Big Beat Steve

Let me know, then.

Agreed about download providers. What I was referring to was the reissuers of tangible media (CDs or - unlikely too - vinyl) since CDs crop up at sales outlets (online or shops) worldwide today anyway, regardless of whether they are "supposed" to be there or not (as has often been seen in the past).

Following the other posts, I just checked my 78s (I knew I had a Guild by Maurice Rocco - it's Begin the Beguine) I not only found I also have Musicraft 368 by Maurice Rocco. Next door in alphabetical order sat the one below that seems to be missing from the discography on 45worlds.com: It's not even on Discogs. But Discogs shows another Musicraft release by her (15027). Her overall leader discography probably is slim (Jepsen has no entry) but I'd say she deserves some reissue of her leader tracks too . The only "reissue" of her that I am aware of is a One Night Stand LP (Joyce) with airshots of the big band she briefly led in the 40s

All I know is that this debate is relatively irelevant on today's worldwide reissue scene because according to EUROPEAN P.D. laws all of these recordings ARE P.D. When they changed the law (at the lobbying of Messrs. McCartney and Cliff Richard) in 2012 all those recordings that had already been P.D. according to the PREVIOUS 50-year rule REMAIN P.D. because the new, longer protection period will not apply retroactively. I.e. whatever was in the P.D. at the time the new law became applicatle will remain so. And since Musicraft weas LONG gone by 1962 ... So it all depends on whether a European P.D. company will jump on the reissue bandwagon in this field. Not very many candidates, though. The only European reissue label I can imagine maybe doing a somewhat systematic reissue of labels like this one day is Acrobat (U.K.). They have done a 2-CD set on the Melodisc label and have also covered Atlas and Macy's (focusing on R&B) and an artist CD (with 78s from various indie labels) of Peppy Prince ("who??") that would take some dedication for a label to see through. Blue Moon (from the Fresh Sound stable) also covers those years, but this label is more geared towards R&B. Don't see if they will branch out into jazz, and I am not sure if theF.S. Cool 'n Blue subsidiary is reissuing new things.

Seven, actually. They also included an unissued tune: "I Would Do Anything For You". Re- Mel Tormé, his Musicraft sides were reissued on the reactivated Musicraft label of the early 80s on 4 LPs: MVS-508, MVS-510, MVS-2000 and MVS-2005 in adition to the sides with Artie Shaw (MVS-503 and MVS-507). The sides with Artie Shaw had been reissued before (e.g. on Everest, according to Discogs)

Those that I have as 78s (Harry The Hipster Gibson, Sherman Stewpot - yes indeed! Novelty! and I may have some by other artists) from memory don't sound worse at all than the average 40s Indie label 78rpm in comparable condition.

Nice and informative links (the one on 45worlds.com (in particular), thanks! So Joe Marsala, Herman Chittison, Cylde Bernhardt and, depending on one's purist (or non) tastes, Maurico Rocco and Phil Moore (in addition to the ones already mentioned, inciding Harry THe Hipster Gibson! ) deserve a nod for their jazz output on the label too. I think at least part of the Mel Tormé recordings were relased on the Musiccraft LP reissue series in the 70s/80s too. I have one of them, and while i have not listend to it for a while I remember it was being at least semi-jazz and not to be sneered at. I am familiar with a few of the hillbilly records (through reissues). For those who are into early post-war country music, they can old their own among the lot of indies.

You're talking about the huuuuge photo book/folio published by Nieswand in the 90s? FWIW, "Nervous Man Nervous", Jim Dawson's biography of Big Jay McNeely, does not list the Haig club in the index of the book (other clubs are listed, though, so this may be an indication that the Haig did not play a (major?) role in his stage appearances). As for R&B places (and action ...) in LA in the 50s, did you check the liner notes of the Jijmmy Wright (aka Jimmy Wrieght on some releases) "Let's Go Crazy Crazy Baby" LP on Saxophonograph BM-1301? Amazing! (I suppose you have all the Big Jay McNeely LPs on the Mr. R&B labels (Saxophonograph etc.) and therefore are familiar with THOSE liner notes)

Excellent. That fills in a lot of gaps of knowledge. Thanks very much!

