Forums

November 24 Scott Colley - 1963 Saw him with Donny McCaslin, Uri Caine and Antonio Sanchez In Göttingen November 6, 2010

Leafing through "BG On The Record" now (4th printing 1973, so admittedly maybe not totally up to date) and checking against the Goodman V-Disc recordings I have on Sunbeam and Dan (Jap.), I see that there were some sessions by the BIG BAND that look like they were specifically recorded for V-Disc: in Nov./Dec. 1943 (p. 352 in "BG On The Record"), as well as in February 1944 (p. 357) and July 1944 (p. 361). And these possibly weren't all but I did not do a complete check. So the reasons for omission would indeed raise a few questions. Overall I guess I'll pass. The major bands featured have been on the reissue market that often that the duplications just would have been too numerous for me.   As for Kay Kyser, like other Sweet bands he may have had a few swingers that got recorded. And who knows - maybe Mosaic felt they just had to include his "Victory Polka" for its topical connotations?  It's on a Time-Life V-Disc set, and listening to it and its girl singers now, I'd say there have been many Andrews Sisters tunes reissued under the "swing" flag that were not that much more jazzy either, for example. Any jazz listeners who'd already consider Bird old hat would of course shudder but would they be in the market for this set anyway?  More seriously, though, checking the "V-Disc Catalogue" discographies (Vol. 1 by Wante & De Block, Vol. 2 by Teubig), I can see two tracks that might qualify for inclusion by their titles alone (no idea how KK treated them, of course): Bye Bye Blues on V-Disc 236, Limehouse Blues on V-Disc 318.

As regards previuosly unissued recordings released in the last 8 years (I'm going off memory, I could be forgetting some other disc; and some of this releases deserved a separate thread):           (the original 'Tete Montoliu Presenta Elia Fleta' album, but adding previously unissued recordings of Tete Montoliu, Giovanni Tommaso and Gege Munari backing Elia Fleta when she was invited to play for the Italian radio station RAI in 1967)

Just to keep things together, a few updates on Tete Montoliu from the last few years, as far as books are concerned:   - Benjamin Fraser: "Beyond Sketches of Spain: Tete Montoliu and the Construction of Iberian Jazz" (Oxford University Press, 2022) The blurb: "Beyond Sketches of Spain: Tete Montoliu and the Construction of Iberian Jazz explores the artist’s life, musical production, and international reception within a cultural studies framework. This book moves beyond mere sketches of Spanish nationhood to challenge conventional scholarly narratives and recover links between the United States, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, and Europe in the investigation of an impressive and often overlooked transnational modern jazz legacy. Eschewing Theodore Adorno’s denigration of Black American jazz, a more compelling model is found in Fumi Okiji’s notion of gathering in difference. In this work, Benjamin Fraser deftly mixes musical biography with urban history, spatial theory, and disability studies, fashioning a highly readable text for readers from all disciplines." The reality (well, "my" reality, also confirmed bysome other Spanish scholars): this is an amalgam of different and "external" approaches to Tete Montoliu (flamenco-jazz (!), blindness, catalanism, jazz in Franco's Spain). No one in the Tete Montoliu "circles" that I am in touch with, was aware that this bio was in the works at that time, so no "inside" information. And, what is worse, not a single addition to the overall knowledge on Tete. This is just a pile of topics within Fraser's agenda, wherein Tete Montoliu is just an excuse to write a book.    - Pere Pons Macías: "'Round About Tete. Una Mirada Coral A La Vida Y La Obra De Tete Montoliu" (Libros del Kultrum, 2023) -  Excerpts from the publicity blurb: ‘Round About Tete offers a kaleidoscopic perspective through experiences, opinions, articles, statements, letters, and other unearthed documents concerning his life and work, contributed by many who had the opportunity to know him: musicians, managers, programmers, producers, journalists, writers, filmmakers, singers, friends, relatives, lovers, entrepreneurs… The book, prologued by Paquito D'Rivera, is accompanied by transcriptions of several compositions that were part of his repertoire: standards, popular songs, and compositions by other jazz musicians.  My personal opinion: Not much primary research, not too many pieces of new information or musical analysis are provided; hence, I would not deem this as a groundbreaking ouvre. Most relevant added value is, from my perspective, that some of the texts bring some 'flavour' on Tete Montoliu, the human being, from different angles.

Nope! This guy was very "local". But his locality was large enough sustain him with a bit (or more) of good old-school hustling. That, and being able to play his instrument quite nicely, as this sample hopefully attests to.