Big Beat Steve

I have Spanier's studio big band recordings (there weren't not many) on a Decca Ace of Hearts LP, and I have an LP's worth of airshots of his big band (all that were ever discovered, at least as of the vinyl era) that was released on Jazz Archives (JA-30).

The Crosby band likely was #1 in this field. At least on this level of presence on the big band scene. OTOH there were the short-lived big bands of Jack Teagarden and Muggsy Spanier, for example, that had their share of N.O. jazz influence too. But compared to the prominence of Bob Crosby and his band they were also-rans, much to the chagrin (and financial hardships) of their leaders.

Unfortunately I do not have the e-mail exchange with TYQ anymore in my e-mail folder (all this happened in 2024) so I cannot check now. And it may also be that the mail I received was sent ON BEHALF OF M. Steyaert. I remember his name figured in the mail somewhere. I can only say that I inquired at TYQ as I intended to place an order and wanted to find out about the total including shipping because the TYQ prices DID seem very correct to me. So I really was taken aback when I received that message that VAT had to be added on top of it. Following your explanation (the way it has been explained to you by TYQ) it now looks to me that there will be NO VAT added to the list price + shipping costs by TYQ. I therefore retract my earlier "statement" and stand corrected. @Everyone else from the EU on this forum: Please disregard my earlier post.

That's what I did. IIRC the reply came from Mr Steyaert himself. I asked him about the total cost including shipping and he told me VAT at that rate of some 20% would be charged too. Was I surprised? Yes!

Worth mentioning in that context is that TYQ will add nationally applicable VAT (some 20%) to the purchase price when shipping to another EU country. At least this is what I was told directly by the TYQ customer service people when I inquired about a different Mosaic set several months ago.

Yes, this does make sense if his Prestige contract was maintained even during his prison sentence in the 60s.

Was on a Ammons listening trip a while ago too, so my curiosity was piqued by your post, and I checked your titles on Discogs. So it lookls like the "House Warmin'" LP on Argo credited to Howard McGhee was the original release. An odd one - though. No line-up on the sleeve, no Gene Ammons mentioned anywhere (maybe omitted because he was doing time at the time?) "Nothin But Soul" - the 1969 reissue - was on a budget label that looked budget-ish (Crown lookalike?) from a thousand miles away, and anything with artist credits can happen there. My guess is it was credited to Gene Ammons because after his prison release and signing by Prestige he was fairly hot at the time - at least comparatively speaking vs. Howard McGhee. "Heavy Sax" on Olympic (Everest!) from 1974 looks just as budgetish and may have been credited for similar reasons. Howard McGhee had nowhere near the LP presence on the jazz market that Ammons had in the late 60s/early 70s during his final years. This reissue must have been distributed widely - I distinctly remember seeing it in the shops way back, but never picked it up because the back cover blurb did not tell anything about where or when it came from exactly. And Everest (or its clones) was notorious (at least in my impression) for mixing its musical contents haphazardly. This reshuffling of album titles and covers (and leader credits) does not strike me as particularly odd - just highly annonying. And confusing for the collector - when you're in the receord shop this kind of mixups makes it hard to remember in each and every case what you have and what not. Happened to me more than once. A blatant example: Last spring I pulled a Woody Herman LP titled "All Star Session" on the Accord (huh??) label from the special offer bin of our local #1 brick-and-mortar record shop. Nondescript cover artwork and liner notes, but the presence of Eddie Costa mentioned on the back cover told me this must come from a time frame of interest to me. So I took it home, only to discover upon checking that this in fact was an 80s reissue of the 1959 "At The Roundtable" LP on Roulette - of which I already had picked up two copies from the Special Offers bin at different moments way earlier; a stereo copy with the original cover artwork (but on the Forum label - an early 1961 reissue) AND a mono copy on the (UK) World Record Club label (with a totally different cover and no mentioning of the Roundtable club). Oh well ... another one for the fleamarket vinyl crate ...

I never dug his Passport period recordings too much but have accumulated most of his 60s Philips albums through the years. Saw him being interviewed on several TV jazz documentaries, and he always struck me as down-to-earth, factual, open-minded, easygoing and a pleasant character in every respect. No big-shot allures, no show-offiness ... RIP and thanks!

Thanks, Fernando! That clarifies another snippet of the history immortalized in this book.

This price difference betwen hardback and paperback versions seems to be an increasing trend these days, at least in the "special interest" non-fiction sector. Is there ANYTHING to warrant such differences with the hardback version? Particularly since it is not likely this can be recouped anywhere once these books hit the secondhand market. And production costs cannot really be THAT different.

