The Magnificent Goldberg

This one turned up this morning and I've just finished listening to it. Ecstasy!!!!! Oh my! MG

Think they might have checked for typos. Not sure this is a clear statement of aims - It may have been there before, but the new site made me look harder (the downside). If it's great and underappreciated, the rationale for limited editions appealing only to the already converted, doesn't look as if the company wants to do anything about the underappreciation that is complained about. MG

Since it's his birthday today... Von Freeman - Doin' it right now - Atlantic orig Willis Jackson & Von Freeman - Lockin' horns, live at Laren - Muse orig Happy birthday vonski! MG

That wasn't the one I had in mind, but it's appropriate. Perhaps someone else poted the Austrian article? MG

... and I always waited for the singer to come in ... Ahhh! You should hear Gloria Lynne's version of "All day long". (I think she's singing a lot better nowadays than when she was in her "prime".) MG

Thanks Aloc - interesting article. I was worried about this when I saw the other article you posted on the Austrian chimpanzee. MG

Didn't realise it was his birthday. Will dig out some of the few LPs I have of his. Von is a guy who has been overshadowed, in my collection, by brother George, whom I LURVE. But I'd appreciate some recommendations as to what's available that's really exciting. MG

My daughter's taking me out to dinner on Saturday - I insisted she finds a restaurant somewhere OUTSIDE Cardiff. Can't go anywhere there'll be all those drunk and depressed French people criticising the great British cuisine MG

Indeed. I've got the twofer LP set, with which I'm more than content, because I only play the two title tracks. All the other stuff sounds too much like jazz MG

That was my question, too, but I couldn't answer it so I let it lie. Someone like Allen Lowe, who's investigated widely in early recordings, might be able to say. Not at all clear to me that, under the circs, it would have originated as late as the forties. MG

Used to be hooked on it. Ah, the days of John Arlott, Johnners, Jim Laker etc. Another era ! I wonder why they mixed curling in there though? Not a big thing over here. I'm not perfectly certain that foreigners can tell the difference between English, Scottish and Welsh I expect his lot could, however. I think curling came in because it just FELT right. MG

