Big Beat Steve

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.

Sorry if I oversimplified matters. What I meant to say is that most of the black audience that had been the DANCING audience of swing bands a couple of years earlier did not care for the bebop bands as bands to DANCE to and turned to jump blues bands instead (I am talking - roughly - about the 1945-50 bands here). Even many of those who wrote jazz history from a "modern jazz only" angle acknowledged that all in all "jazz" lost its dancing audience with the arrival of bebop. A statement likely explained by the fact that they did not see fit to include many of those musicians who DID cater to the dancing audience into the history of jazz anymore (at least not those in the R&B field). Well, yes ...

Just to make matters clear, it was definitely not YOU I was thinking of when I said there were and are people in the discussion of why to "elevate" jazz who have/had an "agenda." As for what's beyond the scope of the thread (true ...), I was just referring to your assertion that "Jazz has always aspired to be a musical form on par with so-called 'serious', classical music." (Always??) OTOH, as for this remark of yours, " Everyone should also know that the focus of jazz post WWII was on Bird and what followed. That's called history, and if you don't know it you don't know jazz. " Now if this isn't condescending ... I'm almost inclined to think I know more about the history of post-WWII jazz than you do. Your statement just reproduces the oft-followed practice where certain parts of jazz were written down (and off) by (primarily white?) jazz scribes. No doubt that Bird and the bebop movement were at the core of the major lines of development of post-WWII jazz but were they the whole picture of what there was in the field of jazz as taken in by the AUDIENCE? Most parts of the black community that had been dancing to black swing bands only a few years before by and large did not give a hoot about BIrd and the beboppers but went for other, more danceable styles of jazz (yes, jump blues aka early R&B) which was the OTHER line of development of swing-era jazz after the end of WWII. And the borderlines between both were blurred anyway (ever listened closer to early Gene Ammons or Leo Parker, to name just two?) and IMO both lines of development were only made out to be so incompatible by those who felt they needed to form the shape of jazz through the public exposure they were able to use (e.g. through their writings in the media). But NOW we are getting off-topic.

@ATR: Well .... words can imply and convey many meanings, including that "it's fine with me" might very well be understood to mean "oh well .... do so if you please but don't expect me or anybody else to take it all that seriously". Because it HAS been used that way. So if read like that then it can well be understood that way (maybe not if heard in a face-to-face conversation but this is one shortcoming of forums as we all know ... ). Anyway ... your assertion that "jazz as dance music pretty much went out" is rather a sweeping generalization that really ought to read "jazz music as dance music pretty much was pushed out of the picture by interested parties", don't you think so at least a little bit if you look closer? Sounds more and more to me like even in this respect (defining what jazz was and was not at that time) there have been forces at work over and over again through the decades that set out to shape and rewrite history (just like it has been discussed in all directions in this thread about the question of how many musical or show tunes became jazz hits - which really is a very minor aspect in the overall picture, isn't it?), likely in an either misguided or - worse - calculated attempt at obtaining "respectability" for jazz and elevate it onto an "art" pedestal on a level with classical music by whatever means it took. But what for? As if classical music automatically was on a higher level that jazz had to be "elevated" to. Wouldn't jazz in its many facets have been able to exist on its own terms? And why should jazz try to humor the audience of classical music in the first place?

No need to be so condescending as for "Whatever gets you through the night" ... True, jazz was no MAJOR force to be reckoned with anymore when it came to jazz as DANCE music - BUT: A good deal (if not most) of this was and is due to the fact that whoever considered themselves the enlightened scribes, academia bigwigs and/or promoters of "valuable" jazz systematically dismissed those styles of jazz (and wrote them off as being outside jazz) that DID get people to dance, ranging from late 40s jump blues through soul jazz (that - comparatively speaking - was relatively accepted but had the scribe vultures sit high on the power lines throughout anyway, waiting for whoever they could castigate for "honking" or other commercial or uncouth, all too down-to-earth blowing or tinkling) through certain types of 70s fusion and up to the 90s neo-/retro swing movement. "WHAT? JAZZ THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY DANCE TO? THEN IT IS NOT JAZZ! IT CANNOT BE JAZZ!" And if this did not silence those jazz fans who appreciated those styles of jazz ANYWAY and DESPITE what the "powers that be" wanted to proclaim to be the only "valuable" forms of jazz then that jazz "fraternity" tried to excommunicate them for indulging in music "of no musical value" and/or allowing jazz to be "dumbed down". (Says who? Those who've found themselves in Third Stream dead ends or those "free" styles that were misunderstood as "free for all" and sought legitimacy for their OWN, subjective definitions of what was and wasn't jazz and - to get back to the core problem raised of many posts in this thread - tried to (re)write jazz history to fit their own agendas?) Even if danceable jazz covered only a minor segment of the wide field of jazz - it WAS and IS there, proving that it CAN exist and CAN be done. P.S. I for one can very well enjoy a 50s Miles Davis Quintet record, for example, for relaxing late-night easy listening every now and then and find nothing wrong with that at all. Takes some previous listening but that's all been done ...