Ouch ... You're right . My error may have come from the fact that in German "customs office lingo" the VAT levied on these imports is specifically referred to as "import VAT" or "import sales tax" (literally translated). It's been a while since I imported stuff from outside the EU that I had to go and collect at the local customs office (and pay for ). But all the time the bottom line was and is that the prices of the imported goods do increase by not so small an amount for the buyer. So one tends to lump all this together, particularly since VAT is applied to the total INCLUDING the shipping costs (which the German customs offices do not tire of pointing out in their info leaflets). And the shipping costs cannot be "played down" on the customs form. So this is one major reason why personal importing of smaller quantities of LPs, CD, etc. (particularly in view of the high shipping costs from the U.S., for example) is hardly ever viable anymore. BTW, it still does occur, though, that smaller shipments in lightweight parcels slip through (I had such a case last spring), with no VAT levied at all. But of course you can never count on it.

Wise words, John.

If this is what "noodling" is generally supposed to mean then I guess it is at least part of what what some reviewers referred to as "rambling on and on and on", as in their reviews of certain "blowing session" LPs. Rightly or wrongly, but that's how apparently they felt about it.

Some special knowledge and preferences off today's mainstream? You never know ... In the discussion forum section of the website of a German news weekly there is a forumist (present sufficiently often to be noticed by others) whose forum nick is "curtisfuller". Anybody's guess how many of the average forumists will be wise to what's up with that?

As far as I know, basically imports from Japan would be subject to import duties as well because these are shipments from outside the EU (the EU territory is is as far as exemption from customs duties goes within any single EU country). Save for one detail: There should still be a "de minimis threshold" applicable to shipments from non-EU countries into the EU that have a value below a certain amount (value of goods plus shipping costs). But AFAIK this threshold has been lowered in relatively recent years so applicablility of customs duties may have increased everywhere in the EU.

Thanks John. "Unfortunately" you confirm my suspicions. The "This Is An Orchestra" book has had good reviews elsewhere. I'll look out for a decently-priced copy that ships safely here. But since I have the Lee book anyway ("gift horse", you know ... ) I'll certainly peruse the first part of it that deals with, say, the period up to about 1960 that is of most interest to me anyway. This does look more straightforward at first sight. I still cannot fathom, though, what the author tried to show (or prove) for the later years, in particular, by including every whatsoever writeup from whatever provincial small-town paper, particularly as some of these seem to deal with the same event (that was deemed interesting enough to recieve media coverage) over and over again (disregarding the obits, BTW). Weird ... and the typeface doesn't help either.

