Big Beat Steve

Funny how things come full circle. I remember checking out Honest Jon's (whose name had figured in tourist shopping guides along with Dobell's) during my stays in London in 1975-76-77 (while I was still in school) but don't think I bought there as IIRC his range of records was very special, spending money was very tight and there were SOOOO many excellent record shops in London at the time. Then, during my last record-buying stay in London in the year 2000 (time flies ...) I literally stumbled into Honest Jon's up somewhere at the north end of Portobello Road (revisiting memories of my excursions in the 70s when I had sought out Portobello Market too) and bought a couple of LPs there. I knew this was not his shop of the old days but was pleasantly suprised he was still around. Now, Rhythm Records is familiar too. I went there several times during my stays in London in the 90s (Camden Town was a prime target for other addresses and shops each time). I do remember the jazz section downstairs (manned by a fairly grumpy elderly character who seemed to take his time to warm up to his clientele). The last time I was there in 2000 I also browsed the boxes with original 45rpm EPs and picked some (getting seriously licked with one that I failed to inspect carefully - its vol. 1 brother was in EX condition - and it turned out to have the grooves covered with splotches of some sort of candle wax or such that I have not been able to remove - never would have imagined a record in such condition would ever make it into the racks of a shop doing business with collectors - luckily I have the music on LP, and the cover is nice ;)). Anyway ... now I know this actually was where Honest Jon's used to be (I did not remember ..). P.S. About that Garth Cartwright book mentioned? Is that "Going For a Song"?

Didnt he come along a bit later? How about Carmen Cavallaro?

Not quite that likely. He was dead by early 1951.

Thanks for your reply. Good to see their standard airmail service works OK. (Any others who'd like to share their experiences? 9 Considering how much I've bought from US sellers through the years (mostly eBay, some occasional record mail order services) basicially i can do without a tracking number but admittedly it does provide some peace of mind these days.

A question to long-time Mosaic customers from OVERSEAS: I am still unsure about whether to order the Savory set directly from Mosaic (now that the release date seems to be real) or waiting for it to show up at Jazzmessengers (not knowing what they will charge for the set, however, so not sure at all how much their price tag will be above the Mosaic price incl. shipping): If I order from Mosaic the overseas shipping costs look like either $20 for standard airmail (2 to 4 weeks, no tracking no.) or $50 for UPS Worldwide Express (4 to 8 days) The UPS rate is quite hefty, though. What are you international customers' experiences with their standard airmail shipping program? Ever had any problems? Arrived within that time frame? Packaging OK? etc. Thanks ...

There you go ... http://www.gokudo.co.jp/Record/BlueNote1/index.htm And yes, i'd second your reissue suggestions.

I remember listening to radio episodes of the "Inner Sanctum" mystery series on AFN radio during my schol days. Predating this movie. For some reasons AFN radio had regular hours broadcasting very, very old radio shows from the 40s, 50s and early 60s over here. This is where I listened to countless hours of the Jack Benny Show and also quite a bit of Bergen & McCarthy. Zany!! But I do wonder what their ACTUAL audience (beyond nostalgia/period flair-minded listeners-in like me) was among the average G.I.s of the "all-volunteer army" dispatched overseas at that time (1975-80)? No doubt other, more up-to-date radio series would have constituted more of a "touch of home"? These old radio shows suited me fine but later on I wondered if maybe they had had a stack of those old tapes (that they had brought along when they set up their services after 1945) stacked away in a corner and decided to broadcast them over and over again until the tapes finally crumbled to dust ... Must be very much pre-1960 indeed. "Little Deuce Coupe" (pronounced "coop") came up c. 1960. Yes, getting in an out of the car on the passenger side was a trademark. Makes us "Yurpeens" admire the size if those classic US car interiors. Unless, of course, you just jump over the edge of the body tub and into the seat (cf. Kookie in 77 Sunset Strip ) And yes, their acting cannot have been any worse than that of many TV series of today. And often it's more fun to watch.

That's one I inexplicably skipped/missed the time. I have the "other" one of his two Whiskey, Women and ... reissues (KM-713).

Reading an interview with Henri Renaud in the November, 1959, issue of Jazz Hot, I came across the following recollection by Renaud when he discussed the 5 LPs worth of material he recorded in the U.S. during his stay there in 1954: "I also participated in a recording for Prestige that featured three pianists - Duke Jordan, George Wallington and me. It was never published for union reasons: The musicians' union confiscated the tapes." Has this session ever been issued since? I cannot find any mention of Henri Renaud in the musicians' index (and no trace of a collaboration of Jordan with Wallington) in "The Prestige Book" published by "Jazz Critique" (No. 3) in the 1990s in Japan. An entry in the Jazz Profiles blog (August 14, 2017) mentions this session but this is a reprint from a 1957 feature in Jazz Monthly (UK) so is not any more up to date on on what may have happened with it later on. So .... does anybody have any specific info on this?