I wonder if these were from the same circle of local musicians that I saw as a backing group for Slim Gaillard in Paris in 1988. Slim was relatively "tame" at that gig but nothing compared to how workmanlike they were. Not bad, just un-hip too.

I thought so too at first. Looking closer, it's the various stages of producing glassware. Searching on the web, they date from 1972 and the denomination is 65 Öre. Now you'd certainly have to stick on a LOT of these to cover present-day rates.

I don't suppose this necessarily is so. I remember receiving mail from the US in my stamp-collecting youngster days (c. 1970) where the postage due was stuck on using decades-old stamps (on purpose, the letter went from one collector to another) but apart from that, things can vary widely. I know even in the post-1948 period when no monetary reforms took place anymore German stamps usually remained valid only for anything from 2 to 4 years. It was not until late 1969 IIRC that they would remain valid indefinitely in West Germany, and in fact in the late 1990s I often used very old stamps from the 70s/80s for my letters - but apart from some sent to a stamp-collecting friend from my car hobby over in the UK - only for the simple reason that I had HUGE stocks of unused stamps from my parents' stamp collecting days. Unfortunately most of these were not worth more than their denomination even among collectors so they got used up as best as I could before they became invalid for mailing when the EURO was introduced. And this must have happened in all the other Euro countries too. I guess the denominations of older Swedish stamps will pose a real counting problem, though, given the inflation of past decades.

Must be a hobby with some Swedish sellers. Throughout my purchases from Sweden (mostly mags - as you know - but also records and catalogs) I received envelopes on 3 or 4 occasions that were plastered with older stamps (60s or so, maybe even earlier - some I recognized from my schoolkid collecting days during the late 60s/very early 70s), though never as many as yours on this one. How far back can you go with using Swedish stamps that are still legal for use anyway?

I wouldn't say Bill Holman is the main point of interest here but at any rate, despite the lukewarm DB review at the time this is a nice and underrated recording obscurity IMO.

Oh ... that's one I missed at the time I bought most of the Route 66 LPs (and those of its subsidiaries) unheard-unseen. This one must have been fairly rare, cannot remember having consciously seen it at the time.

Yes, quarter lengths of that larger pickle sounds familiar. But an entire huge pickle (if this is what was meant, e.g. on Wiki) - ouch ..

https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Halls-Last-Calls-History/dp/1556229275/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522430161&sr=8-1&keywords=Dance+Halls+Last+Calls From all I've heard about this legendary place (including from friends who have been there during US holidays), if you are into (relatively) "traditional" no-frills country music at all, both Alvin Crow and Dale Watson should be a treat in these settings.

Cannot recall having EVER eaten any "rouladen"with a WHOLE pickle inside. Must be a regional thing. Only pickle fillings I can remember having tasted are either sliced lengthwise or cut down into tiny pieces. BTW, one of my mother's uncles (emigrated from Germany to the US right after WWI) ran a German-style "watering hole" in St. Louis until his retirement in the early 50s. Who knows ... your grandparents might perhaps have been to this place. (My mother - now 94 - doesn't remember the name of the place, though). The German immigrant population in that area really seems to ahve been everywhere (my mother's other uncle was head butler with the Busch family (of Anheuser-Busch fame) during the same period, BTW).

Yes, too bad this isn't Reckless Records over in Soho, isn't it?

Interesting indeed. Just put the 1961, 62 and 63 volums into my Amazon cart. (To think that yesterday I browsed their listings for quite some time trying to find another item to reach the free shipping minimum to go with the LP I ordered from Amazon - most of the other items I had to have at that moment came from amazon sellers ...) Do you happen to know if there is a 1960 volume?