My „other“ thread of jazz books for sale (last updated in this “Offering and Looking for” section on 14 Seotember) has become a bit unwieldy to update and keep it easy for readers to follow, so I decided to start a new one. So here goes … Below is a list of the (duplicate and surplus) jazz books I have for sale now. All with English text unless indicated otherwise. All books are in very good condition (defects, traces of wear are indicated as applicable). 1) “Jazz optisch”, edited by J.E. Berendt (Nymphenburger, Munich, 1954) – the first German “jazz picture book” (original printing, not the smaller-sized "Fan Edition"). 72 pages, no dust jacket, some small pen markings inside, otherwise very clean condition. - 7 EUR 2) “That’s Jazz – Der Sound des 20. Jahrhunderts“, 700-page catalog (covering every aspect of the history and recent situation of jazz) to accompany the jazz exhibition held in Darmstadt in 1988, German text, very good condition. - 5 EUR 3) “Photo-Story des Jazz”, J.E. Berendt (Krüger, Frankfurt, 1978), 360 pages, German text. - 8 EUR 4) "Jazz Hot – Un Demi-Siècle de Jazz", photo album released on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Jazz Hot (1987 – second printing 1989), French text, 110 pages. - 9 EUR 5) “Nights in Birdland – Jazz Photographs 1954 to 1960”, photographs by Carole Reiff (Hannibal, Vienna, 1988), 128 pages, German text, othe4iwese contents identical to English edition. - 8 EUR 6) “Jazz West Coast – Artwork of Pacific Jazz Records”, by William Claxton and Hitoshi Namekata (Bijutsu, Japan, 1992). - 25 EUR 7) “California Cool – West Coast Cover Art”, G. Marsh / G.Callingham (Editon Olms, Zürich, 1992 – the edition with multiple exposures of Jack Sheldon o the cover), 112 pages. – 20 EUR 8 ) “New Hot Discography” by Charles Delaunay (Criterion 1948, 4th printing 1966), pen annotations inside. - 10 EUR 9) “Chet Baker In Concert”, documentation of a concert of the Chet Baker Trio tour in October 1985 (Nieswand, 1989), 64 pages, German text. - 9 EUR 10) “Bing – Just For The Record – The Complete Encyclopedia of Commercial Recordings 1926-1977” of Bing Crosby, by Bert Bishop and John Bassett, (Crosby Circle, 1980), 122 pages. - 4 EUR 11) “Sinatra – The Man and His Music – The Recording Artistry of Francis Albert Sinatra 1939-1992”, by Ed O’Brien and Scott P. Sayers, Jr. (1992), 303 pages. - 10 EUR 12) “Profoundly Blue – A Bio-Discographical Scrapbook on Edmond Hall”, by Manfred Selchow, self-published (1988), dust jacket has some wrinkles, 640 pages. - 35 EUR 13) “Edmond Hall – A Discography”, by Manfred Selchow and Karsten Lohmann, self-published (1981), 162 pages, pen annotations (additions to discographical entries) inside. - 10 EUR 14) “Diary of Jazz – A Perpetual Calendar” with 12 interviews by Karl Lippegaus (Nieswand, 1996), some pen annotations inside. - 7 EUR Still available from my earlier thread are: 15) Keepnews/Grauer,”Pictorial History of Jazz”, (Spring Books (UK), revised edition 1966). Dust jacket is tatty round the edges and torn in places but inside of book is in solid, good condition, spine is tight. - 12 EUR 16) Leonard Feather, “The Encyclopedia of Jazz”, 1980s DaCapo paperback reprint republication of the original 1960 “New Encyclopedia of Jazz”. Good condition, some insignificant creases in spine. – 15 EUR 17) “Down Beat Record Reviews” Vol. III (reviews published in DB in 1958) – 20 EUR Front cover slightly faded, spine faded, rear cover and final 2 pages were missing but have been replaced with clean photocopies, inside in good condition, very minor browning. 18 ) “Jazz in Deutschland” by Horst H. Lange, Berlin 1966 (original edition) German-language book on the history of jazz in Germany up to the early 60s. Excellent condition. Some light pencil annotations inside that can be erased easily. – 10 EUR 19) “Jazz in Österreich 1920-1960” by Klaus Schulz (Vienna 2003), German-language pictorial history of jazz in Austria, book in as-new condition, enclosed CD with an overview of Austrian jazz from that period is present. - 6 EUR 20 ) Metronome Jazz Yearbooks 1954, 1957 and 1958, minor wear to the edges of the covers, otherwise VGC. 18 EUR each 21) Big Book of Swing (Ed. Bill Treadwell), biographies (geared primarily to fans) of whoever was considered “hot” in jazz/swing in 1945, published by Cambridge House in 1945, 134 pages, close to as-new condition, 18 EUR (I do realize that shipping costs would make items 20 and 21 primarily of interest to domestic buyers.) 22) “Blues Records 1943-1966”, Mike Leadbitter/Neil Slaven, 1st edition 1968 (Oak Publications, paperback), slight edge wear to spine and page margins from leafing through but overall good condition. - 17 EUR Am open to negotiating a certain discount for purchases of multiple items. Payment: Bank transfer for buyers within Germany, EU bank transfer or Paypal “friends and family” for EU buyers. Shipping: Basically I would be prepared to ship anywhere at cost, but reasonably speaking, the actual shipping costs (via DHL) will probably limit this to destinations in Germany or within the EU. Costs: Destinations within Germany,: Letter up to 500 g = 1.80 EUR, up to 1000 g = 2.90 EUR Small parcel up to 2 kg = 5 EUr, parcel up to 5 kg = 7.50 EUR Destinations within the EU: Letter up to 500 g = 3.30 EUR, up to 1000 g = 6.50 EUR Small parcel up to 2 kg = 11 EUR, parcel up to 5 kg = 20 EUR Thanks for looking!

I would have just about (just barely) understood THAT cover "artwork" for a reissue of some down-home country blues. But this??? Booker Little?

I guess I must admire you for looking beyond that off-putting front "artwork" that is so out of tune (literally) with the music and is not far from detracting from the contents. Not a highlight in cover artwork creativity ... (What were they thinking ?)

Don't have that one, but it seems like that (P.D.) CD reissue wasn't quite up to snuff in its personnel listings for Tracks 8,9,10? No John Lewis. But OTOH - so there was no trumpet (Jesse Drakes) on tracks 11 to 14 after all? Evensmo says so too in his solography. If so, time to correct the "Lestorian Notes" discography there.

Thanks John! "Lestorian Notes" lists the above session with most of the LP and Cd releases indicated by Lord but says the pianist is "unknown". So I take it that the Lord disco has the most up-to-date info. So in the end there is nothing that's "never before released". What puzzles me is whether Lester Young live dates really are considered such hot items today that the (incorrect) "unreleased" claim needs to be made to lure unsuspecting buyers into shelling out. Not that I'd imagine the Session Disc 104 or Ambrosia AMB-10, 20 and 30 LPs are that common among collectors. But they are out there, and at least from what I've observed over here, if this sort of "Boris Rose" vinyls come up they sell for almost next to nothing.

Also pointed out here, FWIW: In the "New Releases" section, though IMO it remains to be seen how much of it is actually "new".

This very RSD release was evoked here yesterday as well: My impressions stated over there stand. Somehow the names, places and tracks sound oddly familiar. So what is REALLY new and unissued on this release in the end?

These tracks, the location and the line-ups read uncannily like what's been discussed "in extenso" here: "Indiana" and "These Foolish Things" not mentioned in that thread did get recorded at Birdland during 1951 too (according to the "Lestorian Notes" discography). The "odd man out" is the presence of Cyril Haynes who according to that discography never got recorded with Lester Young. And according to the brief biographies of him I've been able to ceck at a quick glance the Lester Young Birdland groups would not have been the most likely company he moved in. But who knows ...?