Big Beat Steve

I'd be interested in hearing about the DETAILS of what may not be up to snuff (by what criteria?) there or what "stories" there are anyway. (And of course it would be interesting to see if really all of the Uptown material would be new on the market) Besides, wouldn't it be sad and uncalled for, particularly among real jazz connoisseurs, if the Basie band were reduced to Lester Young only?

In what way? Curious to know .... Even in the vinyl days live recordings by the 40s Basie bands were fairly plentiful. Admittedly I have a LOT of Basie on vinyl but not nearly all of those airshot/live LPs issued in the 70s/80s - yet those I do own already include some 7 or 8 LPs with material from 1944. So what else is out there, I wonder, that transcends (on average) everything so far issued? Or doesn't it, after all?

I do hope they will stay around to see the Savory set through and release it.

The record in my copy is in a clear plastic sleeve and there is a sheet in Japanese (with a translation of the liner notes and some other info that may relate to the release of this album as it specifies "Not for Sale" in the midst of Japanese signs as well as a date of March, 1983, at the end. No tokens that I can identify.

Exactly. It does say Not for Sale in fine print on the bottom of the back cover too. Which is why I guessed it to be a promo. I had somehow overlooked this Discogs entry. Those I saw in the overview listings allindicate the 61007 catalog no. So it IS a promo, then. Thanks for pointing it out

Thank you!

I checked amazon.com and the price indicated there in US$ for the 5th ed. matches the price you quoted. I missed the "for rent" line on amazon.com (never seen that category before) for the 3rd ed.. My fault. So it is secondhand or pay up indeed. Secondhand copies on amazon.de start at $30 too, so ... I agree with your point about the style. I'd find that off-putting too, and I've been disappointed in a number of cases where interest in the subject matter made me jump for a book. I won't name a jazz book written by a board member here on a subject I find very interesting where reading is very, very tough going, and I am not sure yet if this is partly due to my lack of deep knowledge in music theory, but it is a tough row to hoe. I'd cut that one some slack (as no doubt it is very profound), but another one bought recently is to some extent overladen with what you call "academic verbiage". It is a series of essays on individual aspects of European jazz, and some are more "accessible" than others, but those that go overboard in their acedamic pretense - ouch ... If the most frequently used term seems to be "vernacular" then I am beginning to wonder ... Of course jazz (particularly its early history) is part of "popular" music rather than classic or "serious" music so if you have to circumscribe the notion of "popular" (in a looser or wider sense - we are not talking about dialects or folksiness etc.) to this extent by such academic deadweight, then .... And I can well imagine such academic lingo to be even more burdensome in a book on rock where the music and the target audience on average should be even more down to earth than with jazz (taken as a whole across all genres). Anyway, so this book has been settled for the thread starter, I guess ... BTW, talking about the UK and scholarly writing, did you ever see this one? https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Britain-Got-Blues-Transmission/dp/1138259357/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520081654&sr=1-1&keywords=How+Britain+Got+The+Blues The title sounds exceedingly scholarly but this book seemed to fill a niche in writings on my fields of interest in music I took the plunge, and I found it a surprisingly good read as an introduction to this subject from an angle not covered in other books touching on the "white British blues boys" phenomenon (particularly when read in conjunction with other related books).

Are we talking CD or vinyl? I bought Vol. 1 on LP (80s reissue) about 20 yars ago and not all that long afterwards came across Vol. 3 as a Japanese facsimile pressing that looked like Vol. 1 and 2 except that the script on the front cover wasn't red but brown and that where the catalog no. was to go (1507 or 1508) this pressing had just ???? on the front and back. I was intrigued by this as I was only aware of Vol.1 and 2. As the shop owner told me and as the liner notes (by Michael Cuscuna) confirmed these had remained unissued and had been dug out later on the Japanese (who else?) for release on LP. https://www.discogs.com/Jazz-Messengers-The-At-The-Cafe-Bohemia-Volume-3/release/3510742 Contrary to the above and similar listings, however, my copy does not have the 61007 no. anywhere but just the ???? (and no "limited edition" text next to the High Fidelity in the top corner either. Just a no. DY 5805-01 in small print in the bottom left corner of the back cover and on the label where the actual no. would be supposed to go. Do I have something special there? A promo pressing?

