bruce talbot

Buffy Ste Marie Bernard Buffet Bernard Kouchner

William Deedes William Reese-Mogg Peregrine Worsthorne

Matt Dillon John Dillinger Machine Gun Kelly

Ross Bagdasarian Rouben Mamoulian George Avakian

Now there's a blast from the past. I used to have the score from Lilith on Lp. IIRC Phil and Quill played on it. Was it on Verve? 'Lilith' was on TCM the other day - terrible movie script and acting-wise- I can hardly believe that I liked it when it was first released - but some great music on the soundtrack. I haven't seen 'Mickey One' for years - I wonder if it has also dated badly

Snoop Dogg Dog the Bounty Hunter Rachel Hunter

Henri of Navarre Ramon Novarro Gene Raymond

Jack Teagarden Stan Kenton Benny Goodman

Father Coughlin Rod Parsley Rev Fred Phelps

$3.98 was the norm, IIRC. Maybe $4.98 for stereo. Or maybe at one (earlier) point, a dollar less both ways. I bought my first LP in 1968, and that's what prices were then. I began buying LPs in the mid-50's when they first came out. The prices were what Jim said above. In the 60's one could find LP cutouts for $1.69 to $2.50 each. I recall going to a discount dept. store in Detroit in about 1964 and buying a large number of EmArcy LP cutouts for $1.69 each. Another time I went to an electronics store and found a bunch of original Blue Note LPs for $2.00 each. Typically on a saturday I would make the rounds of a number of discount stores and invariably come home with anywhere from 2 to 8 LPs I had bought at bargain prices. So how much was a pint of beer in those days? This is not an idle question. Someone must remember. MG In 1964 the most expensive pint you could buy in a saloon bar in London cost two shillings and sixpence - or the equivalent of about 12 p. We usually drank cheaper stuff that cost about just under two shillings. By 1968 I can remember drinking draft Heineken imported from Holland for 4/6 a pint. I think I earned about 12 quid a week at the Beeb at that time.

James Chirillo Howard Alden Joe Cohn

Tootie Heath Heath Robinson J. Russell Robinson

and hope against hope that it's not true.... this was on the 78L list: Unfortunately, yes. I visited that vault with Steven two years ago, and with his authority was able to "check out," lending-library style, about ten metal parts. There was a corner of the building with metal racks that contained hundreds and hundreds of them in a lot of cardboard boxes marked "Hoffman." That would be Steve Hoffman, who worked for MCA in the late '70s and early '80s, producing LP reissues of hot stuff. Steve cherrypicked the vast archive of Decca metals, pulling every Gennett, Vocalion and even Paramount mother or stamper he could find. He took these home to transfer, and then KEPT them! MCA busted him for possession - I don't know his punishment for this "crime" - and returned it all to the vault. The metals were never re-intergrated into the files, and in 2006, were in exactly the same state - packed willy-nilly in their cardboard boxes - as when they were repossessed. This should tell you how much MCA really cared about them. They would have been a lot better off in Hoffman's house. Anyway, with Steven's help, I took home and transferred the parts for "West End Blues" by Zach Whyte's Chocolate Beau Brummels; two sides by Pine Top Smith, including an unissued take of "Now I Ain't Got Nothin' at All" and eight others. I almost but for some &(^%$( reason DIDN'T take the two Gennett sides by Carmichael's Collegians, "Walkin' the Dog" and "March of the Hoodlums." I can still see them leaning against the box where I left them. I had reason to hope that Steven and I - or Steven alone - could return there on a regular basis, but for reasons he never made entirely clear, he wouldn't and we didn't. Now, as far as we know, all that metal is SLAG. Along with all the acetates and tapes that I presume were also still there. This Lasker story has been repeated all over the net since the fire, but I'm not sure how much stock I'd put into this "rumor" since it's at least two years old and even at the time of the fire the UMG people said that much of the material had already been moved to other locations. Now I don't know which is true - probably a bit of both - but this story keeps making the rounds to "prove" something that may no longer have been the case. Believe me, I work at the studio (Uni Pictures rather than Music, though, a whole different thing now) and can tell you how much they can lie with a straight face, but until I hear more recent, credible reports I'm going to assume the best rather than the worst. somehow it's kind of difficult to imagine a company like Universal (or any other corp) spending money and time to move stuff they don't care about (see their reissue program of the last ten years) somewhere else. The only reason to go to that trouble would have been to better utilize the space. I hope a 'more credible' report might eventuate - I'm also expecting to inherit a vast sum of money from a yet unknown relative.

