crisp

I'm only just getting into vintage British jazz, largely through Vocalion reissues. My personal experience FWIW is that, first, I wanted to discover North American jazz, and it's so vast it's taken me 25 years to get it more or less covered to my satisfaction (I'll never cover it all in a lifetime, nor do I plan to). Second, to my shame, I assumed as a young man that British jazz would be a pale shadow of US jazz. Of course, it has a feeling that's all it's own, just as the Beatles style of rock and roll was very different to that of the US bands they admired and copied. For a start, Brit jazz has all those colonial influences that the US doesn't. And our whimsical sense of humour is as present in our jazz as it is in our rock and roll. There's a lot to explore.

Thanks guys.

Thanks Ubu -- and for indulging me in my extreme fussiness. France seems to be the only EU country in which Uni releases are sealed. I'll probably pick them up when I'm next in Paris.

Kyo, does Amazon.de send these as sealed CDs? And can you post a link to the 3 for 5 sale please? Cheers

Good-ish price on the Paul Desmond Complete RCA Albums Collection: £33.32 for six discs at Amazon UK.

Yes, I liked that one as a child. Also quite liked James, but not Charlie -- too much finger-wagging dictatorialness for my liking. Dahl gives the impression of being a roving antiestablishment free spirit, but he's actually quite snobbish and controlling.

This recent budget set from Sony appears to have most of the Hot Fives and Sevens on it. Don't know what remastering they use: 80s/90s, Schaap or something else entirely. I prefer Schaap's over all the others.

Hey, thanks GA! Missed the salutation last year and just noticed it this year. Both times I had a very happy birthday in Paris -- and hence offline!

That Ellington set was part of a series called Original Masters. Others in the series covered Fats Waller, Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday and Memphis Minnie. This one is from a different line, as mjzee says, called The Real... Each one is three CDs in a Digipak. Titles so far are Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Billie Holliday, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Doris Day and "Christmas". Some are just random comps, some focus on a particular period, others (such as the Johnny Cash) are complete albums strung together. The Real Duke Ellington is an abridged version of the Original Masters release. They are all very cheap at about £5 or less in the UK.

I've found some more titles in this series at Amazon.de: Gene Ammons: The Soulful Moods Of Gene Ammons / Nice An' Cool Charlie Byrd: Latin Impressions / Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros Johnny Hammond Smith: Black Coffee / Mr. Wonderful Clark Terry: Everything's Mellow / Plays The Jazz Version Of All American Bobby Timmons: Sweet And Soulful Sounds / Born To Be Blue So they are including Riverside and Moodsville titles among the Verve and Mercury ones. No sign of them in the shops in Paris or London yet.

Has anyone had any experience of using the HMV website for ordering CDs? The last time I ordered anything from them, which was some time ago, I gave up after a couple of weeks and cancelled. I wouldn't be recommending them if I didn't think they were any good! There was a blip in customer service about a year ago when they migrated from Guernsey to Birmingham in the wake of the tax loophole being closed, but they are back to normal now.

The new releases are now available at HMV for the pre-order price of £6 or less. Search string here.

More new releases coming soon: Archie Semple: Night People & Easy Living Chris Barber, Ken Colyer & Mike Cotton: The Radio Luxembourg Sessions: The 208 Rhythm Club Volume 1 Al Fairweather, Sandy Brown & Humphrey Lyttelton: The Radio Luxembourg Sessions: The 208 Rhythm Club Volume 2 Harry Carney/Harold Ashby & Paul Gonsalves: Rock Me Gently & Two from Duke William Russo & Kenny Baker: Russo in London & Blowing Up a Storm Roosevelt Sykes: The Honeydripper & Face To Face With The Blues Edited to add: Harry Gold and His Pieces of Eight: PARADE OF PIECES

That's two different songs, both from the same film, unless Shorter has made a mistake (hope not because Flying Down To Rio is a nice quirky choice, The Carioca less so).

Trivial question, but are these in jewel cases, digipaks or card sleeves?