The book/edition of "What's that Sound" (a line that I am pretty sure comes up in quite a few other rock songs too, FWIW) shown by the thread starter retails from $15 or so. Is the new (5th?) edition that you seem to be referring to (and that IS expensive, according to Amazon) worth that much extra money? If the 5th ed. has been updated only with more recent developments since the previous edition then it probably is not what the thread starter is looking for (as he says he has a particular interest in 60s/70s rock). Amazing, BTW, that the newer the editions, the older the cover layout seems to get. This 5th edition shown on Amazon looks like an early 70s PRINTING to me. Baffling! The kind of effort to recapture a "period" feel one only sees very rarely these days in book artwork. As for the "short shrift/no shrift" problem - maybe a general problem with books that set out to cover an all too wide field in one single tome (considering the diverse developments in rock since the 80s alone)? I've often found that many authors writing about a "history" in the field of popular music are very much skewed with too much of a bias towards the most recent happenings (with the possible exception of jazz). What's been big in the, say, 10 past years figures prominently in there but the preceding periods are almost only covered by the huge, huge names that still are fairly huge (or remebered through recycling in omnipresent oldies shows) at the time of writing, and this slant becomes more pronounced the further back you go in history. Whereas, if you were to do the subject justice, you'd have to give each decade fairly equal coverage to highlight those that were big in THEIR day (but may have been forgotten except to REAL fans and collectors since) in an even manner that reflects the TIMES and presents the ENTIRE picture of the history in a balanced way. Because who knows who from the most recent years given huge coverage now will still be a household name 10 or 20 years from now, particularly if you take today's increased media exposure into account?

And how and when is this going to become part of ROCK history? Any today's Dylans singing about "The times they are a-changing" out there yet? Just wondering about on-topic/off-topic matters, you know ...

Ha, Jayne Mansfield!! https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85h,_en_s%C3%A5%27n_karl!

Sounds like an interesting record, particularly that west coast-ish jazzing up of classical themes. BTW and FWIW, just going by the tune titles, I'd not really have assumed this was a Third Stream-influenced recording. These plays on words weren't new at all. Red Ingle & His Natural Seven (a comedy/novelty band from the 40s, based on the West Coast, BTW) had done "Moe Zart's Turkey Trot" (a spoof on "Rondo alla Turca") in 1947.

Maybe the intention of the thread starter just was to highlight the opposite of those who might have been asked by Lester Young where their "left people" were (as the anecdote goes).

These tracks have been released before (in the same order) - on the "By George!" LP on Swing House SWH 25. Bought this secondhand at Mole Jazz in London some time in the 90s. Nice music and IMO there is enough to appreciate in his 40s recordings or surviving airshots (as issued by Hep) on their own terms, regardless of whether Artie Shaw's shoes maybe were too big for him or not - and as for the rest, I guess it's best to just focus on the music and not think too much about backstage and off-stage behavior. (In some cases where artists turn out to be pricks offstage you cannot help wondering what would even have come to light if there had been a #metoo then? Probably better not to know ... )

I have the Fresh Sound facsimile reissue LP of this one (FSR-588 - it has all 12 tracks indicated by L. Kart above). The back cover gives the pianist als "Hac" Hanna in the line-up listing and as Roland "Hac" Hanna in the liner notes by Barry Ulanov. But no reording date is given either.

Yes it was (and is) - since 1919 - but not as a RECORD LABEL, by all accounts. And this is what was the subject matter here. Again - trying to make it clear: United Artist and United Artists (as record labels) were not the same. But whether or not there was an "S" at the end of the name was NO factor BY ITSELF that would have determined whether these two entities could have beenc the same. So making a point of this "S" is strictly beside same (the point, that is ). That's that.

Let's face it - there have ben PLENTY of labels through the years that underwent minor changes of their name (and changed their logo) and YET remained the same unit (so this alone would not be a criterion). But not in this case. The gap between the (probable) demise of the one and the start of the other was too huge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists_Records

Thanks for bringing this topic up. I corrected the bass player identity on my copy of Sounds of Swing 121 too. And then I went looking .. I knew i had a Gerald Wilson 78 on United Artist (I seriously doubt this was "THE" UA that Chewy alludes to - this label was founded much later). And it turned out to be this "Dissonance in Blues". The line-up given on that LP seems to be way off in other respects too as the flip (or rather "A" side) of that 78 - "My Last Affair" (coming from the same session) - indicates Trummy Young and Willie Smith as featured solists.

I've just checked the Basie entry in Bruyninckx for CBS 67205. I Ain't Got Nobody and Going to Chicago are on Vol. 1. Shout and Feel It and Where Shall I Go (Song Of The Wanderer) are live recordings (no CBS studio recordings) reissued elsewhere too. Who? and Upright Organ Blues are by Glenn Hardman & His Hammond Five, apparently included for the Lester Young solos. No Basie, so I am not sure what their place is on a Basie compilation. I have this session on a CBS "Young Lester Young" LP from 1972, and therefore might even predate "Super Chief".

Now that I've seen the cover I remember this one. I saw it numerous times in the record racks and always put it right back (not just for the silly 70s cover which still makes me cringe). Hodgepodge compilation that should be interesting as a starter but invariably leads to lots of overlaps if you explore this music deeper on other reissues. If you want to get these recordings on vinyl, IMO the best way to go would be the six double LPs from the "Jazzotheque" series on French CBS which has them all: https://www.discogs.com/Count-Basie-Count-Basie-VolVI-1946-19501951-The-Orchestra-And-The-Octet/release/7663820 (A full overview of all six 2-LPs sets is at the bottom of the track listing on this page) These Columbia recordings also were released as an LP box set (with fairly basic layout and packaging) by some other CBS branch at one time (It took me ages to locate Vol. 5 of the above Jazzotheque series so when I saw that box set in a shop one day one day - which was fairly cheap secondhand - I almost sprung for it for the contents of that Vol. 5 but in the end did not because I liked the Jazzotheque packaging a lot better - and eventually Vol. 5 did turn up anyway ).