I can't give you the exact background (for I don't remember exactly) but to the best of my knowledge they stopped thier reissue program about 10 years ago. Some French forumists might have more info. The English Wikipedia entry apparently was updated haphazardly. They mention the label changed ownership in 2004 and stopped reissuing music in 2008 but the rest of the entry largely reads in the PRESENT tense - as if the label was still in operation. (The French-language entry is even worse) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_Classics

IIRC towards the end of the life of Classics they offered either downloads or CD-Rs even from their website. But of course who'd be able to prove what ANY seller ellegedly negotiated with ANY label owner?

There are (have been) three Classics CDs with his recordings: 1933-41 (Classics 690), 1944-45 (1024) and 1945-50 (1334). I only have the last one - find it very pleaseant and listenable. Wouldn't say it's cocktail piano. Though of course jazzing up the classics in this manner isn't to the liking of everybody (I for one like it better than most of that Third Stream stuff of more than a decade later ). There also was an LP in the Musicraft reissue series from the early 80s: "Herman Chittison - Piano Genius" (MVS 506). Its recordings (spanning the period from December 1944 to May 1945) likely duplicate the contents of the second Classics CD. His interplay with guitarist Jimmy Shirley is quite something IMO. Many of his European 30s recordings have also been reissued on various LPs. @jazztrain: Re- India: Are you sure you are not confusing him with Teddy Weatherford?

So ... time to revisit the Fourmost Guitars again, then (I've had the original LP for about 15 years now). Thanks for bringing this up. By coincidence the other day I worked my way through a stack of 1958/59 Jazz Hot and Jazz Magazine from France (looking for specific features and reviews) and also noticed these Fourmost Guitars were reviewed. Jazz Magazine found it "all in all a very good guitar album" and considered Dick Garcia to be "far superior to Joe Puma, having really astonishing technique and ideas". On the other hand, in "Jazz Hot " where this LP was the subject of the monthly "Pro and con" double review, diehard discographer and researcher Kurt Mohr tore it to shreds, rating it "of no interest" (1 star), considering it an exercise in "vanity and desolation" and a "deadly bore", The way Mohr elaborated on this, he clearly preferred more "meaty" guitarists, a point his colleague André Francis (3 stars = "good") took him to task for, pointing out that "a keen follower of R&B singers will hardly be moved by the music produced by jazzmen leaning towards west coast jazz" (sic ...) "but why bother reviewing such a record at all, then?". Francis had special praise for the interaction of the musicians on most tracks and particularly for the contributions of Dave Schildkraut with Chuck Wayne. BTW, Kurt Mohr found "Li'l Basses" most palatable (relatively speaking) of them all.

FWIW, the release date for this set indicated on the Mosaic website now is "Late May". Holding my breath with due patience ...

My point exactly - all along. Agreed too. Although some of the HRS has been available for a long time in other forms (Riverside ...) this set draws together items that to a large extent are off the beaten tracks of the "obvious" names and therefore fills a gap. Which is a bit more than what can be said of some "big name" sets such as the recent Teddy Wilson set (cf. Hep CDs), for example, great as though it undoubtedly is thanks to the Mosaic treatment.

@Dan Gould et al. re-downloads or not: No need to try again. It is clear that Mosaic have NOT been in the market for downloads. So the point of the original discussion with Justin V still is this: The alleged unavailabilty or OOP character of a body of music as a criterion for the worthiness of a reissue project cannot be compared with the "availability" as downloads (cf. Savory). I'd still bet downloads are not the preferred form of "in-print" music to the majority of typical Mosaic customers and comparisons with "download" availability therefore are pointless. So ... if somebody has to try again it is not me but Justin V. And I am a bit surprised that my description of Mosaic going for downloads was seen as anything but purely theoretical/hypothetical in this context by anybody here.

That's not the point and you know it. All I said was that visibly Mosaic has gone the vinyl and then CD route up to now and certainly not because they oh so sadly just could not, not, not get the download permissions but because (laudably) they believed in physical media for their reissue projects. And correctly so IMHO, seeing what their primary buyer target group is (no doubt quite a few do downloads too but it's certainly no priority with the majority of their customers). In short, as far as I have read downloads never figured seriously in the Mosaic equation so what may have been out there in download formats (no doubt huge chunks of the contents of many other Mosaic sets can also be had via download if somebody tried and preferred to got that route only) is beside the point when it comes to discussing which "recently unavailable" music has been "more unavailable" than other music.

