AllenLowe

all my French black and whites, practically - Bix, Whiteman, Lunceford, Teagarden, Boswells, Chu Berry, OM5, Fats, Jelly Roll, Moten, Thomas Morris and more; wild weekend.

I dunno, never liked that Rollins band - saw them in concert maybe 5 times - Campbell hitting it hard, plus a conga drum, it was like trying to swim through mud.In my head I used to edit everyone out and just listen to Sonny,

Tommy Campbell? I'm not even sure if he was on the Rollins that I heard - I stopped listening to Sonny's studio stuff a long time ago. But the drums always sounded too bashing - might just be the mix. Though in concert I thought Campbell was awful.

those Sonny things also have terrible drums - not just the bad drummer, but the cymbals are so far up in the mix it sounds like somebody dropped something.

actually, if you read her lips in that picture, she's singing "now you say you love me...."

from a review of a new bio of Eva Braun (and I was SURE I saw her one night at Slugs): "Hitler could not have wished for a better girlfriend. In this first full-scale biography of Eva Braun, the German historian Heike B. Görtemaker examines the known sources for Braun's life and emerges with a highly readable and consistent portrait of an ordinary woman who loved sports, fashion and jazz."

"right and in-your-face but lacking warmth and atmosphere" this is what I was talking about earlier - multi-track isolation has allowed mixes to put everything up front and with a complete loss of "air" (or space). I also think a lot of Sonny Rollins' post '90s recording suffer from this - and I also have a feeling they are using one of these attached-to-the-sax mics, which further ruins the sound.

just as an aside, and I can't cite the tune right now (though I think it was on an old Rounder reissue of some Sun recordings) there does exist a Howlin' Wolf recording on which the piano intro (and the pianist is unidentified) is straight out of the bebop era; I've always guessed that it is probably Phineas Newborn. It's a real shocker. I played it once at a Rutgers talk and people were amazed.

just to add, if you know what you are buying, most of this stuff is out on various releases in excellent sound, including plenty of Sun/Memphis stuff (Varese Sarabande did 2 or 3 excellent Sun blues CDs, and a lot of the old Charly stuff, as I mentioned prior, is superb sounding).

well, just got the WEA issue of this (which is different than the Collectables) - and have to say, get this before it disappears (it's already out of print) - sound is fine, I disagree with Mike - this is better than the original LP sounded, so the problem is probably the original recording - also the piano he plays on is not great - but this is indispensable - even if you, like me, don't like Max's playing post 1960s (to me he's working too hard to sound 'contemporary' and no longer swings).

this game is to difficult for me.

the key is to get old and stop hearing above about 5 K - it worked for Orin Keepnews. of course, we could get all our Organissimo boys in one room with a reference system and do a true test.

I hate the sound of multitrack recordings made with isolation - no matter how good the playing is it sounds too disembodied and disconnected - you can tell they were not in the same place at the same time. As Peter Stampfel mentioned recently there a reason these things sound bad - you lose the harmonics created by frequencies which are actually inter-acting. That's why when I hear musicians refer to "tracking" i tend to run. This is more a matter, I think, of engineer's convenience than good music making. All of my own recordings have always been "live." I believe in leakage and no compression, and have done every project that way.

one problem is A to D conversion - as Chuck Nessa will tell you, even with older recordings it makes a huge difference when the audio chain is state-of-the art. I think this is one of the reasons a lot of good original transfers suffer in the conversion to CD -

of late, going through my LPs, I've been gathering sources which I consider to be indispensable sonically - LPs clearly made from masters that have likely disappeared. The French black and white series is one which ought to be preserved and placed in museums (the CD reissues of same are problematic, with some screw ups). Also, in particular, some Brunwick 10 inchers, like a Teschmacher I have which sounds better than virtually everything reissued, even the JRT Davies stuff. Also some EMI - a Kid Ory/Dodds which is astounding. A Jay McShann Decca which is better than the CD reissue, even though that CD was pretty good. The Black and Whites include: Orig. Memphis 5, Waller, Moten, ODJB, Dodds, Morton, Thomas Morris, McKinney, Bix, Whiteman (the latter two are incredible; some sound like you're in the room with them; you feel like you can touch Bix, if that's your idea of a good time). If you have any of that stuff on LP, hold onto it. What I was told was that they were made from masters rescued when they tore down the old RCA Camden studios. the Brunswicks were held by Universal - I have some incredible early Benny and also Red Nichols; also some Champion Berigan, I think, Old jug band stuff from MCA as well as early big band, among others. And since Universal burnt down, this stuff is probably gone.

