Illinois Jacquet Big Band Live At The Village Vanguard volumes 1 through 10.

[Hardbopjazz]

I just both a used copy of this. 25 UDS for all 10 CDs. I never heard of Squatty Roo Records before. They seem to focus on live recordings. Are they a legit label? 

[Dan Gould]

I don't really think so. Their Discogs page sells live CDs but as CDRs, and they are the manufacturers. I had the odd experience of buying a D/L of one of their releases thru Amazon (Doc Cheatham/George Kelly) and was very surprised when I heard seeming pops and ticks like it was a vinyl transfer, yet I couldn't find any indication of a similar recording being issued on vinyl previously.

If I'm going to buy something from them it needs to be cheap and preferably thru someone else.

[JSngry]

Pretty sure they are the greyest shade of grey, but they have some very interesting Ellington things.

[jazzbo]

Pops and ticks can non-LP be. These may well be from collector tapes (?) Squatty Roo is surely not a legit label, even if they have a great label name. 

[Ken Dryden]

Squatty Roo is a notorious bootleg label. They have reissued some of the dreadful audience recordings of Duke Ellington from late in his career. It is clearly taking low budget operations to a new level. 

 

If you do decide to invest in further Squatty Roo, here are some to avoid, obvious audinece recordings with crappy fidelity:

https://www.discogs.com/Duke-Elling70n-And-His-Orchestra-Live-At-The-Cave-Super-Club-Vancouver-Canada-1970/release/6132183

https://www.discogs.com/Clark-Terry-Featuring-Frank-Foster-Carnegie-Blues-The-Music-of-Duke-Ellington/release/6821793

[JSngry]

These too are obvious audience recordings with crappy fidelity, but are damn near essential documents of the TRUE last days of Ellington.

 

[Hardbopjazz]

The cds are all cdrs. Oh well. At least I didn’t pay that much. 

[Chuck Nessa]

Just now, Hardbopjazz said:

The cds are all cdrs. Oh well. At least I didn’t pay that much. 

Nor did they.

[Hardbopjazz]

56 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Nor did they.

Yeah, the artists got squat. 

[JSngry]

but do  you rue?

[Hardbopjazz]

These are all recordings from someone in the audience. Talking by the crowd as the band plays. 

[JSngry]

Contemporaneous reports suggested that it was a really good band. do these audience recordings support this?

They did a fairly good record for Atlantic, and I heard them on some NPR/APR jazz festival broadcast where they sounded pretty frisky. So...not exactly over-documented. Casual documentation such as this might be "all there is"....but 10 volumes? Geez....and grey-market...never pay list price for grey-market (or anything, for that matter, if you can help it).

But it's a band I wouldn't mind hearing if they were really busting loose.