I don't think the Savory set is an apt comparison. The Savory music was 100% unavailable until quite recently and to the majority of THIS niche of collectors that Mosaic caters to, downloads are only third or fourth "best" choice (or else Mosaic would reasonably have opted to go the download route long ago ). If you want to choose another set for comparison, use almost any other of the "name" sets. Very, very often the "newness" of the Mosaics was more about packaging and sonic upgrades but only to a relatively small extent about making music available again after a long "totally OOP" period (because a good chunk of the music of many box set WAS available elsewhere without having to search for ages and/or bound to be present already in the target groups' collections because it was not nearly as (relativley) obscure as the Bee Hive recordings).

Speaking of which ... what would be a correct price for that Condon set? There is one available (NM S/H) at a local record store. I already have a bit of those 50s Columbia recorings but who knows ...

I regret to this day I haven't grasped one of the opportunities to attend one of his concerts here. He was present in many settings through the years, often as a featured "elder statesman of jazz" soloist. It would have been interesting seeing live (and not only through broadcasts) how he had evolved over time. My Herb Geller leader LPs are all early ones too and include his three EmArcys and the two Jubilees but of course I'd have liked to have them signed by him.

It's not the apostrophe that's decisive. The correct name and spelling is "Onkel Pö's Carnegie Hall" (yes, with an "umlaut"). Popular success (beyond jazz circles) mostly came from Dixieland concerts (and made the club quite legendary throughout Germany in its time) but they did branch out into other jazz styles a lot. "Pö" comes from "Pöseldorf", the name of the suburb of Hamburg where the hall was originally located. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkel_P%C3%B6

His name is somewhat familiar among Europeans interested in jazz of that period. Two years ago I came across an original EP from his "The Electric Guitar of the Eclectic Elek Bacsik" LP at a French fleamarket and found it very interesting listening but a bit hard to pin down on what he set out to do, particularly since the comparison with the recordings of Django Reinhardt is inevitable. Then, the other day I noticed a detailed review of this LP in the French "Jazz Magazine" (December 1962 issue) that may explain the impact it had on first-time listeners. The reviewers found him very promising and hoped for greater things in the future but perceived this initial LP (done at a late age of 36 years) as indulging in way too much ornamentation and florid, decorative effects . Apart from a very successful Opus De Funk they found the remaining nine tenths of his record rather to be bound to please fans of virtuosity and esthetic preciousness but not as something to establish him as breaking new ground among contemporary guitarists. They also saw him anxious to work his way out of the shadow of Django (whose influence he allegedly refused to acknowledge, though it seemed to weigh more heavily on him than that of his admitted influences Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery). (End of paraphrased quotations) As for Bacsik being a cousin of Django, widespread family clan ties notwithstanding, what's up there? The French and German Wikipedia entries (contrary the the English one) do not mention anything like this (the French ought to have known anyway), and the Jazz Magazine reviewers refer to Bacsik as a "remote brother by race" of Django only. Maybe his late start and (at that time) lack of orientation perceived by the reviewers also were a reflection of his personality at the time? Early in the 50s he had appeared with the Italian group led by Renato Carosone but was relatively soon let go on account of his "lack of reliability" - long before the group had its major chart successes, contrary to what the Wiki entries seem to imply.

Yes, it's very good. Though I must admit I liked his first one ("Boston 1950") even better. Don't quite know how to put it but somehow i find the first one more "coherent". But any glimpse into an otherwise undocumented past is very welcome. Of course here's hope too that the label will continue.

+1

Or replies to what Mjzee said (needless to say I understand his point), then, might just as well be considered a case of "I know I am right so if they don't listen to what i feel they ought to listen to then they are nowhere". However, it all boils to down to "YMMV" or "one man's meat is another man's poison". And "your loss" arguments usually doesn't hold water either. There isn't that much mandatory listening for EVERYONE in such an IMMENSELY wide field of music and just about anyone can come up with a dozen recordings from one's personal and reasonably wide tastes or favorites that "others" (who admit they don't go for that music because they, in turn, have different priorities and favorites and won't listen to EVERYTHING in DEPTH either) would have to listen to by all means. Not so, though. It's all a matter of taste, and tastes differ, and if it's outside of what you feel like exploring in your tastes then it's no loss to you.