans." And so on ... OTOH, why would drum and bass fans, for example, be at the negative end? Are their everyday lives all just pieces of junk and even their drum and bass hammering won't relieve them from that feeling or do they lead great lives yet delight in talking only about the negative vibes they get from their music all day? Or does this happen to be a style of music that tends to amplify any negative feelings you may harbor? (Hard to believe but ...) Anyway ... no doubt the "Loudersound" people were not taking these findings all that seriously ("no, we're not sure why ...", "rigorous and absolutely definitely scientifically-sound..." ) and neither do I, but isn't the bottom line that this "survey" is only about how people feel about their favorite music and what input they obtain from their music? Not about what else happens in their lives? FWIW, last winter I went through a somewhat difficult phase in my everday life for a number of reasons mayself, and yet my favorite music(s) was a source of uplifting feelings throughout. Which might have come to the fore too if I had ever posted on Reddit. So if even your favorite music can't put an occasional ray of light in your life then ... 😕 Hope the people you know will fare better over time.

So in what respect are those you know fundamentally different and unhappy? Frustrated by the niche existence of jazz and its fans? Frustrated by the inability of convincing everyone (else) of the overriding appeal of "jazz"? Frustrated by the problem that what they consider jazz may not be considered jazz by everyone else within the jazz microcosmos? Or just plain grumpy? 😁 (Not that I would attach too much GENERAL relevance to what someone thinks he has uncovered on something called Reddit, BTW But even if this finding was just a flash in the pan it could have come out worse, right?)

Which raises the question of what dope delirium Chet was in at that moment.

Adding to Rabshakeh's recommendations (I'd fully second PJC but they tend to be pricy), here is one more: "La Dame Blanche", 47 Rue de la Montagne Ste. Geneviève. Not just jazz but other styles too, and you never know what you might find ther in jazz. But worth a stopover and IIRC it is within easy walking distance from PJC. There was another one (specializing in jazz but the focus seemed to be more on post-Swing/Mainstream jazz) in the same street (a bit uphill from the Dame Blanche): CROCOJAZZ. But according to the internet it seems like it has closed down. A pity ...

He was omnipresent on the Italian scene, and of course his family lineage helped for the tabloid side of the media. In line with my personal tastes in jazz I've been attracted more by his relatively early works when he made an impact on the scene (so am not familiar with his later film scores you mention). But his vinyls are hard to come by and so far I only have his 1957 LP "Romano Mussolini con Nunzio Rotondo e Lilian Terry" on (Italian) RCA LPM 10010. He was considered a force to be reckoned with on the scene and his appearances at various festivals were generally praised in the contemporary jazz press.

Now if YOU (with your experience in this "business") have your doubts about all this then I feel somewhat comforted in my earlier buying decisions. So ... trying to take things in order (see numbers below) with the spotty information I can provide: (1) - In fact "Bird Symbols" and "Bird is Free" were two Charlie Parker Records label LPs I bought in my early days (must have been in 1976 after I had jumped head-on into bebop courtesy of the Dizzy Gillespie "In The Beginning" twofer on Prestige and after having bought the Ross Russell "Bird Lives" biography during a school class stay in London). I found both of these LPs in the jazz corner of a local record shop and picked them up at once, wondering how these "old-looking" LPs came to be available there as "late" as 1976. They did not look like someone had sneaked secondhand items in there. But both have the "Stereo-Pact" imprint on the cover too. The "Bird Symbols" cover facsimile in the "Complete Charlie Parker Records" box set released on a PD label a couple of years ago does not have this imprint but it will be a while before I can do a sonic check of the CD contents of this LP. (2) I own these three LPs (the pressings that figure under the three Discogs links I provided. There are other pressings of these LPs with different covers so quality may not always be the same). To refresh my memory I listened through Vol. 1 of these today and find the sound quite OK but I do not have enough other vinyl pressings of Dial Bird tracks to do an aural comparison of them all and am not sure the Charlie Parker Records label LP would be the ideal reference of what can be achieved on vinyl soundwise. And I won't claim I am an experienced expert on the finest details of such comparisons. My guess is that Joker "adopted" the mastering used on the series of Spotlite LPs reissued earlier. (3) Not wanting to pick nits, but isn't it so that the accepted (mandatory?) gospel in many Birdophile circles is that ANY alternate studio takes by Bird are a revelation? Or is it really so in your opinion that the "Hot Blues" alternate of "Cool Blues" is the most essential alternate, but not all of the others are nearly as essential for the non-ultra-completist? (4) and (5) Good to know, all this ... I know some other Bird compilations on LP (Verve included) had left me puzzled too when I compared the matrix numbers listed and found they had used alternates here and there without any discernible logic. (6) According to the "Bird Lore" discography by Piet Koster and Harm Mobach (published in 2002), matrix D 1106-A (identified as the "alt. take" in the listing) was used on Dial 1024. As well as on 78s on London, Swing and Vogue. BUT - matrix D 1106-B (listed as the "master") is ALSO listed as having been used on Dial 1024 (along with 78s on Blue Star, Cupol, Esquire etc.). So there seem to exist TWO pressings of the Dial 78 with both takes of "Embraceable You" having been used. FWIW, according to this listing, matrix D 1106-A (alt. take) was used on many more LP reissues than matrix D 1106-B. Discogs lists only the Dial 78 with matrix number 1106-B in the runout. I trust that the discographers knew what they were putting into print in this book. Although ... I just noticed that they seem to have mixed up the A and B sides of this 78. According to the labels shown on Discogs "Bongo Bop" was side A, "Embraceable You" was side B. It's the opposite (for both takes and pressings) according to "Bird Lore". So "one never knows, do one"?