This, very obviously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest_gateau Since France (gateau is French for "cake") is not extremely far away from that region we won't hold this language mixup against English speakers. We're glad enough if the Americans (or Canadians or whoever ...) don't expect to be able to step off their River Rhine cruise boat and jump just across the street into the Oktoberfest beer tents .

Just searched their site high and low but did not see the Savory set. Where did you find it?

How are German food restaurants doing? Some are fine, some are improving and rising, some are struggling, some are going downhill because the general trend is towards lighter food here too (which CAN be at odds with traditional German food). Like everywhere else. Many French bemoan the trend away from typically French cuisine too. As for "German" restaurants in the US, are they actually German (which would be a wide gastronomical field anyway, supposedly most of the long-established ones imitate dishes from Southern Germany - which isn't ALL of "German" gastronomy anyhow)? Aren't they rather a US variation or evolution of dishes with German overtones or maybe even just a cliché-laden imitation of what would one like to believe to be German? Reading the article one is left bewildered. Reading about "Bavarian cuckoo clocks" for decoration, for example, is one of the dumbest things that a writer could put into print when trying to capture the atmosphere around the dishes served. Cuckoo clocks are typical for some regions of Germany indeed but the Black Forest is not really part of Bavaria. Not even remotely. If you are fine with that anyway - OK, but I suppose those who feel so would then agree with tourists too who think they have understood the US when they figure Stetson hats are most typically worn where the Niagara Falls are. Reminds me of story a friend told me the other day of a couple of Italian brothers emigrating recently to the US. They all were fine and well-qualified cooks, figuring they would not have any trouble finding a job there. In fact they did not but the first thing their first employer - Italian too - did was to set them wise: "So you're from Italy and you are cooks and know the Italian cuisine? Fine .. but to start with, forget all the specificities you have learned. Remember, this is the US. Italian food in the US is not what you'd consider Italian food where you came from. It is no coincidence they speak of "American pizza", for example." And so on and so on ... BTW, as for trying to figure out what country "Schnitzel" (particularly the "Wienerschnitzel" cited in the text) is most typically associated with, check this: https://www.discogs.com/de/Crazy-Cubes-Hemenex-Rockabulls-Rioters-Schnitzelbilly-Rockabilly-made-in-Austria-1/master/887098

I don't think anybody seriously interested in history would object to expanding history through truly new facts and findings in order to gain new insights (which means that sometimes history does need to be rewritten). But willful omissions and/or apparent ignorance combined with self-perceived expert knowledge are much harder to separate. Do we know if omissions or "errors" come about through ignorance or through carelessness or if they are part of an "agenda" of rewriting history? Omissions and misrepresentations can falsify history enormously the way it is presented to those who read about it. And if these errors and omissions and misrepresentations are repeated often enough the risk that they will be taken as gospel is very real (including for the reason that all too many who write about history tend to refer to other secondhand sources - that may already be skewed - instead of going back again to FIRST-hand sources). I've witnessed this problem in another field of special interest where I think I have a fair deal of knowledge of the history. All too often it happens that scribes who set out to write about history just aren't well-versed enough in that particular field and YET write about it. Which results in the inevitable array of errors and omissions (that cause more errors and skewed narratives) and outright incorrect statements. Probably these scribes not really qualified for the task (from a historian's/researcher's angle) keep writing on the premise that "I KNOW how to write - others who may know the history better just don't know how to write so what I write because I know how to write must be correct because it has been written by me", and they defend their position in these publications with claws and teeth, even if their errors are pointed out over and over again. This is one area where I feel they have an agenda - defending their status as "expert" writers on the subject matter in general and therefore defending their livelihood. Still far from good enough IMO. Obviously you cannot include all the facts if you cover a given topic (particularly in the field of history) within specific limits of text length. But whatever you do write - 1) "get your facts right", and 2) "if you cannot include all the facts, present those that you do include in such a manner that the overall picture is correct and balanced". And this is where many, many self-professed "expert" writers fall short. Sometimes on purpose, it seems, because they consider themselves above having to really research and ask the true experts. And this can be galling to those readers who DO know.