Christiern

John Hammond's intros were added to the original release of the From Spirituals to Swing concert.

This book has a lot of interesting first-hand reminisces by Bechet protegé Bob Wilber. It also happens to be a worthwhile read.

Earmarking a percentage of the proceeds to charity is an old gimmick. If it really benefits a worthy organization, it is usually by default.

Can't we all just stop getting along?

I always loved the Hoffnung festival and PDQ Bach Here's a bit of And let us not forget Anna Russell . I love her routine, but I guess she was best known for her take on the Wagner ring.

Allow me to use this thread as an opportunity to kill rumors that I danced with Dolly Madison. It never happened!

Those "collector's item" coins that almost appeared before the count was in. The ads are annoying, deceptive exploitations. Unfortunately, they will probably sell tons of these coins. How do you feel about this sort of thing?

I agree with everything good said about "Texas Moaner Blues", "Cake Walking Babies," and the Bechet-Spanier Big Four (I had them all on 12" 78s). Fantastic stuff, but it is hard to recommend Bechet material, because it is so difficult to go wrong with anything. One of the first records I bought, back in the 1940s, was a brown-label English Columbia 78 by Bechet with Bob Wilber's Wildcats: "Polka Dot Stomp" and "Kansas City Man". I have been hooked ever since. He is definitely among my absolute favorite musicianeers.

NY Times story here.

Whenever I want to hear truly awful, how-did-they-even-get-this-far performers, I turn to SNL. That show rarely lets me down when it comes to hyped mediocrity.

with milk.

Nice story, Peter. My Dexter Blue Note box did not walk, but the discs did.

A list of thoughtlessly designed CD packaging would, indeed, be long. That would include text printed on a background of the same density or in a point size usually reserved for information consumers are discouraged to read. The rusty boxes were stupid as well as unsightly, but I have seen much that is worse.

The question of whether or not to break any law is solely up to each individual, but there may be consequences. This is Captain Obvious, signing off... When do we ever do anything that does not potentially have consequences? Captain Obvious, indeed.

That, too, probably. Come to think of it, you're right, the Harry Fox people were after him.

Sad news. I have admired John's mind since the mid-Sixties when we were both broadcasting at Pacifica stations. John did a wonderfully eventful night show on KPFA in San Francisco and I tried my best to be half as good with my own night show at WBAI in NYC. John was the "big cabbage of the night," I was "Uncle Chris." You may remember John from the CBS Sunday Morning show, where he did reviews, or from his writings in the NY Times. You can read more here.