This debate is at the point of running in circles - again. You know the non-retroactive European PD laws as well as I do. And they make most of the Fresh Sound CD reissues (i.e. pre-1962 recording and release dates of the orignal material) totaly "legit" by European PD laws and for European buyers. If anyone wants to complain about substandard identification of source material, please look at the oft-touted Proper boxes. Their credits as given on many V.A. box sets and CD sleeves are just laughable - and utterly misleading. Having to leaf through the booklet to find out at last which is which is not the way to do it if you're being serious about your stuff.

In the same vein: Was Wade Legge white? Those who claim so - please look at his BN cover.

Talking about editing, wasn't there some rather huge and heavy-handed editing going on with certain Louis Armstrong recordings on Columbia in the 50s? I think Chris Albertson once wrote rather a detailed and acidic piece about this here. One piece of editing I personally really regret are those jam session recordings by Bird in Sweden in 1950. I think from the first time these were released in 1959/60 the editing was there. I have a Spanish Storyville pressing from the 70s where the liner notes even give details about the Swedish (cream of the crop, mind you) soloists edited out because "of no great interest" - and this by Lars Werner, jazzman, scribe and producer himself! Understandable considering the cult surrounding Bird but still a pity ...

Actually I now wish I still had that "Bielefelder Katalog" from the early 60s that I was given along with the 1960/61 issue of the jazz catalog. But it was sold off at a fleamarket a long, long time ago as it really was "surplus to requirements". Its correct title was "Katalog der Schallplatten klassischer Musik", listing what was available on the market in Germany, probably a bit like your "Schwann", except that it focused on classical music only and had track listings etc.. Copies of older volumes are around on abebooks and elsewhere, though. I just checked - at the time my 1960/61 jazz catalog was issued with some 110 pages, the classical music catalog had a whoopping 288 pages. And I am pretty sure the portion of import records listed in the classical catalog was far smaller than in the jazz catalog (where I do think all the Blue Note, Pacific Jazz, etc. listed in there, and of course French Vogue, were imports, not German pressings). So this might give you an idea of the relative size of the record market in this field here. Mike is correct about what he says about soloists/conductors working with orchestras from other countries. From what I also remember in those record racks is that while I cannot really remember US solists/orchestras there, let along US pressings (except for those early ones), featured soloists and orchestras from various West European countries also were around. Same for Czechoslovak (above all) and Polish records with classical music, and these most often were imports from those countries (mainly because records from those countries were dirt cheap here and apparently were exported widely from behind the Iron Curtain). OTOH I cannot recall having ever seen a record featuring Lily Pons, for example (a name I would have noticed for quite a peculiar reason too long to explain here ). Again, I observed this only browsing through the bins, but since apparently a an awful lot of fairly well-cared for collections (wishing you'd hit on jazz collections from the same era and in teh same conditions ) were dumped there and sold off cheaply (because there is no huge market for classical vinyl) you just couldn't help noticing and getting an idea over time of what was out there.

I am not into classical music at all so can only comment as an "observer". But if what I have had to wade through in the record bins at countless record clearout sales in the shops (or even at the usual fleamarket crates) through the years is anything to go by, it seems to me that classical and light classical music from DOMESTIC labels featuring German or European artists was omnipresent in huge, huge numbers here in the 50s and 60s. (Deutsche Grammophon, in particular) I've long ago stopped wondering about the "interesting" older vinyl record jackets seen in stacks that on second look turned out to be classical or light classical music. As for Americans, I suppose Jascha Heifetz, for example, would rank as a U.S. artist? Those big names certainly were sold here too, but probably on domestic pressings, not imports. I also remember the annual record catalogs issued each year were even thicker for classical music than those for jazz and blues (Experts will be familiar with these "Bielefelder" catalogs - and the one "classical" catalog from the early 60s I had was about twice as thick as the jazz edition, and the jazz edition would only reach that stage about 10 years later - and this doesn't even take into account the sales figures which were far higher for classical LPs than for jazz LPs, for example). As far as I can remember IMPORTED pressings with foreign conductors, orchestras and soloists were relatively thin on the ground in those bins, with one exception: For whatever reason I've always had the impression that older 10-inch LPs from the 50s with classical music had a higher share of those thick cardboard U.S. pressings than later LPs did. But maybe this was because whenever I saw a bunch of 10-inchers I checked them particularly closely, only to be dispppointed at a rate of about 99:1. Some very nice cover artwork there, though, but you have to draw a line and cannot start buying items outside your (wide) fields of musical interest just for that ...