John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith Phoebe Jacobs Joe Glaser

Allen - that goes some way to putting the water back in the glass. I'm sure that many of us still have LP versions of George Avakian's Chicago Jazz Album, in reasonable shape, but as the recent SONY Ellington 30s 4CD demonstrated, there's no substitute for being able to go back to the primary source as remastering possibilities become more sophisticated and sensitive. A friend in Paris a few years ago played me 'KoKo' on an unprocessed vinyl pressed from a barely used metal. I've never heard anything so marvelous in my life and the sound was a million miles away from the various iterations sold to us by RCA

and hope against hope that it's not true.... this was on the 78L list: Unfortunately, yes. I visited that vault with Steven two years ago, and with his authority was able to "check out," lending-library style, about ten metal parts. There was a corner of the building with metal racks that contained hundreds and hundreds of them in a lot of cardboard boxes marked "Hoffman." That would be Steve Hoffman, who worked for MCA in the late '70s and early '80s, producing LP reissues of hot stuff. Steve cherrypicked the vast archive of Decca metals, pulling every Gennett, Vocalion and even Paramount mother or stamper he could find. He took these home to transfer, and then KEPT them! MCA busted him for possession - I don't know his punishment for this "crime" - and returned it all to the vault. The metals were never re-intergrated into the files, and in 2006, were in exactly the same state - packed willy-nilly in their cardboard boxes - as when they were repossessed. This should tell you how much MCA really cared about them. They would have been a lot better off in Hoffman's house. Anyway, with Steven's help, I took home and transferred the parts for "West End Blues" by Zach Whyte's Chocolate Beau Brummels; two sides by Pine Top Smith, including an unissued take of "Now I Ain't Got Nothin' at All" and eight others. I almost but for some &(^%$( reason DIDN'T take the two Gennett sides by Carmichael's Collegians, "Walkin' the Dog" and "March of the Hoodlums." I can still see them leaning against the box where I left them. I had reason to hope that Steven and I - or Steven alone - could return there on a regular basis, but for reasons he never made entirely clear, he wouldn't and we didn't. Now, as far as we know, all that metal is SLAG. Along with all the acetates and tapes that I presume were also still there.

and hope against hope that it's not true.... this was on the 78L list: Unfortunately, yes. I visited that vault with Steven two years ago, and with his authority was able to "check out," lending-library style, about ten metal parts. There was a corner of the building with metal racks that contained hundreds and hundreds of them in a lot of cardboard boxes marked "Hoffman." That would be Steve Hoffman, who worked for MCA in the late '70s and early '80s, producing LP reissues of hot stuff. Steve cherrypicked the vast archive of Decca metals, pulling every Gennett, Vocalion and even Paramount mother or stamper he could find. He took these home to transfer, and then KEPT them! MCA busted him for possession - I don't know his punishment for this "crime" - and returned it all to the vault. The metals were never re-intergrated into the files, and in 2006, were in exactly the same state - packed willy-nilly in their cardboard boxes - as when they were repossessed. This should tell you how much MCA really cared about them. They would have been a lot better off in Hoffman's house. Anyway, with Steven's help, I took home and transferred the parts for "West End Blues" by Zach Whyte's Chocolate Beau Brummels; two sides by Pine Top Smith, including an unissued take of "Now I Ain't Got Nothin' at All" and eight others. I almost but for some &(^%$( reason DIDN'T take the two Gennett sides by Carmichael's Collegians, "Walkin' the Dog" and "March of the Hoodlums." I can still see them leaning against the box where I left them. I had reason to hope that Steven and I - or Steven alone - could return there on a regular basis, but for reasons he never made entirely clear, he wouldn't and we didn't. Now, as far as we know, all that metal is SLAG. Along with all the acetates and tapes that I presume were also still there.

Balthazar Johannes Vorster Gabe Balthazar Gabby Hayes

I found the following on the San Francisco Chronicle website: '.......The fire also destroyed a portion of Universal Music Group's recordings, primarily big band and jazz recordings on the Decca label and video copies of Universal movies and television shows. Music stored in the vault also had backup copies, said Peter LoFrumento, a spokesman for Universal Music Group, now a subsidiary of Vivendi SA. It was unclear if the recordings were originals, he said. Gardner said the company has insurance for the damage and lost business. She had no further details on the extent of the coverage or when it might be paid. General Electric referred questions to NBC Universal. In such cases, corporations often take short-term writedowns on losses as they await reimbursement.' Who knows what 'backup copies' might turn out to be.

Russell Jacquet Illinois Jacquet Fred Robbins

Victor Herbert Franz Lehar Rudolf Friml

Been listening to Louis for more than 50 years and still finding new and enthralling stuff there. Currently knocked out by his playing with Henderson in 24 and 25. Like Prez he just seemed to have arrived, fully formed. In addition, on those same records it's fascinating to witness Hawk's evolution....

Well, it's even your current avatar - they could add the Live At The Shrine album. I suggested this set to Michael Cuscuna a while a go and he liked the idea a lot, saying that they'd wanted to to a bigger Stan Getz set a few years back but Verve wanted to do something themselves (the result being the East of the Sun set). With Verve's reissue program being what it is now, a Mosaic Select might happen after all. 'With Verve's reissue program being what it is now' and Verve being owned by Universal it may not even be what it was 'then' See my posting today on the Universal Fire

My friend at SONY reports that another industry authority told him that the fire was much more catastrophic than admitted. He said that not only Impulse, but also A&M source material had gone up in smoke as well as "a lot of masters by people like Connie Boswell" (sounds like the Decca archive) and thousands of hours of video material from the 50s and 60s. Universal will happily take the insurance money and be relieved that they no longer have to carry all that old crap that they didn't know what to do with and Accounting kept telling them to get rid of.

Bomber Harris Harris Tweed Buddy Weed