I remember seeing this WB twofer several times through the years but I cannot recall if I already saw it at the time it was still available new or if this was in secondhand record shops throughout. I passed it up because I already had the contents (and more), though the liner notes looked nice.

From your question I gather that the "Charlie Parker on Dial" LP series on Spotlite (6 volumes first released in the 70s but with numerous and multiple alternate takes) is not for you. Though does not seem to be overly rare. In my early record buying and collecting days in the second half of the 70s I had bought a few LPs of Bird recordings on Dial that had been reissued on the Charlie Parker and SAGA labels, but they weren't widely available here at the time as they all were imports. Besides, these were compilations that left gaps and caused overlaps. So I soon figured it was time to get his entire Dial output in a more orderly and chronological way. In the early 80s a 3-LP series of the Bird Dial recordings (master takes in session chronology) showed up on the Italian budget label JOKER (a label that was all over the place in the shops then with almost countless jazz reissues). Presentation and packaging are nothing special but pressing quality and fidelity are quite decent - and they were decidedly low-priced (which suited my University student's purse, though even then I found the presentation a bit below what would be appropriate for Bird). https://www.discogs.com/release/3342575-Charlie-Parker-Charlie-Parker-Quartet-Quintet-Septet-Vol-1 https://www.discogs.com/release/1500626-Charlie-Parker-All-Stars-Quintet-Sextet-Vol-2 https://www.discogs.com/release/1500662-Charlie-Parker-Quintet-Sextet-3-Vol The contents are almost the same as on the later Spotlite double LP indicated by Jazzbo (which I cannnot recall having ever seen in the shops), except that they do not have the Dizzy-Gillespie-led "Diggin Diz" of 1945 (which is widely available on numerous other reissues) and the "Hot Blues" alt. take of "Cool Blues" but instead have 2 tracks of Bird and Diz with Red Norvo from 1945 (not present on the Spotlite 2-LP set) to make up the same total of 36 tracks. I've since bought a few other, more carefully curated single LP compilations of the Bird Dials but still own no other chronological vinyl set of these (it's one of those things you postpone endlessly in the light of the countless repackagings of the material available at all times). These Joker LPs still are available cheaply in various reissue pressings (see Discogs) so if you don't mind the budget packaging this might be a stopgap solution until something much more carefully presented comes your way. I also remember the WB compilation 2-LP set linked by JSngry but as far as I can see it has "only" 27 instead of 36 tracks, so ...?

Well, in my above comment I was being polite. I had bought a box of the Creative World reissue some 15 to 20 years ago (NM vinyl, box with just some shelf wear). Then a couple of years ago a Capitol original with OK vinyl and booklet (a solid VG+) but a box that had already disintegrated considerably at the edges, spines and seams came up in the jazz section of a local record shop but at a price that I considered too high for its overall condition. I watched it sitting in its corner among other box sets literally for years (and from time to time even picked up the torn-off shreds of the box spine etc. and put them back inside the box ), waiting for something to happen about the price (they do reduce certain items over time). So when I noticed about half a year ago it finally had been marked all the way down from 35 EUR to 5 EUR I had pity on it and took it home at once. Apart from the glossy paper (which is better than on the Capitol original IMO) the packaging of the CW reissue does remind me of the typical results you obtain when you produce a photocopy of the original on a fairly good 80s photocopier. Something I had relatively often done myself back in the 80s and 90s with otherwise unobtainable OOP books so no big surprise nor shock. But the comparison with the Capitol original of course made it clear that this was an almost entirely different world ...

Now that this discussion is revolving about the seemingly eternal "who's paying whom and when and why not" question again, how about looking a wee bit beyond Jordi Pujol (who is not the only fish in the P.D. pond, BTW, although arguably the one who - in addition to other wheelings and dealings - occupies territory that hardly any other reissuer saw fit to occupy even at a time when Pujol was not around) and Boris Rose? There also was a character named JERRY VALBURN. Looking beyond the good he seemingly did by adding to the Duke Ellington discography, anyone know for SURE that HE did pay royalties to the artists or their descendants according to US laws for all the stuff he reissued (or actually released first time in the case of alternate takes) on his plethora of labels (the covers of which often did not exactly look much more upmarket than those of Boris Rose)? E.g. Meritt, Blu-Disc, Everybody's, and so on ... Just wondering because in recent months I got quite a batch of these (secondhand) from jazz collectors' estates that showed up in a local record shop ...

"Spacechick"!