no problem here. This is interesting. I always found the Marquis book interesting but boring. But still an interesting source. But I gotta admit, I have absolute faith in Gushee. He's not only a close friend, he is just unfailingly rigorous, and has always been able to back up his argument. Always; he's just so smart that I have many moments with his writing where I say "of course!" just because he is incredibly methodical and logical and just does not report speculation without saying it's speculation. I would walk off a building if he advised that it was an historically accurate gesture. Really, I would. So if he says he marked up his copy of the book, there has to be a lot of questionable things in it. As I said, he's not real well (about 5 years ago I could have gotten a lot more detail) and I'm not trying to be mysterious. He knows I've been thinking about this a lot, so I'll have to see what happens.

I'm not even going to bring up Frank Strozier -

there are three (or more) key problems in contemporary sound restoration, IMHO: 1) De hiss - this is the worst, because new Dehiss progams CAN take out that hiss - but also remove all ambience, all air; I find this discouraging and almost disgustingly stupid when done as I have heard it recently - listen to the Donald Lambert CDs, for one example, and you'll know you need to keep your Lps. I love CDs and good sound work - but have held onto my LPs because of the above and other problems - it's like restoring an old painting by removing the color - clean it up, but there's no character or detail. these new de-Hiss programs are cheap, and everyone is using them - you can also often hear a tell-tale metalic-ism, plus some gurgling. Oy. 2) bad equalization/prep - Remember years ago when Garry Giddins launched a huge attack on the Morton box and the use of No-Noise? Gary hadn't a clue as to what he was talking about. They barely touched that Morton box (No-Noise, as Steve Lasker told me, was still in it's very early stages and had very little effect). The problem was an analog one, the way in which they eq'd the master tape for reissue - a classic thing in which, like the old days, they rolled off the highs to kill noise. I was able to take that box, re-work it, and play it for none other than Larry Gushee, who was amazed at how much sound was in those - unfortunately your average person does not have much in the way of eq to use. And it helps to know what you are doing in terms of center frequency and what they call Q (which indicates how many herz on either side of the frequency are effected). and I have heard this problem in MANY CDs - the other problem with digital de-hiss (see above) however, is that once you chop off of the highs they are gone, the wave form cannot be restored. For some reason I am not sure of, even with digital eq changes, they can be restored, thank goodness. More important is that sometimes I find it necessary to increase the noise slightly, to bring out the ambient (if noisy) sound of 5-8K. 3) the tell tale guttural "chhhhh" that brass and even vocals make when too much de-crackle is involved. My policy when this happens is simple: re:do it. Most engineers are too damned lazy. This is so common it's amazing - listen to the beginning of Weatherbird on the Louis Sony box - right into it there is CEDAR-induced distorion. I was astounded.

addendum to the above - I just talked to Mr. Gushee - who said "call me back. If I have time I will pull out my copy of the book, which is covered with my markings of problems and errors."

well, I don't want to cause a ruckus here - and we can agree to disagree, as the saying goes -but all I will say is that according to 2 people I know who are themselves the most knowledgable people I have ever come acrross about this time and millieu - Larry Gushee and John McCusker - Marquis' problem, aside from lack of reliablity, is a pervasive lack of understanding of the whole sociio-musical scene of that era - Larry called him "naive," though he was a bit reluctant to take the time to go through it point by point - though knowing Larry, if I talk to him enough, he will eventually give me more detail (he is not well these days). McCusker basically said that Marquis' had no real understanding of the concept of the New Orleans Creoles (a crucial thing in getting a grasp on early New Orleans); he gave me a detailed if somewhat difficult explanation, but I await his Kid Ory book for direct documentation. But he thinks Marquis didn't get it, and I will leave it to the Ory book to lay it out. But those two have really given me pause when it comes to Marquis.

yikes, Niko, we can run but we can't hide......

so we're assuming he's dead?

my ding (to quote Miles Davis) -

will have to read that poem - I have a knack for annoying the world, so it's ok - I will make a few calls this week; suffice to say that after speaking with 2 people that I trust I cannot look at Marquis anymore without wondering about everything in it - Jeff - I will be in contact. Unless I turn out to be wrong on this, in which case I deny everything. Even if, as Lenny Bruce used to say, you got pictures (and thank goodness for the delete button here; I hit that and YOU look like the crazy one instead of me; I mean, arguing with yourself...).

you know, we could probably resolve all this if Larry didn't spend so much time watching football games - I sure hope he has a legal cable hookup.