Big Beat Steve

Sadly, accessible to subscribers only. But sad anyway.

Now that you mention it ... Rummage, rummage ... yes, I still have an original 1995 Fantasy catalog. Useful as a refernce source indeed. The numerical index lists all the OJCs from 001 to 840 (LPs and CDs, thankfully they did not change their numbering for the CDs). From 675 onwards the releases seem to be CD only. Is this correct? No OJCs beyond 675 pressed on vinyl anymore?

Yes, of course - if we are counting twofers instead of single LPs too! Re-Blue Note "Brown Bag" : You're referring to the mid-70s United Artists reissues, I guess? They also did single-LP reissues, BTW, and also reissued records that did not come from BN but from Aladdin subsidiaries (e.g. Art Pepper) or Liberty (e.g. Bill Perkins).

I have quite a few of this series too and they are nice as an introduction. But as far as SINGLE LP series in THIS area go, I'd rather go for the (French) Black & White reissue series (the ones with the - mostly - black front cover that predated the later 2-LP Jazz Tribune sets - something like 203 volumes in all!), even if you take these series just as an introduction to the subject matter. They were more comprehensive, more thoughtfully planned and treaded where others did not dare to go through the RCA catalog reissue-wise at that time (and for a long time before and after). Over in the US you may not have been exposed that much to that series (and therefore still tout the Vintage series ) but really, the Black & White series did go one better indeed. Case in point: I do have the Harlan Leonard RCA Vintage LP and do like it as an introductory set but in the end I only kept it because I only have one of the two Black & White LPs that featured the band's FULL recorded output (and since that second B&W LP did not make for one full LP's worth of Leonard tracks they also included the early 50s George James recordings - who?? Which OTHER label would have dared to resurrect those (they ain't bad, BTW)? Certainly not the Vintage series ... ;)) (Oh yes, I have the Chronological Classics Harlan Leonard CD too but am still hanging on to my LPs as well). Speaking of which ... how come NO ONE has mentioned the Chronological Classics single-CD series as "favorite" here yet? Considering the cult status they seem to have attained ever since they suddenly went under there must be some who'll just drool at the mere mentioning of that name?

Be different! All things being relative, do we know after all if it actually is the HOUSES that are upside down?

I for one am VERY much interested in swing-era jazz (always have been) but that many alternates strung one after another sometimes ARE a bit much for me (not just in the case of Teddy Wilson - elsewhere too). I like the immediacy of the music (which IMO tends to get lost with too many alternates one after another) and also a bit of variation in listening to this music (which sometimes needs some accommodating anyway to start if you listen to an LP's or CD's worth of 78rpm reissues in one go that were listened to quite differently "one pair at a time" when they were issued and therefore made an impact that is different from the way you absorb it today) and anyway do not that often dissect bars and tones (trying to find out if maybe on take 17 this or that artist did indeed replace an augmented 15th for a flatted 12 1/2th in bar 37 that he had used on take 15 ). And admittedly THAT's only me. Which is not to say, of course, that studying and analyzing different takes does not have its merits (it does!) - it's just something that you cannot undertake at all times and it is not something that serves ALL listening and enjoyment purposes of music. So with the CD media I find the approach taken by Ace Records, for example, i.e. putting alternates elsewhere in the sequence of tracks and not directly behind each other, vastly more enjoyable and useful both for straight-ahead listening and absorbing AND for studying and analyzing.

No doubt. I was just asking because after a quick check of the Teddy Wilson pages in Brian Rust's discography those 155 tracks WITHOUT the Billie Holiday tracks seemed like an awful lot to me.

Well. ever since I saw Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud and Paris Blues and read certain pieces by jazz-minded French scribes, I am inclined to agree with you and i tend to see the same images. Although images of '"U.S. 40s Noir street scenes" run a very, very close second.

Yes that 3-LP box (CBS 66370) is nice but if you are not in the mood, listening can become tiresome due to the strings of alternates. (Who really needs to listen to SEVEN versions of China Boy, making up one entire LP side, in ONE go?) As for the CD reissues of the solo tracks, I assume these are the commercial recordings only and do NOT include the "School for Pianists" sessions? I have these on Meritt 23 (LP) which incidentally claims this is the "Complete School for Pianists Recordings" but has only 15 tracks (including some alternates), not 18 as mentioned earlier in this thread. BTW, IMHO the Musicraft material is fine. At any rate I am not totally awestruck by Teddy Wilson's big band recordings. They are OK but I feel the small group sessions of the mid-40s served him better.