Time for a history lesson on covers, because this has been going on for a century. Back in the early days of the record industry, there were what seem to us now some pretty funny things going on. It was an industry hobbled by patents; the big record companies were also manufacturers of gramophones and, to get around the patents, had to design machines and compatible discs, that were different from those of their competitors. The company which appears to have taken eccentricity to its ultimate limits was the French firm, Pathé Frères, which opened up an American branch in 1914. Their records were: vertically cut; designed to revolve at 90 rpm, not 78; designed to be played with a jewelled stylus with a tip 0.005 inches in diameter, not a steel needle; 14” in diameter, not 12” or 10”; and played from the centre outwards towards the rim (and presumably the tone arm fell off the edge a short time after the music finished, damaging the jewelled stylus). (The firm standardised both records and players in the early 1920s.) So you had a load of non-compatible labels knocking around and they all wanted to flog the popular songs to their respective captive audiences. There were two solutions. The first was to license recordings made by other labels, and there was a good market in this, and release them pseudonymously (because the originating label insisted). As 78s became standardised in the early twenties, the licensing market moved into creating labels for the burgeoning “five and dime” chain stores, which wanted their own labels, on which the hits would be issued. These, once more, were pseudonymous. The other solution was to record alternative versions of hits. Right through to the forties, and maybe into the fifties, the music publishing companies employed song pluggers, whose job was to get record companies to make as many different recordings of as song as they could. The object here was to sell sheet music, which was where the big money was in those days, and it didn’t matter which version people heard to induce them to buy the music. There was, of course, a big market for sheet music from the Territory Bands. The recordings and the sheet music tended to use “stock” arrangements, so that every version sounded like everyone else’s. The exception was in jazz where, even using stock arrangements, the soloists sounded individual, and the best were inimitable. From the bands’ and singers’ point of view, records were not really where it was at – they, and later the radio plays, helped command higher paying gigs, which is where the real money for the artist was. So the fact that an artist had little choice over what was recorded, and little creative investment in it, wasn’t a big issue – though of course, there were some exceptions in jazz, such as Duke; and Basie managed to get around the stock arrangements issue by using head arrangements. But quite a lot of even their recordings were simply what was put in front of them. As the Depression eased into post war prosperity, record sales took off and suddenly became important in their own right. And the big band market fell away, as did the sheet music market. Only three record companies emerged from the Depression: Victor; American Record Company (ARC); and Decca. Even in the thirties, indies started up: Varsity; Commodore; Blue Note; and Savoy among them, but wartime shellac rationing halted this development. In 1944, the number of companies doubled. Most of these new companies were involved in recording the various kinds of contemporary black music or country music, or both. These were areas which, with their backs to the wall during the Depression, the majors had sacrificed in order to stay in business, and had never really got back into. It was in this period that the practice of recording alternative versions became rather dodgy, to say the least. Despite what Chris says, I don’t think that, initially at least, this was a black/white thing. I think it was a record company thing. If we look at the fate of a few of the biggest black hits of the forties, we don’t see a black/white pattern at all. Louis Jordan’s Decca recording of “G I jive” went to #1 on the R&B (7 weeks) and pop (2 weeks) charts in 1944. But it was a cover of Johnny Mercer’s Capitol recording, which also spent a week at #1 on the R&B chart, but only got to #11 on the pop chart. “The honeydripper” was a huge R&B hit for Joe Liggins, who wrote the song. His recording, on Exclusive, spent 18 weeks at #1 on the R&B chart in 1945/6. Three other recordings of the song got onto the R&B chart, by: Jimmie Lunceford on Decca (#2); Roosevelt Sykes on Bluebird (#3); and Cab Calloway on Columbia (#3 but about 3 months after the other three hits). Only Lunceford’s and Liggins’ versions made the pop charts, Lunceford’s being the bigger hit. “Open the door, Richard” was the biggest song of 1947. It was originally recorded by Jack McVea for Black & White. His was one of five versions to reach the R&B charts (#2), and one of seven versions on the pop chart (#3). (My earliest memory is singing along with my mother to this song.) The biggest hit was by Count Basie on Columbia, (#2 R&B, #1 pop). Louis Jordan’s had a hit on Decca (#2 R&B, #6 pop), as did Dusty Fletcher on National (#2 R&B, #3 pop) (Fletcher was the comedian who had popularised the routine on which the song was based); The Three Flames (a black group) also on Columbia (#3 R&B, #1 pop). In addition, the Charioteers (a white group who had done backing vocals on a Frank Sinatra record or two) also n Columbia (#6 pop) and the Pied Pipers, Tommy Dorsey’s vocal group, on Capitol (#8 pop) had pop hits. All of these records hit the charts in early 1947. Finally, the biggest R&B hit of 1949 was Paul Williams’ “Hucklebuck”, recorded for Savoy. (It’s based on “Now’s the time” and features a great Bebop solo by Phil Guilbeau.) That spent 14 weeks at #1 on the R&B chart and reached exactly nowhere on the pop chart. Two other versions reached the R&B chart that year: by Roy Milton on Specialty (#5); and Lionel Hampton on Decca (with a vocal by Betty Carter) (#12). The two versions that made the pop charts were by Tommy Dorsey (with trumpet solo by Charlie Shavers) on Victor (#5) and Frank Sinatra on Columbia (#10). While there’s no evidence here (or, I’m sure, if more detailed lists were compiled) of an anti-black bias in recording competing versions, I think we do see a pattern emerging of recordings by white artists being more popular in the pop market and those by black artists being more popular in the R&B market. And that this was a new development. There was no R&B chart before 1942. Pop chart positions prior to 1938 are pretty unreliable, and even less reliable prior to 1935, but there can be little doubt that, during the thirties, there was no real bar to the chart popularity or black artists like Ellington, Armstrong, Waller, Basie, Holiday, Chick Webb and many others. But, during the forties, it’s easy to see a trend of the segregation along race lines of the pop and R&B charts. This seems to me not, or not entirely, to have reflected the will of the white-oriented record industry. In 1951, Johnnie Ray, who had a big R&B hit with his second single “Cry”, was dropped by the black population when it became generally known that he was a white singer, with a style derived from Amos Milburn, but with little credibility in term of black music (in contrast to Johnny Otis, who had oceans of credibility). It was this segregation of the charts, I think, that gave rise to the most pernicious variant of the cover version; one in which records by black artists were copied, but whitewashed to make them suitable for the obviously more lucrative pop chart. This was particularly prevalent in the fifties. By the late fifties, companies like Atlantic, Specialty, Imperial, Chess and King had learned how to cope with and counter the problem, which they managed with spectacular success; from 30 November 1963 to 23 January 1965, no R&B chart was published by Billboard on the grounds that the R&B and pop charts were too alike. From around about that time, pop LPs began to be more significant. One of the favourite strategies of record companies in that era was filling out an LP with cover versions of current hits; riding on the coattails of hits, rather than trying to steal sales (though there were and are still quite a few examples of this, particularly where American recordings were covered for foreign markets). The Ventures’ albums, as I recall, were full of ‘em, but they were far from alone. I remember an article in Billboard in the mid-sixties deprecating the practice as being a cheap and uncreative cop-out (except that guessing what were going to be the big hits in six weeks’ time was perceived to be a good game). Here are few track lists of the Ventures’ LPs, just to amuse us all: BLP-8037/BST-8037 - The Ventures a Go-Go - Ventures [1965] Satisfaction /Go-Go Slow / Louie Louie /Night Stick /La Bamba /The "In" Crowd //Wooly Bully /A Go-Go Guitar /A Go-Go Dancer/The Swingin' Creeper /Whittier Blvd. /I Like It Like That BLP-8045/BST-8045 - Go with the Ventures - Ventures [1966] Green Grass/Ginza Lights/These Boots Are Made For Walkin'/Frankie And Johnny/Ad-Venture/Monday Monday//Good Lovin'/Eight Miles High/Escape/Sloop John B/Go/California Dreamin' LST-8054 - $1,000,000.00 Weekend - Ventures [1967] What Now My Love /Georgy Girl /Ode To Billie Joe /Sunny /Respect /To Sir With Love /Music To Watch Girls By /Groovin' /Windy /Sealed With A Kiss /Uptight (Everything's Alright) /Yesterday It is probably from this era that the present day view of cover version originates. It seems to me that this practice, too, faded away, though I don’t know whether it has entirely disappeared. Subsequently, we got the era of the singer/songwriter, in which, for some reason, it seems that recording new interpretations, however different and unique, of anyone else’s songs was deemed an uncreative cop-out. And the term cover has been applied pejoratively to any such recording. This appears to be a situation that is still continuing, despite the singer/songwriter business having gone away and having been replaced by Rap, manufactured pop artists such as Britney Spears & etc and the remix; a different kind of cover. Although I knew this history, what I hadn’t realised, until I started writing this, was the extent to which the various practices that can be called covering has changed over the past century or so, in terms of their rationale as well as their artistic impact. Each of these different implementations has had a period in which it was prevalent, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. (And of course, throughout the period songs have been translated from one language to another, thus producing an entirely necessary form of cover recording.) It’s not clear to me that there is any longer a need for the word cover to be used pejoratively, except in relation to specific historical events and trends. Sorry this has been so long, but I needed to work this out for myself. (Is the thread dead yet? Or are you?) MG

