Big Beat Steve

Update of above list and an addition: 9) Bulletin du Hot Club de France, complete years 1965 to 1968 (10 issues each) - 6 EUR per year (20 EUR for all 4) (French language) Panassie's montlhy publication with record reviews, concert reviews, historical articles, club news (and his share of rants and opinions on the state of jazz - often fairly amusing from today's vantage point)

Ohhh .... He was one of the persons that you figured would be around forever. And it makes you realize how time flies and how you get older too ... RIP

Thanks very much for the links. I had seen the one on Discogs but was wondering whether there might be more details (e.g. more comprehensive recording dates). I am still interested in scans of the booklet, though. In particular if there's a section that discusses the individual tracks. Any general chapters on the basic story of the Beat Generation would be far les important (I've got books that cover this subject pretty well).

This is the first one I ever bought of them (on the strength of the lineup - and at 1 EUR apiece you can take chances. ) According to Discogs they recorded 3 LPs during the 60s (my find is the second one of them). So you will have to wait for others to chime in.

Browsing the bins at a record clearance sale held by a local shop today, I found the three CDs of the Rhino box set "The Beat Generation" (R2 70281) at the VERY affordable price of 1 EUR each. However, no booklet anywhere in sight. Now I would of course like to add the info of this booklet to the music (starting with the accurate discographical details). So ... my question to fellow forumists: Is there anyone out there who owns this set and would be able to take the time to scan and mail the booklet that came with this box set? Please PM me for further arrangements if you are basically OK with helping me with this. Thanks a lot in advance! (P.S.: As to anyone wondering how come such box sets crop up piecemeal, there were several more box sets that apprently had been taken to pieces (including Bear Family sets). I asked the shop owner if the booklets by any chance still were anywhere around but he said unfortunately not. These items came from a "collection" they had received where the owner had filed the CDs individually. They had been able to piece together a few complete sets but in most cases the booklets and box shells probably had been discarded earlier.)

Getting back to the question about to what degree revivalist bands were integrated (in a natural way, in particular, without actually giving thoughts to the color of one's skin), here is an example that goes some way in that direction (the bassist is white): an original from 1967 I picked up at that record clearout sale I went to yesterday. The Saints & Sinners band led by pianist Red Richards was around throughout the 60s as an "all-star" band. The liner notes describe the music on this record as "mainstream" and "swing" but teh Classic/Traditional Jazz overtones are very, very evident. It is an easy-going, relaxed, naturally swinging session (not dull, but not at all extrovert like many white revivalists and not as cliché-laden as some post-circa 1960 New Orleans bands ). Otherwise, this discussion was of course on my mind when I browsed the bins for hours ... 😁 At 1 EUR per item throughout the bins you can take chances ... Yet I shunned the European trad platters (nothing that special or "early pressing" there anyway) and really could not bring myself to buying any of the Firehouse 5+2 or Dukes of Dixieland LPs (there was a handful of each). But I took home one more Soprano Summit LP and (admittedly) did pick up two Turk Murphy Columbia/Philips original pressings from the 50s . And for history's sake I grabbed a 70s reissue of the 1959 Atlantic LP of the Young Tuxedo Brass Band (recorded in 1958, no revival but ongoing tradition from the source .... ).

Yes ... seeing THAT band in such a setting is sort of strange ...

One more ... (ouch ... )

Thanks!