EXCLUDING the Bille Holidays?

Is there a lot that has NOT been reissued by CBS, Hep, Tax et al. in a quite comprehensive manner from that period in the past? And if it's NON-BIllie Holiday, how many Nan Wynn vocals does a JAZZ collector need?

Wow, that's what I call an expert eagle eye!

Yes, please do report back. I do care for R&B obscurities like this. I only have "Take It Away"myself (on a compilation R&B CD reissue), and a couple of Jimmy Tyler's somewhat later releases on Federal have been reissued on two CDs focusing on Federal R&B but I have found no reissue sources (yet) of the other three tracks you asked about.

I've already done that here and there just listening to the LP. Thanks, Brownie, for that candid review!

Indeed:

Talking about Art Blakey and film scores from that period: Did "Des femmes disparaissent" age any better? Just being curious (no, I have not taken the time yet to view the film on Youtube ) Considering the French title ("Women disappear") and then the (period) titles in other languages ... "The road to shame" (English) "The sex vampires" (Italian) "Blonde freight and black devils" (German) ... you sure get a distinct "pulp fiction" feeling about the plot that would have triggered THESE translations to drag people into the movie theaters abroad ...

Yes there is ... discussed there only a short while ago:

I am not sure about artists like Tony Bennett but in JAZZ discographies this happens all the time as new discoveries are added to an artist's discography (either previously unreleased studio recordings or live recordings discovered only much later). Both in the "good old days" when discographies were printed books throughout (just compare - in order - the works of Rust and Jepsen (or even Blackstone and McCarthy if you want to go back even further) with more recent books by Bruyninckx and then Lord (including their CD updates). Same with blues discographies (Goodrich/Dixon and then Leadbitter/Slaven/Pelletier). And online discographies are handled the same way. Chronology of the recording dates usually is the overriding criterion for arranging an artist's output. This often means that, for example, you find data on a given session that yielded, say, an album's worth of tracks released as an album right after the recording session, and then a handful of "leftovers" not released at the time (but released in the meantime) that NOW appear in the UPDATED session listing too but only with a record release number that indicates a much more recent pressing and not a release from, say, the 50s or 60s or 70s. All within one single receording session.

To be honest, Tati had been directing movies when Lewis was not there yet. There may well have been some cross-poliination but his mold had been cast before Lewis came along. And Tati IS more subtle (in a not immediately evident way, and some of it may be picked up only by extreme Francophiles ). As for remembering Jerry Lewis films, this excerpt might be one to be remember:

Need I say that Texas Hop was one of the tunes I was thinking of, in particular?

I for one can hear connections between T-Bone Walker's guitar playing and Chuck Berry. But OTOH, how about drawing additional lines between predecessors like Pee Wee Crayton and Saunders King and their guitar styles leading towards Chuck Berry, maybe? See his "Rockin' At The Philharmonic" (Chess 5121), for example.

Don't know what kind of music you were into at that time but I suppose you were not the only one. Far from it. Reading all those (period) reviews of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and of "Jazz On a Summer's Day" today, it is uncanny how his appearance at the festival was blasted by really everyone of the scribes out there (and then some more ... ).

Well, not wanting to belittle his memory, but when I caught him live on stage in 1988 he played a set of relatively routine material in a routine sequence of stage effects, and after close to 60 minutes sharp everything was over as if against a stopwatch, no encore, no nothing. (Yes, and no photo taking from the audience, of course). Off the stage, lights on,over and out. Not that it was an all-out surprise (revews to that effect of his live apperances had been around), but it was a bit formulaic. Yet audience applause had not been lacking (of course 95% of those in attendance had been long-time r'n'r fans - some from way back in the 50s - so it was a matter of seeing the old hero live once more and "you can't do wrong" no matter what he did, but still ...

Y'all? As far as I can see only the thread starter seems to have such a ton load of Tony Bennett platters to file. Us others, we used that question as a platform to discuss how we'd tackle the "problem" evoked on a general level.