Yes, most Creative World covers are boring and can be a turnoff, but is it really so that it was a copyright question and not rather a money question? Visibly Capitol did NOT object to the artwork of the "The Kenton Era" 4-LP box set (of all Capitol originals ...) being used by Creative World (although the CW reissue was in black and white instead of part-color, and with overall somewhat below-standard printing quality of the booklet compared to the Capitol original). Besides, several Capitol original LPs (reissued by CW with the same contents) were pressed with widely differing covers over time, and some of these covers should have been accessible to CW (if Kenton had wanted to ...) because they were fairly generic even in their day? And then there were some compilations on Creative World that never existed as Capitol originals (such as the entire "By Request" series, "The Lighter Side", "Some Women I've Known", and others). So Kenton had to use his own artwork for these anyway. And who knows - maybe he just stuck with variations on the same 3 or 4 basic themes for the rest? You didn't ask me! Kidding aside, by that time last year I probably had largely completed my run of Kenton LPs I ever wanted (a bit less than 78 LPs overall ). But I do agree that even over here they are not that hotly disputed among the secondhand special offer bin contents - so you can grab what you want at very affordable prices. As for "polar opposites of goods which sell like the proverbial hotcakes" - believe it or not, but I have found that one of the slowest sellers in my crate of Swing-era jazz duplicates is Duke Ellington!

Not sure if Mark Stryker still is on the lookout at all. But in case anyone else is wondering (and to update my post of 3 years ago), there also was the below LP box set that covers the entire Columbia/Vocalion output in one sweep: https://www.discogs.com/release/8013743-Jimmie-Lunceford-The-Complete-Jimmie-Lunceford-1939-1940 Actually the contents go beyond the 1939-40 period: For completeness sake the two 1933 recordings by the orchestra are also included, thankfully. I had not been aware of this box set when I wrote my post in 2020 but at our local #1 brick-and-mortar store two very nicely-priced copies of that set came up recently, so one is now on my shelves and the CBS Realm Jazz LP I mentioned in my earlier post has been relegated to the fleamarket vinyl crate. For those who do want to get the ENTIRE output of the Lunceford band up to the end (beyond "essential" or "best of" compilations, and despite the "not all that essential" ballad vocals), the series of Classics CDs (though some of them seem to be rare) would be the CD option to go for. In vinyl days, OTOH, the Lunceford band was one of those where reissues were spotty and uncoordinated and impossible to round up without many overlaps and remaining gaps (even disregarding the forgettable ballads). So the above set might be of interest to some geared towards vinyl.

Agreed on the Fats Navarro (and Bird, of course) alternates, such as on the "Prime Source" Blue Note "paper bag" twofer. Aural comparisons of these often are very interesting and instructive But basically I think Gheorghe has a point - not all alternate takes by all artists are overly instructive listening for their differences, and sometimes the compilers of reissues really go overboard, particularly on box sets. And having not just two versions (master and alternate) but a total of 3 (or even 4) versions of the same tune one after another - and this for several tunes in a row - can not just get boring but annoying, particularly if you have almost endless strings of such "triplicates". Particularly on vinyl sets where you cannot just press the Skip button as with CDs. Still beats me why they could not put all the master takes in the original session order on the first disc (or discs) of a box set and then the alternates (in the same order) on the remaining discs. At least in SOME cases. I just cannot imagine that there is a clear majority of buyers/listeners who regularly sit there throughout entire box sets, listening raptly to multiple alternates of multiple tunes in a row, gravely nodding their heads and mumbling something to the effect of "yes, hearing him play the altered 17th instead of the diminished 9th in bar 19 of that alternate take, that is the bees knees!" 😁😁 Not to mention the case of reissues filled to the brim with false starts, abortive runs, studio chatter, etc. where you get an LP's full of such snippets that in the end amount to complete recordings of maybe 4 or 5 tracks, not more. Quite OK if you find these dirt cheap in the special offer bins but otherwise? Because listening in like that tends to wear thin after a while (or even fairly soon), even if it's candid enough, such as on that Sonny Boy Williamson LP where the track preceded by (lengthy) studio chatter was marked "not suitable for airplay" on the cover because the man made no bones about the fact that he considered one or several of those present at the session just a "motherfucker"!

But the very discussion goes far beyond a simple act of "acquisition". There is more to it - white or anti-white or whatever. Besides, the title of the topic refers to an actual statement by another author that is quoted and DOES raise the question hinted at in the title of this topic. Regardless of how anyone feels about it. Why hush it over in the title? Everyone can have his say - it won't mattter to the publisher/Editor of JT anyway, I guess. This much from an onlooker who has no horse in this race.

@JSngry: OK, so Discogs was incomplete in what they listed as Japanese vs (undated) US reissue pressings? You are referring to the undated US pressings with the "T" trident label that are listed there? (As opposed to much earlier pressings with the trumpeter label) @Pim: All the better, as long as Japanese shipping costs won't sour the deal for you.

Of course, but that was then. And on the one hand the Japanese reissues probably were inexistent in Europe, whereas TODAY and even through the internet I guess they most often are overpriced for what they are. So if you are going to settle for a reissue anyway the other series (particularly the Frnech one from the 80s) might be better buys - at least for the "Yurpeens" (like Pim, for example).