(Sorry to Rabshakeh for straying a bit OT ) If you intimately and immediately know (in EVERY case) which artist plays WHAT music (across the board of ALL genres and styles) - fine. But what makes you think that EVERYONE a) KNOWS all that, b) will embrace and love ANY sort of music alike ("sort" just to avoid the terms "genre" or style" or "label" you so hate ) at any time? That's just not realistic - nor possible nor human. Because humans are different, have different tastes and preferences. So why don't you just take these terms as OPTIONAL GUIDELINES to c) tell those interested in looking beyond the categories (or artists) they are already familiar with what to expect from the music "out there in the great unknown musical territories", d) explain to them where to look FIRST when they want to explore their stylistic preferences of music in greater depth and where not to look (at least not primarily) if they want to avoid pitfalls because a given artist may have changed his musical orientation radically through his career? Examples: c) Something probably not all that unknown to you as a Texan: One genre of music I like immensely is WESTERN SWING. Now this being a subgenre of Country music in the first place (so-called "serious" jazz fans often still sneer at it), why should it be out of place to guide those exploring the genre even in its broadest sense by tagging that stylistic label to the relevant artists? Anyone searching for info specifically on such artists would not necessarily (or rarely even) want to be forced to wade through Nashville assembly-line country music just because it all files under "Country" (nor would those preferring mainstream Country artists wnat to be bothereed with that "old hat" stuff at times they do NOT want to go there). Only human ... d) The first Johnny Guitar Watson LP I ever bought was a Red Lightnin' reissue of his mid-50s recordings. At the same time his 70s Funk stuff was all over the place in the bins for a time. Would it have been a service to the customer to lump everything together in the racks? This one was much better placed in the "Blues" section. Even if there was a separate Watson section in the Funk corner of the shop as well. Look, tomorrow I will check out a record clearance sale at a local shop. More than 50,000 LPs plus countless CDs and 45s on sale but NOTHING sorted by ANY genre or artist at all. (By your reasoning this would be heaven on earth for you about NOT compartmentizing?) Competitively priced and you CAN make finds there (because they also relegate regular stuff to those clearout sales that has been sitting in their bins for too long). So it is worth the effort browsing (last time I came away with more than 100 items) but it is TOUGH work sifting the gems from the dross. Yet the unexpected finds make it worthwhile but you have to EARN them under these circumstances. But would I (or in fact anyone) want to do this every time even at full-price items throughout the year and would compartments by artist and/or style in the record shops therefore be dispensable? NO WAY ... Anyone wanting to expand into other genres or categories is free to do so whenever he sees fit (I've done so too). But everyone decides for himself when and how he wants to go that route into new territories and can and will use such labels and genre categorizations at least as ROUGH GUIDELINES for orientation instead of being forced not to be able to see the forest for the trees ... (I rest my case ...)

I may not be the one to be able to "calm things down" here but just my 2c: Labels such as Bob Wilber being of the "Traditional" school just indicate that he had his origins in Traditional Jazz as a "pupil" of Sidney Bechet. And he went on from there. So his earlier records will usually be filed under "Traditional", "Dixieland", "Classic Jazz" and the like. And such a label IS convenient and serves a purpose just to give "new ones to the game" an idea of what (genre) to expect in a broad stylistic sense. If, for example, someone is into Classic Jazz, nobody will do this listener (or the efforts to widen the audience for jazz) any service by shoving avantgarde acts (or possibly even Bebop or Hard Bop) down the ears of these listeners on the premise that "this is jazz and if you love jazz you GOT to like that too". (People who "argue" like this ARE and have been out there for decades, mind you!) As an example, at one point I mentioned to a neighbor (who had rightly guessed that I am into Rockabilly and REAL Rock'n'Roll, i.e. the 50s variety) that I even more so am into various styles of jazz. His reply was, "Jazz isn't my cuppa, that's all too weird and bizarre for me." Do I know what kind of "jazz" he had been exposed to to come to that conclusion? Shrieks and screeches of what others would embrace as "avantgarde"? Was it Bird (who can be challenging on first hearing to the unaware) or was it "just" some high-note trumpet solo by anyone ranging from Cat Anderson through Dizzy to Maynard Ferguson? But had my neighbor been exposed to something more accessible as a first taste of jazz he might feel differently now. So someone ruined his ears for "jazz" by what he made him listen to at some time in the past. So things don't work that way with most of the "typical" music lovers. Just like someone who is deeply into Heavy Metal will likely be turned off by Techno (and vice versa) - at least upon initial exposure. You got to EASE people into exploring new styles and genres of music (new to them, that is ...) so they gradually discover what is palatable to their tastes after all and what will never be. And "labels" to describe genres do serve a purpose there! And from then on it is up to everybody not to let himself be pigeonholed but to look beyond as he feels comfortable with. But you cannot force them - or leave them in the wilderness by lumping ANY genre into one big blob of "just music" from the start. Getting back to Bob Wilber, this discussion of labels reminds me of one key experience I had decades ago. Listening to a jazz radio show, I was blown away by the Bob Wilber and Kenny Davern live recording of "Stompy Jones". Was I pleased when I later found this track on the Soprano Summit In Concert LP at Mole Jazz in the 90s ... That killer track might not be totally out of place at a dance session for advanced jivers and lindy hoppers (with the right stamina - the track clocks in at 07:52!). So this might be one tune to increase the awareness of the not all that jazz-minded dancing crowd (though maybe not one of my buddies who is exceedingly knowledgeable of R'n'R/Rockabilly but has an intense dislike of horns ).