Yeah, it was kinda funny how that went. You had praised it in an e-mail, and a few days (nights, really) later, I'm at work when I notice a young-ish lady listening to it. I ask her if I could borrow it when she was finished with it and she said sure, no problem. Well, I kept it all night, and she had to ask for it back. She only knew me as an "old jazz guy" and was really puzzled why I was going apeshit over a Jill Scott record. I started telling her about all the different musical activities & interests I have/had, and pretty soon she started looking at me like "who ARE you?" , so I stopped, just smiled & said thank you, & went out to buy the CD the next day. When I showed up at work with it the next night, she really looked at me funny, kinda like, "o...k...how long until this old fool starts hitting on me?" And then when I didn't, she was really...perplexed. What kind of a world do we live in anyway? :g :g Yeah, my daughter thinks I'm a bit weird. But she loves me... MG

I keep meaning to pick up some Jill Scott and never getting around to it. Thanks for the incentive, Jim. MG

It's even better to read that than to hear the Gentry recording, in my view. Thanks. MG

Ordered as part of my OJC push on 16 September and just arrived today (5 more still in post!) Damn fine album! MG

Interesting point, Matthew. MG

That is absolutely beautiful! It completely captures the essence of cricket, and its heroism, and is hilarious! The commentary is perfect! And the zaniness! What a team! I wonder if you have to be English to truly appreciate this. MG

If we already have a perfectly good word for recording a tune that somebody else has recorded, what is it? Revival or reinterpretation. MG

You're not wrong about any of this. And I agree that it is necesary that we don't speak Anglo-Saxon. There's a backward compatibility issue here. While it's clear that the activities for which the pejorative sense of covers was appropriate continue, I'm not clear on how widespread they may be nowadays, by comparison with the fifties and sixties. So I'd be happy to accept that, as the activities have become less prevalent, the meaning of the word may change. But what do the linguistic theorists say about the backward compatibility of terms when one is, for example, writing history? My guess is that they would say, "write explanatory footnotes". Would that be your view? MG

Not as common as death, though. MG

MG PS should have put in a link to the article. Here 'tis (no sammich). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macarena_(song) I see what you're describing, which to me is a cover (by today's definition) just as much as Jason Moran covering Bjork or Annie Lennox covering Neil Young. The intent may be different (in Macarena's case to trick people into thinking you're the artist with the hit), obviously, but they're all covers of other artist's work. They are all covers, as you say. But now there is one word which is used for something extremely common and innocuous and also for something relatively uncommon and quite a long way from innocuous. I find it unsatisfactory. An analogous case would be to call all deaths murder on the grounds that all murders are deaths. MG

:g MG

Sly Dunbar - Sly-go-ville - Island orig Roland Alphonso - Roll on - Wackie's orig Dean Fraser - Pumpin' air - Island orig MG

Yes, that's one I should have picked up. MG