I am afraid you've nailed it. I've had the same feeling every now and then (not just in the field of music history). Erroneous statements of "facts" put into printing by reputedly authoritative sources (though clearly incorrect) tend to be taken as the gospel truth after a while if read and quoted often enough. Talking about dumb mistakes that ought to have been spotted (such as in your example or that of Simon Weil), it is a moot point IMO if these errors ought to have been spotted by the author or the proofreaders but in fact you CAN sometimes make an attempt at setting the record straight. Some time ago I came across a similar rather glaring error (that should not have happened to ANY writer in this field) and will therefore just quote part of my review I put up on Amazon, hoping it might rebalance the rating of the book: It is about "Dance All Night - The Other Southwestern Swing Bands" by Jean A. Boyd (about some lesser-known Western Swing bands), and I did have this bone to pick: "... there are some factual errors in the book that are hard to understand. To name just one example, "South" was indeed a tune picked up by many 30s and 40s Western Swing bands but how could this possibly have been suggested to the Light Crust Doughboys as "the new release" of the Bennie Moten band (the originator of the tune), given that Moten recorded the tune in 1928? It almost was an "old chestnut" by the time the Western Swing bands picked it up. ((The tune was recorded by the Doughboys in 1940, BTW - 12 years after the Moten original, so I guess my comment was being kind )) And as for Count Basie taking over the Moten band because Moten "quit the band business"? Dying on a doctor's operating table due to a botched tonsil operation and leaving the band leaderless from one day to another certainly is a way to "quit the band business" but is this really an appropriate way of summing up the man's history? No doubt ANY however brief bio of Bennie Moten consulted for reference would have highlighted this fact." A glaring blunder? I'd say so. Sloppy researching? I am afraid so. Couldn't care less (because it is not part of the core of the history)? Hopefully not. Not wanting to overrate the effects of an Amazon review (just an attempt at setting things right a little) and not wanting to make this review sound like a case of "look, I've spotted a mistake" but this should not have happened in the first place. And to me it read like more of a blunder than the question of how many "My Fair Lady" jazz albums actually were hits. ANY bit of research done should have yielded the correct facts. The author is at her third book in this field so will probably be regarded as an expert in some circles, yet to me her writings in many instances read not so much like those of someone with an innate feel for all the meanderings of the history of the music and the musicians but rather like those of an interested outsider (or observer) looking in. Rather odd for someone who is a professor in music history. Anyway, it's a pity ...

Bought this one a couple of days ago: Chet Atkins - Teensville - LSP 2161 - "Guitar With A Beat"

See? You weren't one that I was targeting in the first place. I have long had a feeling for myself that there is jazz for the brain (modern jazz, mostly) and jazz for the guts (R&B etc.) - with some overlaps of course and blurred boundaries. Fine with me as there is a time and place for everything and I am able to enjoy both on their own terms. And even better if you can combine the two (like many musicians managed to in the swing era). And if this can be combined in today's jazz again - fine. And I read something like this from your previous posts. It just galls me that there still are those out there who seem to consider themselves part of "those in the decades-long know" ("jazz acedamia"?) who still sneer at jazz that is out to entertain and is gutsy and straightforward enough to have the immediacy to get people up and dancing. If there are those who feel they prefer their jazz in a more sedate, concert-like atmosphere of aloof, earnest, sophisticated appreciation throughout - fine, there is a place and time (and market) for this too, but this is not all and certainly not the beginning and end of jazz as it "ought" to be enjoyed. And it also appears to me that given a certain awareness of some of the more immediately accessible facets of jazz present even AFTER the spread and development of "modern jazz" after WWII quite a bit of what Leo P. does, for example, is a case of "nothing that much new under the sun". More power to him if he can blow off the cobwebs in a few corners of the jazz world as he IS taking things a step further but OTOH he definitely is not breaking as much new ground as some might make it out to be in today's media - or so it seems to me anyway ...