Yes, when did musicians cease to feel the need to dress well for a gig? There's a pianist who regularly plays at Ronnie Scott's wearing a rugby shirt. I mean, make an effort -- it's Ronnie Scott's. Oh, and I would *much* rather hear a bass solo than a drum solo, which are usually only effective in person. The first jazz gig I went to was the Oscar Peterson quartet with Ray Brown and Herb Ellis and Brown stole the show for me.

She sounds awful to me and I'm not even French.

Rap.

Damn, my error. Still it's a good chance to get most of the original set for peanuts.

Couldn't find a thread for this but I know it's been discussed here and is much sought-after. This boxed set, which was available very cheaply a couple of years ago and now sells for silly money, is being reissued in Sony's The Real series as The Real Duke Ellington, again for a very low price. Even better, it has five extra tracks (6-10 on disc two). For what it's worth there are three other new jazz titles in the series: Benny Goodman Dave Brubeck Louis Armstrong (Also Bob Dylan, Doris Day and, er Christmas.)

It did a lot of people, but just because of the Dolly Parton association. It's actually a good melody with nice changes, especially the bridge. There's some live recordings where Sonny really eats that bridge up! Oh you don't need to convince me. That record is a desert island disc for me. Made me think twice about Dolly Parton. I have a lot of time for her now. I love him, he was a magnetic entertainer, but sadly a lot of people can't get past the blackface thing. Sometimes I understand that, sometimes I don't, depending on where the person in question is coming from.

Actually, those are just the sort of tunes I would expect him to play. He's always been drawn to offbeat songs. Lots of Al Jolson for some reason. However, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's Here You Come Again surprised me.

I won't let class issues put me off a work of art (and in any case, most of the opera we hear in England is imported), but I have always been impatient with it. I see it as a rough draft for the far superior operetta, which in turn was improved further into the Broadway musical, the pinnacle of musical theatre. However, I very much like Mozart's operas, even though I'm not keen on most of Mozart's other work. And I'm drawn to Wagner for some reason -- I don't *think* that isn't a sign of Nazi tendencies (at least I hope not)... But, yes, for me it's that leaden stuff that follows Jazz Record Requests (after the obligatory 30 minutes of chat). I usually turn Radio 3 off whenever it -- or medieval music -- comes on. Although those Go Compare ads don't contain any opera. The original song was by George M. Cohan.

The Bessie Smith date hasn't changed.

I wouldn't call Rodgers later music 'staid'. It might sound staid because it became one of the middle-of-the-road sounds by the 60s. But it's very rich harmonically - there are some heart stopping modulations. I was listening to Harry Allen's version of South Pacific yesterday and what I noticed was how the jazz versions actually iron out much of that richness in order to make it jazz-worthy. In its orginal form 'My girl back home' is a wonderful evocation of nostalgia for home, brilliantly evoked in the music; in the jazz version that tristese is lost. I think that's much closer to the mark. Those musicals are extremely sentimental - I wouldn't go near 'The Sound of Music' for decades after an infatuation with it as a ten year old. But I watched it again a couple of years back and was enchanted. The streetwise wise-crackers of Rodgers and Hart songs are always going to have more kudos than nuns and kids dressed in curtains. But I think that disguises a richness in Rodgers music that the knowing music fan often misses but the general public gets without even thinking about it. I stand by the staid comment, although that doesn't mean I don't love R&OH -- I do. I pretty much agree with all the remarks above on these and other GAS songwriters. The last R&OH show I saw was The Sound of Music at the London Palladium. What's incredible about these shows is the sheer overwhelming force of the talent involved: great song after great song with barely a pause between them. Hammerstein was also a great book writer: the songs are intricately woven into the story and carry it forward without a break. I remember the first of their shows I saw was the famous National Theatre production of Carousel; the Carousel Waltz ballet opening was one of the few times I wept, for want of a better word, at the beauty of a piece of theatre, and I'm not the weepy type. The show kept up that standard throughout. I just think that some songs are so much a part of their origins -- in this case the stage -- that they resist translation to other genres. Doesn't mean they can't be transported, but it's a challenge few rise to. That's surely true, although for some of those musicians the very "corniness" is a challenge. I'm thinking of Lee Morgan doing All At Once You Love Her or even Coltrane's My Favourite Things. Some musicians, Sonny Rollins for example, seem to specialise in unlikely show tunes; all those Jolson numbers...