38 years ago, when I spent several weeks occupying John Hammond's chair at Columbia, George Braithe completed an album that he had worked hard on for over a year. I was asked to tell George that Columbia didn't wish to release it. It struck me that a record company should not have the right to sit on and essentially suppress any artist's work. I spoke to Clive Davis about it, suggesting that artists like George Braithe ought to be given an option to purchase and shop around—at the cost of production—any work that through no fault of their own was simply being put into the vault. Clive listened to me, nodded his head, and said he would look into that idea. Nothing was done, perhaps because Columbia—facing serious legal problems—soon thereafter used Clive as a scapegoat and fired him. I wrote the following article 10 years later, so it is in many ways outdated (the internet alone has cast a new light on the issue), but I think the moral question still exists. It has perhaps been compounded by a recent twist that has unscrupulous, strictly-for-profit record pirates stealing from nobly motivated producers who have put a lot of work and money into vital reissue projects. Of course the whole issue was muddles by the disparity between European and U.S. copyright laws. Anyway, what do you think? Where do we draw the line—is it alright to break the law if the purpose is a noble one that benefits the music and its makers? BENIGN PIRACY Stereo Review, October 1980 - “The Pop Beat” In perusing your favorite newspaper lately, you may have come across a story of an FBI raid on a record and tape bootlegging operation. In fact, there is a good chance that one or more bootlegged items are—unbeknownst to you—in your own collection, counterfeit merchandise so expertly copied that even the record companies have found it difficult to discern whether it is their own product or not. It is, of course, a matter of semantics, but in regard to recordings the term “bootleg” usually applies more to counterfeiting than to the unauthorized use of material. A counterfeiter will concentrate on current hit items, duplicate them in toto, and represent them as the original product; the profit margin is wide, for he pays neither production costs nor royalties, and all advertising is handled by the victimized label. A “pirate,” on the other hand, simply releases someone else’s recorded material on his own label or with no label at all. Rock concerts and complete opera performances have been covertly recorded from the audience or off the air and sold to connoisseurs in unmarked albums, but the most common pirate records are those assembled by people we used to call “moldy figs,” dyed-in-the-wool collectors of vintage jazz whose “piratical” efforts are often motivated simply by a desire to make available performances that might otherwise remain forever secreted in some record company’s vaults. Though such releases usually make some profit, the return one can expect from sales of, say, Louisville Lou by Ladd’s Black Aces (to take an actual example) won’t soon buy a house in Malibu. I don’t condone the practice, but were it not for the so-called “pirate labels,” a thick slice of American music would be known today only to a handful of collectors lucky enough to get their hands on the now-rare original 78s. Limited space precludes my delving here into the ethics involved, but when a company keeps an artist’s work off the market by neither issuing it nor allowing anyone else to do so, that work is, in fact, being suppressed. Record companies ought to be obliged, as a matter of artistic and cultural conscience, to make all recorded material available, if not in their own catalogs, then at least—through licensing—in those of other interested companies. Such an arrangement would be welcomed by many small labels now operating more or less covertly, and there is at least one precedent: Biograph, the legitimate offspring of Historical (a pirate label), made a unique arrangement with Columbia to issue some of the big company’s closeted treasures a few years back. Regrettably, the licensing fee proved to be unrealistically high for the long run, so the deal died after the release of only a handful of albums. But it was a step in the right direction, and Biograph has since blossomed on its own through leasing or buying masters from other, smaller companies. That pirate jazz labels want to go straight is evidenced by the fact that several of them have channeled their shadily acquired profits into legitimate ventures. One such company is Stash, a label that until recently was best known for its thematic albums of “borrowed” vintage jazz (“Reefer Songs.” “AC-DC Blues,” etc.) but now boasts seven releases (with two more in the can) of its very own studio sessions featuring such established jazz names as Slam Stewart, Grady Tate, Jon Faddis, Hank Jones, and Milt Hinton, The most recent Stash release features nobody you are likely to recognize unless you already have the Widespread Depression Orchestra’s first album for the label, “Downtown Uproar” (ST-203). But if you like moderately large bands playing in a style that would not have seemed odd or out of place at Roseland some forty years ago, the WDO’s “Boogie in the Barnyard” (ST-206), a collection of fairly obscure Swing Era tunes, ought to cheer you up. Many bands like the WDO would remain unrecorded were it not for such small labels as Aviva, Biograph, Stash, and Blue Goose, all of which are pirates gone legit. There isn’t much money to be made from pirating old jazz material, but if the big labels feel uncomfortable about having their past efforts put back on the market by unlicensed vendors, they can do one of two things to regularize the practice: lease the recordings to others or reissue them themselves. —Chris Albertson BTW: Stash ultimately tanked due to Bernie Brightman's failure to pay collected sales tax.

Rooster Ties: "One woman here compared it to being hit by a train." This woman has obviously been "outside," as Icelanders call it when anyone takes a trip abroad. Other than the toy variety, there are no trains in Iceland.

I'm afraid not, Aric. MG, I don't think Rudy Powell got in touch with me when he returned from Europe, but he might have. I have come across several letters that I had completely forgotten about.

One wonders if they could not have found a smaller envelope...

But old enough to remember VC. Welcome back....hvad fanden blev der af dig?* *What the hell happened to you?

Yes. It was also 1961.

Bol: "Ratliff and Chinen, who do cover some pop music, seem to gravitate towards the most commercial of jazz musicians and ignore many more interesting ones in NYC." The NY Times jazz coverage has been diluted in recent years. I think it took a deep plunge with Ratliff, whose scope seems limited and antennae are clearly picking up J@LC.

When a deliberate effort to marry writing and music is attempted, the result can be... ...a dud:

I haven't even done a drive-by in many months, but they had a repulsive storm trooper from Canada monitoring. He who took himself very seriously and effectively drove away anyone who disagreed with his narrow mindset. Compounding that was Mike's support of his actions. I will never go back as long as such cyber bullies are in charge. It's too bad, because the site could easily have been important.