This Bob Wilber clip is nice! Re-Soprano Summit, yes - I would not categorize them as Dixieland or Traditional Jazz but rather among comparatively recent Swing-style jazz. As for being "talked about", what I think Rabshakeh meant to hint at (and I concur) is that there are so many styles and artists of jazz (of the "high-level artistic jazz" type, to describe it loosely) that are discussed and dissected in an atmosphere of listeners gravely nodding their heads and pondering every note. Jazz by artists who, for example, by their own admission are of the "searching" type (and from a certain point onwards might make you wonder "hey, how about FINDING?" 😉 ) OTOH there is this jazz that as you say is fun, musical, satisfying ... and it is indeed not talked about much (in whatever media) but just taken for granted - or is its existence just grudgingly admitted in some circles? Because it seems to be too much about fun, dancing, easily accessible enjoyment. (And therefore does not come with a high-enough level of "respectability" or "serious art"?? Pity ... ) Re- surprises, may I suggest another one from what at first sight looks like post-1945 Dixieland jazz? A very young Steve Lacy with the Dick Sutton Sextet in 1954, playing what might be termed "traditional-cum-modern jazz crossover". (One of the original LPs was called "Progressive Dixieland".) Fascinating but not for the "purists" in either camp ... Reissued on a twofer on the Fresco Jazz label . These clips are just tasters but there are some more on YT.

No doubt these records sold reasonably well compared ot the more purist forms. The Wyndham site with its "plethora" of articles and stories is a hard one to digest evenly but from what I've glanced at I'd say that to him these "Dixie bands within the band" were neither flesh nor fowl. Unjustified but understandable from a purist stance. (Though, OTOH, who within the overall Dixieland/Revival/latter-day Traditional Jazz artists would objectively have been entitled to calling himself a "purist" - beyond the "Bunk Johnson adulators" fraternity? 😁 And even then ... ) Actually I often am not quite sure where to file records by some of the artists from your latest post. My Bobby Hackett leader LPs sit in the "White US Traditional Revival Jazz" corner but (by personal majority vote as to its musical contents) all the Bud Freeman LPs are filed in the (much, much larger) "Swing" section. And I cannot see why I should separate the small group spinoffs from their Big Band homes. But the Jimmy Dorsey LP you showed would be worth the price of admission for its Jim Flora cover alone!

Just so I get a better grip on this ... Where, by definition, would you draw a clear-cut line between "The Great American Song Book" and "Tin Pan Alley Standards"? Aren't there fairly sizable overlaps?

Those were the days ... (At least as seen on period photos from such events - I was not yet born then ...)

