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Baby Face Willette


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46 minutes ago, chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez said:

a new Here Tis bonus track?  Is this something not on ebay or amazon?  

if you dont mind me asking what are some of the other newer discoveries issued as bonus tracks on these, are these only available directly from japan

Someone here did a nice summary of these bonus tracks back when this series was announced. There were quite a few alternates issued that aren't in the Cuscuna discography. I bought several of these because of these bonus tracks. They sound great to my ears.

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35 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Someone here did a nice summary of these bonus tracks back when this series was announced. There were quite a few alternates issued that aren't in the Cuscuna discography. I bought several of these because of these bonus tracks. They sound great to my ears.

Here 'Tis:  :g

 

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Well, the "new" track from the "Here 'Tis" session is an un-named Donaldson tune, and it is just as good as everything else. It runs 10:11, so it wouldn't fit onto the original LP. When Michael Cuscuna issued it on the Japanese CD, he arbitrarily named it "Blues #4".

This is NOT a track that could possibly be marked as not worthy of issue.

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What a nice find! Dr Jo Jo Adams was from Alabama but was well featured in Chicago through the forties up to 1958. That appearance would have been somewhere in the period after his recording for Hollywood in the late forties/early fifties (can't remember or find the date very quickly) up to '58. His recording for Vee-Jay was done I think in '55. I'd guess that the Jo Jo show would have featured him working up his organ style - one of the Vee-Jay sides has the same approach as 'Chances are few' on 'Stop & listen'. So if you'd been in the Hickory Pit that night...

MG

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Recent posts about Baby Face Willette prompted me to dig out his Blue Note recordings.

Today, I played "Face To Face", with Fred Jackson, Grant Green and Ben Dixon. That's a magnificent session all the way through. Back in 1967, I read "Write For Free Catalog" on a Blue Note label, so I wrote for a free catalog and got one. Quite a number of their LPs were already out-of-print. I noticed the Jackson album, which they titled "Hootin' And Tootin' ". The title revolted me, suggesting a "yakety sax" album. It wasn't until the end of the 1990s that I got the CD and discovered that Fred was a fine player. Bad title, in my opinion. He sure plays fine on the Willette session, as do they all.

I have the "Blue Note Works" CD of it, which doesn't have the two extra takes included on the McMaster CD, but they are on the Japanese 4-CD set "The Other Side Of Blue Note 4000 Series" (TOCJ 5941-5944). That set has Michael Cuscuna written all over it, but my copy doesn't have the booklet, which surely must have been included originally. So, I was able to make up a nice, McMaster-free, CDR of everything that is available. I feel that the previously unissued take of "Face To Face" (take 8) is better than the originally issued take, though both are excellent.

I recently acquired Willette's two Argo albums ("Mo Roc" and "Behind The 8 Ball"), and, to me, they are miserable. Many tracks are short, and there is no "groove" track like Jimmy Smith's "Red Top".

Lou Donaldson's "Here 'Tis" is my favorite of all Lou's albums.

Too bad that they didn't do a follow-up to that 4-CD set, which only goes as far as 1961. It has a 1500-series equivalent, but only on vinyl.

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