Rabshakeh, I do admire your perseverance in exploring all these facets of post-war (and later) white dixieland/traditional jazz revivalism. And I understand your feelings about those "Dixie for (rebel) Dixie's sake" records. Your quote from the liner notes of that "true Dixieland sound" by the Dixie Rebels is hilarious. Eddie Condon "degrading" the "true" spirit of classic jazz (latter-day aka "Dixieland")?? My oh my ... Makes Rudi Blesh and Hugues Panassié sound like all-out modernists by comparison! Records like that certainly were plentiful in the USA in the 50s and (early? mid?) 60s for consumption by what I'd call the "fun jazz" faction. Reviews of such records cropped up evey now and then in Down Beat (maybe when the reviewers needed some lighter occasion to let off steam😁), and the general assessment varied between lukewarm receptions but kudos to the musicianship, even if it was all common stuff, and puzzlement as to what the point of note-for-note recreations could possibly have been. FWIW, DB gave the Dukes of Dixieland LP you showed 2 1/2 stars and reviewer Dom Cerulli said "After the third track I was all set to pack up and go marching around the breakfast table. It's that type of happy Dixeland .." And would you believe - "your" Dixie Rebels LP did manage to gain a 3-star ("Good") review by DB and reviewer George Hoefer! The lineup was given as "Big Jeb Dooley (tp), Lou McGarity (tb), Kenny Davern (cl), Gene Schroeder (p), Milt Hinton (b), Cliff Leeman and Panama Francis (dr). A virtual all-star lineup. And the involvement of Enoch Light was indeed mentioned. One focus of the review was on the quality of sound reproduction: "The striking-back feature apparently is a crack at such bands as the Dukes of Dixieland that have made it on sound reproduciton. The rebels claim theirs is the true Dixieland sound. The mistake on this record is the repetition of the tired Dixie tunes that have been recorded over and over from the 1920s to date by the greatest instrumentalists in the business. [And yet they awarded it 3 stars??] The most impresisve soloist on these sides ias tormbimist mcGarity, whose horn is good to hear again." Well well well ... I am not sure I have much by the Dukes of Dixieland and the like among my records But still don't feel I missed out on something crucial. And those Firehouse Five + Two LPs (10 and 12") I've let myself be lured into picking up now sit in an easy-listening corner outside my music room. These somewhat caricaturesque Dixieland bands don't do all that much for me (and I am surprised you found they rate that highly on the "most collected" charts on Discogs) even within the Traditional Jazz (I refrain from using the term "Trad Jazz" as somehow this has strictly British connotations for me) REVIVAL. If I feel like letting myself be entertained by such "fun dixieland" I'd rather stick with our unpretentious German "Beer Jazz" trad bands such as the Old Merry Tale Jazz Band. 😁 But hats off to your thoroughness in covering these various aspects of white reivivalists. As for the OTHER artists you mentioned early on in your recent post, I'd say that Pete Fountain WAS the real deal after all, and certainly no reactionary. And I'll concede that others who claimed that Al Hirt had his strengths in some of his recorded output were right (I've heard too little by him, except his bigger hits which did not move me much). As for Sharkey Bonano, I'll freely admit that his Sharks of Rhythm of 1936-37 so far were enough of a taster for me (as a very slightly more oldtime-ish variant on the Louis Prima New Orleans Gang theme). So ...Overall your impressions confirm that I do not need to feel any qualms about maintaining the Condonites in all its aspects at the core of my post-WWII White Traditional Jazz listening and collecting, and beyond that a sampling here and there will do.

@soulpope: Thanks for your flattering comment. As I have several albums with this cover art in my collection (see my starting thread), actually I had not been aware that this subject matter seems to be comparably rare when I started this thread. But I may be biased because I have a soft spot for picturesque views of older car wrecks in older pictures of scrapyards. 😉 @optatio: Your recent finds are nice! 👍 I wonder if that "One Family" cover was shot in a partticular (legendary) scrapyard in Vösendorf.

My thoughts exactly!

Nice recent finds ... But somehow - considering the contributions to this thread - I have a feeling album covers showing car junkyards are a no-no among US collectors or cover artwork geeks ... 😁 How come?? 😉 Anyway ... Here's another one:

The "Bix Duke Fats" Tom Talbert? (Isn't in his JAZZ discogrpahy)

Amazing that this one hasn't come up yet ...

Not nearly as crazy as when you put Jo Stafford with Red Ingle! 😁

Regardless of how US-centric this author may be and what meaning he put into this personal "Ken Colyer" category, any classification of the styles of the entire field of traditional jazz needs to include the European scene too - at least as ONE of the substyles. The European traditional/classic jazz revival scene not only of the post-war years but even way later up to more recent decades played a significant role in "carrying on the flame" (and no, they weren't all copycats). It just was/is so that a lot happened outside the USA and the Traditional jazz revival definitely has not been a US-only affair anymore for quite some time. And not least of all the revivalist traditional jazz scene in Europe provided sympathetic backing (and livelihoods) to many U.S. expats (Albert Nicholas, to name just one, for example, or - right up to his death in 1998 - Benny Waters). (And I'm saying this despite the fact that European revival jazz is nowhere near my top listening priorities) As for naming Ken Colyer first and maybe as the only one in what appears to be a "British" category, this may be due either to the almost legendary role of Ken Colyer as the "purist" among early Brit Trad Jazz exponents, including because of his visits to the US where he absorbed every note, sneeze and cough of his idols in almost folkoristic proportions (which may have endeared him to certain American jazz historians and scribes in hindsight). Or it may really be a case of unawareness of others (Chris Barber? Humphrey Lyttelton? Just two who no doubt had a larger impact in the long run). Awareness of them might have led Wyndham to reassess this category. In general, and (sorry for this, Rabshakeh!) as an OT side note (at the risk of alienating some here ), I often am underwhelmed by US music scribes who are called upon to cover in any depth a "revival" subculture flourishing to a large extent outside the USA. Often their blind spots as to what was going on in these "far away" countries are such that you wonder where in fact they are NOT "sightless". Case in point: The Rockabilly subculture that has been going on all over Europe since the 70s/80s and has evolved in many directions and new facets. FWIW it also provided a new lease of stage life and belated musical apprecation to many US artists who had recorded in the 50s/early 60s (but in their home country had been relegated to playing hick C&W gigs in the sticks by the 80s). There is a basically very nice book called "Rockabilly - The Twang Heard 'Round the World" with contributions by (a.o.) Greil Marcus, Peter Guralnick, Robert Gordon (all no slouches). As the book title implies it covers the European side to some extent - both "then" and "now" ("revival"). But as anyone familiar with this subculture will see from the artists chosen as a cross-section of the European scene, the authors' awareness of the facts - beyond some major acts presented nicely - was cloudy, to say the least. The "then" French acts they chose give a slanted picture and mysteriously include a minor also-ran but bypass bigger artists who did make a splash. And their look at what they term the "Worldwide Revival" by post-1980s bands (shown through a cross-section of album covers) are arbitrary and random and do look like some record shop owner threw a stack of record covers their way when they asked him "Hey, what European bands ARE there, after all?" Amusing for European readers in the know but confusing for those discovering this aspect for the first time. In short, this Ken Colyer thing does not come as that huge a surprise to me. Still I find it odd that he should be singled out as someone who inspired the playing/emulating habits of US bands enough to warrant a separate stylistic category. I think you will agree that this blows up his importance - even in the European Traditional Jazz revival - in a skewed way. Finally, as for the "Kustbandet" ("The Coast Band"), I have listened to quite a bit of their music online but can't point you to any specific album. They recorded a lot from the mid-60s onwards. I suggest you check out their discography here (page 20 onwards in this file) ... http://old.visarkiv.se/jazzdiskografi/jazzdiskografi_K.pdf ... and see what combinations of tunes appeal to you most. However - their records may be hard to come by outside Scandinavia (or in fact Sweden) so you would have to rely on Discogs sellers. Which may make things uneconomical "just for the fun of it".

Actually this categorization is interesting, give or take the blurring of the "boudaries" between each style (as you mention ...). At any rate, a case can be made for this kind of subdivision, at least "for convenience's sake". I feel somewhat uneasy about some of the definitions, however: i) "Hot dance" orchestras as one style of classic jazz is very apt, but I wonder about labeling these bands "non-jazz or partly-jazz". Granted that there always have been fans and/or discographers who drooled about almost any (mostly white) non-jazz and not even partly-jazz 1920s dance band documented on records that in their opinion qualified as "jazz" just because of the presence of 8 or 16 bars of a "hot solo" (preferably by a name soloist). Which of course is seriously skewed because the same yardstick would never have been granted to comparable "dance" big bands from the Swing era. There were many that were sweet, corny or mickey mouse-ish most of the time but did have capable hot soloists too and did occasionally cut loose and swing with the best on some of their flagwavers. Yet they would never have rated even a "selective" entry in jazz discographies (contrary to 20s dance bands that overall did not muster a higher jazz content either). Was this shift of criteria due only to the scarcity of real JAZZ dance bands (with a mostly hot repertoire preserved on records) in the 20s? Somehow I doubt it. OTOH at least among Black dance bands or orchestras of the pre-Swing era there were quite a few that were much more than "partly jazz" only but would not fit the "downtown N.O." category either. So that "Hot dance" criterion would have to be extended IMO to cover anything from "non-jazz with occasional hot solos to fully-fledged jazz bands". ii) Among the Revivalist styles, I take it that "British trad" is a category that popped up there because of the (U.S.) author's unawareness of most of what happened across the Pond. In all truthfulness this should read "European and Australian trad jazz". There WERE discernible stylistic differences and subcategories, after all, that sometimes could even be categorized by country. I realize subcategorizing this one any further would lead way too far, so at least this "main" category should extend beyond Britain. Not to mention that some acts would not easily fit that overall category anyway, such as the Kustbandet from Sweden.

I was referring to the Coral period of Pete Fountain. Never been too keen on Al Hirt, OTOH. But I am not so sure I would WANT to hear the (Coral) album of Pete Fountain album being backed by Lawrence Welk. (Just listened in on that album on YT and my misgivings have been confirmed in full. )